Sanders calls for expanded affordable housing in CNN op-ed

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) blasted the Trump administration’s housing policies and called for the expansion of affordable housing options in a CNN op-ed Tuesday.

Vermont senator and presidential candidate lambasted Trump administration moves such as proposed 18 percent cuts to federal housing programs, a proposal to eliminate the National Housing Trust Fund and the 2018 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Sanders writes “encourages gentrification, rather than needed investment in affordable housing.”

{mosads}“As President, he has used the White House to represent the interests of his fellow real estate moguls,” Sanders writes.

Sanders recounted his experience living in a rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn, which he writes has “informed my significantly different housing policy agenda.”

Sanders proposes creating a National Affordable Housing Trust Fund as well as doubling funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s McKinney-Vento homelessness assistance grants.

He further calls for increased grants to cities and localities seeking to create community land trust housing, which he spearheaded in Burlington, Vt., as mayor, and which allow low- and middle-income home buyers to buy homes at below-market prices on land owned by the community.

“We should also support communities’ rent control ordinances and their mandates that developers include affordable housing in their new projects,” Sanders writes. “And we must aggressively defend and promote the legal protections of fair housing, so that we are making sure no one is denied housing based on race, color, national origin, religion, gender or disability.”