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26 J. Affordable Hous. & Cmty. Dev. L. 255 (2017-2018)
Solving the Affordable Housing Crisis: The Key to Unleashing America's Potential

handle is hein.journals/jrlaff26 and id is 283 raw text is: Ri fj ARTICLES Solving the Affordable Housing Crisis: The Key to Unleashing America's Potential J. Ronald Terwilliger As someone who has worked in the homebuilding industry for more than forty-five years, I have never seen the housing situation more despe- rate. The combination of rising rents and unsustainable housing costs is wreaking havoc on families across America. Inexplicably, the affordable housing crisis is generally an afterthought in our public discourse. Health care, tax reform, infrastructure, and the latest political scandals dominate the attention of lawmakers in Washing- ton. Yet the affordable housing crisis has a very real impact on millions of our fellow citizens and responding resolutely to it is profoundly impor- tant for our nation's economy and future prosperity. In 2016, nearly twenty-one million families paid rents considered unaf- fordable under federal standards, up from 14.8 million in 2001. Approxi- mately eleven million of these households were severely cost-burdened, spending in excess of fifty percent of their incomes on housing alone.' Rent increases continue to outpace inflation in most local housing markets. While rental cost burdens hit lower-income families the hardest-in 2016, more than 83 percent of renter households with annual incomes under $15,000 were cost burdened-they also are impacting moderate- income households in communities throughout the country. Make no mis- take: This problem is national in scope and not reserved exclusively to the big cities along America's two coasts. Unfortunately, many older Americans are suffering. According to En- terprise Community Partners, 1.8 million seniors devote more than one 1. HARVARD JOINT CENTER FOR HOUSING STUDIES, AMERICA'S RENTAL HOUSING 2017, at 26 (Dec. 2017). Ron Terwilliger is chairman and founder of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America's Families and chairman emeritus of Trammell Crow Residential. 255

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