A Bipartisan Fix to the Housing Crisis?

In 2015, a quarter of renter households in the U.S. paid more than half their income toward their rent. That’s just one of the figures that define the affordable housing crisis, a slow-motion catastrophe that, by 2025, may consume more than 15 million Americans. The Senate Finance Committee just held a hearing to figure out what to do about it.

“Several people mentioned the 25 percent increase in renters over the last 10 years, which is the largest on record,” said Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington State during Tuesday’s hearing. “That is just unbelievable to me—unless you stop and think about the implosion of the economy during that time period, and then you realize, yes, those who were on the last rung of the ladder literally fell off the ladder.”