hi yes as someone who worked in affordable housing the trump administration is wildly damaging & his cuts to HUD & housing programs are going to be felt for decades. the DAY he was elected federally-funding housing projects were scrambling to cover defects (i’ll explain why) https://twitter.com/angryblacklady/status/1301141500890198017

so housing is expensive, right? rather than hand out checks, the govt makes affordable housing developments developers apply for tax credits. now, non-profits have no need fo tax credits — but they do need capital. this is where banks (and elections) come in.

Say I’m an affordable housing developer who managed to be one of the few in this round of founding who was awarded. Say I’m awarded 500,000 in tax credits. before i even applied, i applied *with a bank*, at an agreed up exchange rate of $ to funding. maybe 93 cents to the dollar?

what this means is i, the developer, get 465,000 towards the loan — and in return the bank gets to write 500k off their taxes & check off their mandatory community re-investment

but when you have presidents that cut housing funding — and favor big banks — banks know this! & suddenly, they’re not as worried about taxes.

so in 2016, when trump won?

every developer that had been awarded hundreds of thousands saw their tax credit agreement w/ banks TANK

suddenly, banks that had agreed to that 93 cent exchange came back & said “oh, we actually can’t do more than 81 cents.”

so now we’ve lost 60k, overnight. & affordable housing development budgets are already terrifyingly tight. so where does the missing money get cut from?

“the developer!” you might say. nice try. the developer probably already deferred their fee to make the project competitive.

the money has to come from somewhere, so that means units are taken out. amenities & services are removed. projects shrink in scope & impact.

when trump was elected, projects that had been years in the making tanked, *just from the anticipation* of what kind of president he’d be.

banks KNEW republicans would slash HUD investment & community investment requirements. & he did.

& your community paid the price.

“Not MY community!” You might say.

Yes, YOUR community. You don’t have to live somewhere for affordable housing & community reinvestment to benefit you, bc it has a ripple effect. it attracts new tenants, better housing, new businesses, better schools — so yours benefits, too

i live in southeast michigan. under obama there was a huge push to pour FHLBI & MSHDA dollars into some struggling towns. the ripple effect literally saved local schools & now one of those towns (oak park)’s housing market is doing so well affordable housing can’t be built there

(i have a lot of thoughts on this, on how laws & current award payouts are structured to force developers to only build in struggling communities vs building accessible & affordable housing in median communities that would benefit the tenant more but that’s for another day)

& this is only a slice of it! this is only talking about tax credits. Ur local housing $ that get funneled through your Continuum of Care were also impacted bc the Trump administration slashed budgets & “redid” CoC fund rules to make them. basically nonsense & difficult to award

(if you didn’t know, every public health : mental health service in your community depends on CoC funding. from shelters to veteran programs to crisis counseling for at risk teens. all. of. it. & all of these have suffered MASSIVELY under trump.)

so, no. trump running left of biden isn’t possible. it means NOTHING. i worked in the field under his administration. i saw what happened *the day he was elected* before he was in office to slash critical service funding.

him getting re-elected would be devastating. full stop

tldr; trump getting elected was INCREDIBLY INCREDIBLY bad for housing & community health. trump getting elected would be far, far worse

(also the sad, maddening irony is that the communities that desperately need massive pro-housing HUD reform + bigger budgets tend to be white, rural, conservative areas whose location make it impossible to get projects awarded. so now they’ll suffer to stick it to the left )

THERE IS A TYPO IN MY FIRST TWEET I HATE IT HERE

****the day he was elected federally funded projects were scrambling to cover DEFICITS