华盛顿——白宫官员概述了建造和修复200多万套住房的计划，以应对过去一年房价的火山式上涨。
数以百万计的美国人失去了所有权，或者将大部分收入花在了房租上。6月份，标普/凯斯席勒20个城市的房价指数比一年前攀升了创纪录的19.1%，因为可供购买的房屋太少，而且低利率使富裕的购房者和房地产投资者能够支付更多的房价。
房价的飙升对美国总统乔·拜登(Joe Biden)围绕中产阶级发展美国经济的愿景构成了威胁，中产阶级在很大程度上是通过拥有住房来定义自己的。美国人拥有住房的愿望也改变了地区政治，因为郊区居民在2020年与民主党人结盟，帮助拜登在亚利桑那州和佐治亚州取得关键胜利，这两个州通过新的住房建设增加了人口。
白宫经济顾问委员会周三在其博客上发布了一份关于负担能力问题和政府缓解计划的详细分析。其分析指出，40年来，住房供应一直赶不上人口增长，因此许多挑战早于新冠肺炎大流行造成的破坏。
抵押贷款购买者房地美的研究人员估计，美国有380万套住房无法满足需求。持续的短缺意味着房价稳步增长的速度快于收入增长的速度，这使得首次购房者更难为首付存钱，也更难让他们在租房时住得更久。将近一半的租房者在住房上的花费超过了推荐的收入的30%。
为了增加住房建设，拜登的经济团队提出了一系列政策转变。
首先，它打算通过一系列行政改革，在三年内提供10万套经济适用住房。它将通过房地美和房利美增加两到四个单元的人造房屋和建筑的抵押贷款可用性。政府还打算让潜在业主和非营利组织更容易购买在止赎拍卖中未能出售的房屋，并扩大与地方政府和非营利组织的联系，以购买联邦政府持有的房屋。
政府还计划通过税收抵免、贷款和赠款增加公寓楼的融资选择。
其次，拜登政府估计，其经济议程将导致建造和翻新200万套住房。这将包括使用联邦补贴、低收入住房税收抵免、针对经济脆弱社区建设的新税收抵免，以及取消地方和州政府限制新建设的排他性分区和土地使用政策的激励措施。
尽管如此，该博客警告称，供应短缺可能会持续。
“没有快速缓解供应紧张的神奇公式，”它总结道。
White House details plans to improve housing affordability
WASHINGTON -- White House officials are outlining plans to build and restore more than 2 million homes, a response to the volcanic rise in housing prices over the past year.
Millions of Americans are getting priced out of ownership or stuck spending the bulk of their income on rent. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city home price index climbed a record 19.1% in June from a year ago, as too few homes are available to buy and low interest rates have enabled affluent buyers and real estate investors to pay more for homes.
The jump in prices is a threat to President Joe Biden's vision of centering the U.S. economy around the middle class, a group that has defined itself in large part through home ownership. Americans' desire to own homes has also altered regional politics as suburbanites aligned with Democrats in 2020 to help give Biden key victories in Arizona and Georgia, two states that have added population through new home construction.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers on Wednesday posted on its blog a detailed analysis of the affordability problem and the administration's plans to relieve it. Its analysis notes that housing supply has fallen short of population growth for four decades, so many of the challenges predate the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Researchers at the mortgage buyer Freddie Mac estimate that the United States is 3.8 million homes shy of what is needed to meet demand. The persistent shortage has meant that home prices are steadily increasing faster than incomes, making it harder for first-time buyers to save for down payments and keeping them in rentals longer. Nearly half of renters spend more than the recommended 30% of their incomes on housing.
To increase home construction, Biden's economics team proposes a series of policy shifts.
First, it intends to deliver 100,000 affordable housing units over three years through a series of administrative changes. It will increase mortgage availability through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae for manufactured houses and buildings with two to four units. The government also intends to make it easier for would-be owners and nonprofits to buy homes that failed to sell in foreclosure auctions, as well as expand outreach to local governments and nonprofits to buy federally held homes.
The government also plans to increase the financing options for apartment buildings through tax credits, loans and grants.
Secondly, the Biden administration estimates that its economic agenda would lead to the construction and renovation of 2 million homes. This would include the use of federal subsidies, the low-income housing tax credit, a new tax credit for construction in economically vulnerable neighborhoods and incentives to remove exclusionary zoning and land use policies by local and state governments that limit new construction.
Still, the blog post cautioned that a supply crunch could linger.
“There is no magic formula to quickly relieve the supply constraints,” it concluded.
