LOS ANGELES _ Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders released a $2.5 trillion housing policy plan on Tuesday that aims to end homelessness in the U.S. and enact a national cap on annual rent increases.
The release of Sanders' housing plan came as President Donald Trump said he was weighing federal action to address homelessness in West Coast cities. On a flight to California on Tuesday to raise money for his reelection campaign, Trump told reporters he could not let Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities "destroy themselves" by tolerating the explosion of tent encampments, but his administration has said little publicly about its plans.
Sanders' plan prioritizes establishing 25,000 housing units during his first year as president through the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund and, over the next five years, spending $32 billion to end homelessness in the U.S.
The presidential candidate's plan includes $50 billion in grants to cities and states for community land trusts that it says will "enable over 1 million households to purchase a shared equity home over the next 25 years." The 10-year plan would also invest $70 billion to modernize public housing.
Housing _ like health care, education and access to clean water _ is a human right, Sanders says. His plan appears to strengthen the rights of renters by adding a "just-cause" requirement for evictions and ensuring LGBTQ+ residents are protected by the Fair Housing Act by passing the Equality Act. The plan would impose a national cap on yearly rent increases at 3%, or 1.5 times the Consumer Price Index.
He also proposed increasing funding for the Indian Housing Block Grant Program to $3 billion to build and improve affordable housing on tribal lands. A 2017 study by the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that in a two-year period alone, 68,000 new units were needed on those lands to replace deteriorating buildings.
Sanders has spoken recently at events centered on housing affordability in California and Nevada.
"Today in America, we have well over a half a million people who are either sleeping out on the streets or are in emergency shelters, including 58,000 right here in Los Angeles," he said in early August at a town hall at Temple Ahavat Shalom in Northridge, citing the latest findings of the homeless population in the county.
"And we have got to ask ourselves, what in God's name is going on in this country when we would give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1% and large profitable corporations, but presumably, we do not have enough money to make sure that a half a million of fellow Americans are not homeless? That is an outrage."
He was referring to a report by the nonprofit National Alliance to End Homelessness that 552,830 people nationwide were homeless on a single night in 2018.
California has long struggled with housing affordability. The state has the highest homeless population in the nation, with 129,972 people who were homeless on a given night in 2018, according to the alliance. Los Angeles County's crisis has been brewing since the 1980s, and a report released this year revealed a 12% year-over-year increase in the number of people who are homeless _ nearly 59,000. The city of Los Angeles saw a dramatic spike of 16%, with more than 36,000 people sleeping on the streets, in shelters or in their cars. Last year, the city poured $619 million into housing and services.
Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties also saw double-digit increases.
At the town hall in Northridge, Sanders spoke about what he hoped to achieve, including strengthening Section 8, a federal housing voucher for low-income residents, and requiring real estate developers to include affordable housing in new developments. These are both part of his plan.
Sanders joins Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California and former HUD Secretary Julian Castro in releasing a housing policy plan.
Another of Sanders' Democratic rivals, former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke, campaigned Tuesday on skid row. He called the scale of the squalor "breathtaking."
"The number of tents, the number of people on the street, the desperation _ we saw fights break out as we were walking down the street," O'Rourke said. "I can only imagine what your temper and frustration and anxiety are when you've been sleeping on the street night after night."
O'Rourke, who has not released a detailed plan, promised to invest $400 billion over 10 years in housing for Americans with low or moderate incomes, building 200,000 units a year.
After his August town hall, Sanders also toured skid row. He stopped by Star Apartments, which provides permanent housing and support to homeless people, and he later walked down to a sobering center, passing a person sleeping under a red blanket on the sidewalk.
"It is painful to know that we are the wealthiest country on Earth, and there are people a few feet away from up here who are sleeping out on the street," he said after his tour, gesturing to 7th Street behind him. "For too long we have ignored this growing crisis, and everybody thinks it's somebody else who's out there until it happens to them."
