The Senate never took up the Moving Forward Act. But housing advocates continue to focus on repealing the Faircloth Amendment. The New York Times recently ran an op-ed labeling a repeal of the rule as the “first step to addressing the country’s housing affordability problem.” On the other side, Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institution, recently argued that “focusing debate on the Faircloth Amendment is a red herring—a political distraction from more tangible obstacles to low-cost housing.”
Here’s a look at the basics.
What is the Faircloth Amendment?
The Faircloth Amendment was a provision of the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998. It amended the Housing Act of 1937, which authorized federal financial assistance to help states and housing authorities provide housing for low-income people. The amendment says, “a public housing agency may not use any of the amounts allocated for the agency from the Capital Fund or Operating Fund for the purpose of constructing any public housing unit, if such construction would result in a net increase from the number of public housing units owned, assisted, or operated by the public housing agency on October 1, 1999, including any public housing units demolished as part of any revitalization effort.” In other words, the amendment prevents housing authorities from ever maintaining more public housing units than they had in 1999.