On March 13, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) reintroduced the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act. This comprehensive legislation aims to address our nation's affordable housing crisis by producing more than 3 million new housing units, a 10 percent rent reduction, and the generation of 1.5 million new jobs. It also aims to promote home ownership and reverse discriminatory housing policies such as redlining and restrictive zoning.

In addition to the aforementioned goals, the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act aims to protect low-income seniors, people with disabilities, families with children, and persons without housing by:

• Creating a new $10 billion grant program that enables communities to build infrastructure, parks, roads, or schools if they reform land use rules that make new affordable housing projects needlessly expensive;
• Providing down payment grants to first-time homebuyers living in low-income, formerly redlined, or officially segregated areas in an effort to close the racial wealth gap;
• Strengthening the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to cover more financial institutions (excludes credit unions in the re-introduced bill) in an effort to promote investment activities in poor-and-middle-class communities;
• Supporting families whose wealth sustained substantial damage due to the 2008 financial crisis and still have negative equity on their mortgages;
• And making it easier to use housing vouchers in areas with good schools and jobs for residents.

To learn more about the American Housing Economic Mobility Act, click on the following links to read letters of support discussing the potential impact of the bill on families and communities: 

• Read Letter of Support from the U.S. Conference of Mayors
• Read Letter of Support from Massachusetts Mayors
• Read Letter of Support from Civil Rights Groups
• Read Letter of Support from the National Rural Housing Coalition
•  Read Letter of Support from Credit Union National Association