Left and Right of Housing

In terms of spending on Welfare Programs goes, housing is just about in the middle of the pack.  Annually the government spends about $560 billion on all of the different types of housing assistance.  These include Section 8, two rural housing programs, and a number of other grants and subsidies to developers, the elderly, and those with a low income.  Most of these programs are administered by the Department of Housing and Development.

This is a program without a lot of policy variety within the parties.  For a general trend the left wants to increase funding and the right wants to decrease the funding.  The extent of the change is different within those groups and there are some subtleties to the plans but that is the way to condense it down as much as possible.

We’ll start with the Democrats.  Clinton’s plan (announced back in February) calls for working on solving some of the causes of homelessness in the United States.  The biggest part of the plan is funding to build a lot of low income housing, to the tune of $125 billion.  The construction projects are intended to both create jobs and increase the available amount of housing, which is one of the problems those who apply for Section 8 housing face.  Sanders hasn’t released a plan that is quite so concrete but has said on several occasions that the 3.5 million estimated homeless people in the United States is unacceptable and he plans to increase the availability of affordable housing and work on reducing homelessness among veterans.

The conservatives would argue against these plans simply on the grounds that it costs the government more money.  This increases the government’s role in people’s lives which goes against everything that they believe.  To the average conservative it isn’t the government’s job to control the housing market, the free market would be best suited to ensure that housing is affordable for low income individuals because there will be more competition.

The Republicans plans are all relatively similar, the amounts are mostly what change.  Cruz wants to entirely cut the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  He insists that it isn’t the government’s job to help people find and afford housing it is the job of the free market to make it available and for people to work hard and pay for it.  Kasich and Trump have not given specific housing policies just that they will reduce non-defense spending significantly.  This is in line with the Republican rhetoric of cutting spending and reducing the government’s role in people’s lives.

The liberals would argue against these cuts because they would suggest that it puts an extra burden on people who are already having trouble.  They would contend that it is very hard to work your way out of homelessness.  It makes it hard to get a job and once the person has one the stress of being homeless makes it harder to keep the job.  Most Democrats would argue that the government needs to help these people, at least temporarily so that they can get up on their own two feet.