Bipartisan Senators Reintroduce Bill to Establish Affordable Housing Task Force

Senators Todd Young (R-Ind.), Angus King (I-Maine), and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), along with a group of 13 bipartisan senators, reintroduced the Task Force on the Impact of the Affordable Housing Crisis Act, which aims to better understand and respond to America’s housing affordability crisis by creating a bipartisan housing task force. The task force would evaluate and quantify the impact of housing costs on other government programs and provide recommendations to Congress on how to increase affordable housing options to improve life outcomes. Specifically, the task force will:

• Evaluate and quantify the impact that a lack of affordable housing has on other areas of life and life outcomes for individuals living in the United States, including education, employment, income level, health, nutrition, access to transportation, and poverty level in the neighborhood in which individuals live, regional economic growth, and neighborhood and rural community stability and revitalization.
• Evaluate and quantify the costs incurred by other federal, state, and local programs due to a lack of affordable housing.
• Make recommendations to Congress on how to use affordable housing to improve the effectiveness of other federal programs and improve life outcomes for individuals living in the United States.

Cosponsors of the bill include U.S. Senators Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Doug Jones (D-Ala.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Ark.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Jon Tester (D-Mont.).