Essay on Affordable Housing Crisis

1 Edward N. Wolff. “Recent trends in household wealth in the United States: Rising debt and the middle-class squeeze - an update to 2007,” Working Paper No. 589. Accessed January 13, 2013, http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf

From 1938-1969, in America was in a period called the great compression, a time where the difference between the richest and poorest Americans was very small and economic growth was explosive. Due to past and current economic policies and events, income inequality has exploded in America, which is why in 2015 America had the highest level of wealth inequality in the world at 80.56 gini[1] . In the future this inequality will slow down economic growth, increase debt for middle income Americans, make America less democratic, and reduce economic mobility. This problem, however, does have solutions and this paper will lay out some of the solutions and the effect they will have on the economy, but first I will explain the history of income inequality in the US.

Wealth inequality in the United States has grown tremendously since 1970. The United States continuously reveals higher rates of inequality as a result of perpetual support for free market capitalism. The high rates of wealth inequality cause the growing financial crisis to persist, lower socio-economic mobility, increase national poverty, and have adverse effects on health and well being.

This first lecture gave us a close look into the unequal share of wealth and the factors that determine the wealth of individuals in the American society. One of the first factors that affect immensely the inequality in America is the obsessiveness of wanting to classify people and make them mark a box for their gender, race and class. Where men and whites have more privileges than any other person and are not only paid higher, but would most likely spend less time in prison for committing the same crime as an African American. The United states is so unequal that the top 1% of the population has 38.1% of the wealth and the bottom 40% which is a little less than half of the people living in America only have 0.2% of the wealth. And as if that statistic alone was not scary enough, we learn in this

“Growing Apart: The Evolution of Income vs. Wealth Inequality” written by Michael Cragg and Rand Ghayad is an article about how wealth distribution in America has dramatically changed within the last three decades and how it has become one of the most political and economic trends in this nation. The main priority of the article is that it talked about how the wealth and financial statues in the United States has favored in the upper class and has opposed the middle and lower class within the last three decades. The first subdivision talked about how income inequality and wealth inequality are both different and how wealth inequality has a bigger negativity on the United States economic growth. The second subdivision talked about how if the

The highest earning fifth of U.S. families earned 59.1% of all income, while the richest earned 88.9% of all wealth. A big gap between the rich and poor is often associated with low social mobility, which contradicts the American ideal of equal opportunity. Levels of income inequality are higher than they have been in almost a century, the top one percent has a share of the national income of over 20 percent (Wilhelm). There are a variety of factors that influence income inequality, a few of which will be discussed in this paper. Rising income inequality is caused by differences in life expectancy, rapidly increases in the incomes of the top 5 percent, social trends, and shifts in the global economy.

When placing my life into the context of the world around me, it can be rather difficult to examine upon the struggles I’ve had upon my life. Particularly profound instances have scarred me to a certain degree, and for quite a while I’ve maintained an unhealthy manner of total repression from these happenings. However, as I move forward in my journey in life, battling to ward off the demons which have infiltrated my psyche since my youthful days, I hold the knowledge that I am not alone, and there are always people that care for me and my well being. This is where Affordable Housing has emaciating themselves in my heart forever. Without Affordable Housing, there is a fantastic chance that I am not the same happy, hard-working individual that I am today, and for that, I will forever be indebted to Affordable Housing. The impact

The Institute for Policy Studies recently released a report on wealth in America. The survey looked at a number of statistical breakdowns of our countries wealth from simple dollars in the bank to overall net worth to land holdings. To give some perspective to the numbers, let's start with some basic understandings:

Despite dipping below ten percent between the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the income gap in the United States has climbed steadily over the last fifty years. From its low point in 1973, the wealthiest Americans’ income share now exceeds even that which they held in 1928, on the eve of the Great Depression. Experts have pointed to several potential culprits, including the underrepresentation of lower- and middle-class citizens in legislatures, the shrinking power of organized labor, the expanding power of organized business, and a tax system that seems to disproportionately favor those at the top at the expense of those on the bottom. These factors vary greatly in level of impact and the feasibility of potential solutions,

Moreover, some of the qualifications for HUD voucher are based off the individual annual gross income and their citizenship status. While approximately 40 percent of the housing stock in the nation is worth less than $100,000, nearly 68 percent of the homes in the Delta are worth less than $100,000. Correspondingly, Improvement of Housing and Infrastructure Conditions in the Lower Mississippi Delta, a recent released report by the Housing Council, focused on documenting some of the different approaches to improving housing and infrastructure conditions in the Delta, how to overcome obstacles, and provide practices other

Historically, there have been many instances where the incomes of individuals have fluctuated and caused great changes to the nation, especially post World War II period until the present day. The income share of the wealthiest 1% of Americans was the same in 2006 as it was in 1917 (Jansson, 2012, p.45). The years from the end of World War II into the 1970s were ones of substantial economic growth. In summary, the period from post-World War II until about the late 1960’s, income inequality was not as great as it is today and was more steady, but it still existed and greatly influenced the income inequality in present day America.

The wealth gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow in America as it has in recent decades. Wealth distribution in America has not been this unequal since 1928, the year before the Great Depression started. The richest four hundred people in America have more money than the one hundred fifty million poorest Americans combined. The wealth gap needs to shrink due to the negative repercussions of wealth inequality. Wealth inequality leads to inequality in other aspects of life. Uneven distribution of wealth stunts economic growth as well as limits socio economic mobility. It also leads to a shorter lifespan for the less wealthy.

Public housing, first introduced in the first half of 20th century in the U.S., aims to provide affordable housing for the low-income. Early-reformers of such policy in the U.S. considered public housing as a responsibility for state government to ensure the humane need and more generally the well-being of all citizens (Stoloff, 2004, p. 2). A major form of public housing historically and currently is concentrated public housing which the low-income may apply for with a subsidized rate (Stoloff, 2004, p. 1). However, scholars and administrators later noticed a great deal of side-effect problems, a dominant one of which is the poor health condition of public housing residents. According to Fertig (2007), there are numerous negative relations between public housing and health risk

So, you’re finally ready to sell your place, but you don’t know the first thing about how to prepare to put your home on the market. Preparing your home to go up on the market is one of those things you can put a lot of work into doing and still not sell. The housing market is a very tricky business to be in. You can’t just expect to put your house up for sell as is and get a bunch of offers. People want to walk in and see their future in it, not yours. When preparing you can choose how little or how much you put into it. Just know the price will increase with every task you do. Your homes first impression is vital. You must ask yourself, when buyers drive by your home, do they get scared away or are they tempted to see the inside? So,

An average output of about 20,000 to 25,000 new homes were built per year up to the mid-1990s when output increased considerably for 15 years, before reducing to an average of 10,000 homes per year for the last five years. Housing supply remains below demand requirements, particularly in urban areas. There are 81,000 homes needed by 2020. The study estimates that 44,902 homes are required in five major urban areas accounting for 55.4% of those needed in the five-year period, therefore future housing supply must reflect demographic changes and vacant housing needs more attention. (Housing supply and demand report 2017-Ronan Lyons).