Ten years after the 2007-2008 housing crisis began, people across races and classes are increasingly affected by the protracted crisis of U.S. housing affordability. Many who own homes remain in precarious positions with unaffordable mortgages. Fewer and fewer families and individuals can afford to buy a home and are swelling the ranks of “the renter nation”. Renters find themselves paying more and more of their paycheck to rent while evictions are skyrocketing. Housing stress is a part of life for millions of people. If someone is not experiencing it, they likely know someone who is.

Public housing — a critical safety net against housing insecurity — has been actively dismantled even as the national housing crisis builds. Public housing has been one of the best examples of truly affordable permanent housing in this country, allowing families and seniors to pay no more than one-third of their income to the house, with rent adjustments as employment and incomes change. But neither U.S. federal nor state governments have supported public housing programs sufficiently to maintain either the quantity or quality that is necessary, and decades of disinvestment and demolition means fewer and fewer low-income people benefit from public housing. Today, the reality of public housing includes long waiting lists, inadequate upkeep, lack of resident control in decision-making, and often, barriers for undocumented immigrants and formerly incarcerated people. And some politicians and developers have found a convenient target in public housing, using racist stereotypes of public housing to justify further funding cuts and elimination of the housing to make way for gentrification.