Economic Justice

Affordable Housing

Decent affordable housing is a fundamental basic right, but it is out of reach for far too many. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition stated that the 2019 national Housing Wage is $22.96 per hour for a two-bedroom rental home, or more than 3.1 times higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. The 2017 Housing Wage for a one-bedroom rental home is $18.65, or 2.5 times higher than the federal minimum wage.

Over the past few years, these numbers have become a stark reality for the citizens of District 5.  Recently, a study concluded that in the next few years, Nashville will be more than 30,000 housing units short for its growing population. Further, there has been a significant rise in working individuals who are struggling to make ends meet due to rising rent and mortgage costs.

The area median income for Nashville is around $56,000, but a single person should only be paying 30 percent of that towards rent. But finding a one-bedroom apartment in Nashville to rent for less than $1,000 a month has become extremely difficult.  The average family of four makes around $75,000 and is paying too much for rent or mortgage payments, causing the quality of living to decrease significantly.

Unaffordable housing drives poor people deeper into poverty, depriving them of other necessities, and limiting their chances of rebounding.  Before we can have serious conversations about living options, we must first make sure housing is affordable…and right now, it isn’t. As we contend with this affordability housing crisis, the time to act is now to ensure that all Americans have access to safe, stable and affordable housing.

Living Wage

Stagnant income is another crisis of our time.  The U.S. economy is nearly double what it was in 1980, but most families have nothing to show for it. Corporate profits as a share of our national income are at an all-time high, while wages are at a 65-year low.  At the same time, it has been 10 years since Congress increased the federal minimum wage, the longest period in history.

The current $7.25 minimum hourly rate was set in 2009, during the Great Recession. Since then, America’s lowest-paid workers have lost about $3,000 a year, considering the rising cost of living, according to calculations from the Economic Policy Institute.  Pay has fallen so far that today nearly four in 10 American workers struggle on less than $31,200 a year, which translates to $15 an hour for a full-time employment.

Raising the minimum wage is one of the best tools we have to lift incomes and grow our economy. No one who works a fulltime job should have to live in or near poverty.

Student Loans

At nearly $1.6 trillion, student loan debt is now the second highest consumer debt category, behind only mortgage debt, and exceeds debt for both car loans and credit cards.  By anyone’s definition, this is a crisis.  It is certainly a crisis for those of us repaying student loans, with repayment schedules that span decades of large monthly payments.

Unfortunately, this debt is on a trajectory to grow much larger in the future.  By 2021, the student loan debt is projected to balloon to $2 trillion.  Today, more than two-thirds of college graduates have student debt, compared with less than 50 percent in the early 1990s.  Then, the average debt was $9,000; now it’s $30,000. The typical monthly bill is nearly $400.

As the student loan debt rises, homeownership rates are falling. For every 10 percent in student loan debt a person holds, their chance of home ownership drops 1 to 2 percentage points during their first five years after school, according to the Federal Reserve. More than 80 percent of people age 22 to 35 with student debt who haven’t yet bought a house blame their educational debt as a factor, according to the National Association of Realtors.

We are long overdue for genuine, transformative reform.