How to fix the affordable housing crisis, big government-style

Uncle Sam needs to build, build, build

Construction in San Francisco.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Affordable housing is dangerously close to going extinct. There are only 12 counties in the whole country where the average one-bedroom apartment is considered affordable for minimum-wage workers. And throughout the U.S., the stock of affordable housing is dwindling fast: Between 2010 and 2016, the amount of housing priced for very low-income families plummeted an astonishing 60 percent.

This is a crisis and it's high time American policymaking took it seriously. The federal government must get into public housing in a big way — and it needs to be smart about it.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.