SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Joe Biden unveiled a new $640 billion housing plan on Monday that includes certain homeowner and renter protections already in place in California.
While he won't cap annual rent increases, which California lawmakers did last year, he supports a national Bill of Rights similar to the California Homeowner Bill of Rights.
California's 2013 law, which former state Attorney General Kamala Harris pushed for in response to the state's mortgage and foreclosure crisis, prevents mortgage servicers from continuing a foreclosure process if a homeowner is still trying to get a loan modification. It also gives homeowners a single point of contact as they work through the process and allows them to sue lenders that violate the law.
Biden wants to see those protections rolled out on a national level. If elected president, he said he would also push for local governments to create eviction diversion programs that include both a payment plan and financial education component.
Nearly half of the $640 billion he's proposing to spend over 10 years would go toward new housing construction. The money would come from increased taxes on large financial institutions and corporations.
Biden's housing plan comes just eight days before California's March 3 primary election, making him the last top Democratic candidate to release a proposal on this issue.
During a Jan. 10 interview with The Bee, Biden vowed to make sure no American pays more than 30% of their income on housing.
"Housing should be a right for people," Biden said. "The idea that you have so many people on the street in California because of the increase in cost of housing, it's just not right, and we're gonna fully fund housing, and we're gonna make sure that everyone has access to Section 8 housing. No one should pay more than 30% of their income for housing."
Senior advisers on his campaign familiar with the proposal said the 30% target remains the "goal" in his housing plan, which he'd work toward by fully funding the Section 8 housing program and giving first-time homebuyers a $15,000 down payment on a house. He'd also create a new renter's tax credit targeted toward low-income families that make too much money to qualify for a Section 8 voucher but still struggle to pay their rent.
Housing and homelessness are the top issues for likely Democratic primary voters in California, according to a recent poll from the Public Policy Institute of California.
California has the largest share of homeless people in the country. Biden said in January that all of the roughly 150,000 of them should have a right to shelter.
His new proposal builds on that by supporting a national bill from California Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles.
Waters' Ending Homelessness Act calls for $13 billion over five years to address the issue and create more than 400,000 new housing units for homeless people.
