A version of this article was first published in Next City.
Last summer, the House of Representatives passed the Moving Forward Act, a $1.5 trillion plan to upgrade the national infrastructure and combat climate change by reducing demand for fossil fuels. The bill incorporated a handful of amendments related to housing and homelessness offered by a group of Congressional Democrats.
One of those amendments, introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), would have repealed the Faircloth Amendment, a 1990s-era rule that prevents the expansion of public housing in the United States. Repealing the amendment would remove a legal obstacle to a series of ambitioushousingplans that progressives have rallied behind in the last few years, which include calls to repair and expand existing public housing and build new social housing in American cities.
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