Former HUD Secretary about the challenges for affordable homes
She first spoke about what she saw as the three most important issues for tackling homelessness: affordable housing; A too stringing local regulatory environment for builders and developers; And neglect to keep track of the construction of all homes.
Fudge also defended Hud’s work under her leadership and said: “As a result of the work we have done, more houses are being built nowadays than ever in the last, probably 30 years,” Fudge said. But she admitted: “It’s still not enough.”
She wanted to sound the alarm about rising poverty and homelessness percentages among older Americans, warning for potentially important consequences if the social security program will go through heavier cuts in the coming months and years. But Fudge also focused on opponents of housing, regardless of their political convictions, with a certain observation about even her own political allies.
“Even our most liberal friends and those who want to help do not want to help enough to have it next to their house,” Fudge said. “What we think is that people come to plan meetings and say:” No, we don’t want that. We don’t want you to change the zoning in our neighborhood. It should only be residential, which means that you can even place a small, four -unity building that is rent. “
She also said that people’s objectives against the proliferation of housing are achieved through a web of legal guidelines, including dictating the types of materials that can be used in certain types of construction, and these have become “obstacles” to build more.
But she also focused on the mentality of cities themselves, and their destination rules.
“The biggest problem is that most cities have not even looked at their zoning for years and years, they don’t know the barriers they create,” she said. “So we want them to look at it and make a serious effort to change it, because again, there is no place in this country where you can live on a minimum wage in a two -bedroom unit. What does that say about our nation? It is embarrassing, but it is reality [of] How we know how to solve it. We still have the will to do it. ‘
