The distraction strategy aimed at stopping Kamala Harris is most effective at drowning out her solid, commonsense ideas for solving a real crisis in America: housing.
This problem especially hurts young adults starting out in the workplace. It’s hard to take a job that would advance your career but doesn’t pay enough to cover the rent or the mortgage payment for a home.
But this issue spans generations. Many of my fellow retirees are looking to downsize or move to a place that’s more accessible to folks our age. That’s not an easy thing to find.
Just before the Democratic convention in August, Harris and newly picked running mate Tim Walz announced their housing plan. It is multi-faceted and seems pretty damn smart.
Among her proposals is an initiative to build 3 million new housing units. It would rely on providing incentives to homebuilders, including breaks when those new homes go to first-time buyers.
Harris and Walz also want to provide a $25,000 credit to first-time homebuyers. They want to crack down on housing industry manipulation – both in the purchasing of groups of homes as an investment rather than a life experience, and in the manipulation of rental markets aimed at driving up lease costs.
Many of their proposals have bipartisan support – if you remember that idea. Kids of Republicans who aren’t super wealthy need homes, too.
One thing I think a Harris-Walz administration should consider is a reallocation of real estate space.
You see it almost everywhere you go: Big office buildings emptied by COVID and teleworking. Storefronts, strip shopping centers and malls deserted thanks to the convenience of online shopping.
There is so much empty built-up space in this country. It’s not limited to cities – like what I’ve seen first-hand in San Francisco and Minneapolis. In suburban New York, where I live, nothing looks as awful as a space that was once occupied by workers or shoppers.
Converting these spaces is going to take a lot of money. Think about it: Most offices don’t have water flowing through them – and people aren’t going to want apartments for which you share a bathroom and kitchen with your neighbors. Pipes ain’t cheap.
But sometimes we forget that we’re a country that’s especially good at solving problems.
The technology Americans created is what makes it possible for everyone in the world to see what I’m writing right now. We can see a co-worker in Istanbul, buy a hat from a store in Seoul or order jambalaya from New Orleans.
The scene from “Apollo 13” when the NASA scientists create a way to reduce CO2 emissions using the available parts on the spacecraft should be our guide in endeavors like this – including and especially in something so precious as housing.
Because one of the reasons we’re seeing the declines in family creation that conservatives seem so worked up about is that young people have such a hard time figuring out how to make a go of it.
Solving a housing crisis won’t cause any massive shift. But it sure will help.
One final point: Homelessness remains a scourge in this country. It’s an embarrassment and a tragedy in the world’s No. 1 economy.
And while all of it is awful, the fact that people who have served the United States as members of the military find themselves on the streets or in the woods is shameful.
We’ve got the space. We need the know-how and the will.
That – not phony stories about people eating dogs and cats – is what American politics should be about.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the Harris-Walz campaign and elder care.
SUBJECTISM 