As the presidential election heats up, newly minted Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, who has come under pressure to unveil her policy plans, has released a portion of her economic strategy to combat what is widely viewed as an affordable housing crisis in the United States.
According to Gallup polls, the cost of housing is becoming a top financial concern for voters nationwide in the 2024 election.
Harris underscored this urgency in a recent interview with CNN on Aug. 29, where she highlighted the need to tackle the rising cost of housing as a critical priority of her campaign.
“What we need to do is bring down the cost of housing,” Harris said. “My proposal includes what would be a tax credit of $25,000 for first-time homebuyers so they can just have enough to put a down payment on a home, which is part of the American dream and their aspiration.”
The affordable housing crisis is not just a campaign talking point — it’s a harsh reality in cities like Gary, where economic inequality and racial disparities intersect with the housing market. Recent census figures show the median income as under $37,000. These local issues mirror a broader national problem of a systemic housing shortage that disproportionately affects Black and lower-income communities.
The Harris campaign’s focus and strategy on housing, particularly the plan to offer down payment assistance, aligns with local efforts taken by Indiana lawmakers, specifically Indiana’s Black Legislative Caucus, to bridge the housing gap and could represent a synergy between federal, state, and local policy.
Earlier this year, Capital B Gary reported on the efforts Indiana lawmakers, housing advocates and government municipalities are making to establish a Housing Commission aimed at addressing the state’s current affordable housing crisis.
Fresh off the momentum of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Harris campaign has released an ad touting parts of her plan to address the housing crisis. The Harris campaign revealed specifics of the plan in a section entitled “Build the American Dream: Lowering the costs of renting and owning a home.”
The plan calls for the construction of 3 million homes within the next four years to address the housing shortage, taking action to lower rent, and providing up to $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers.
“I think it’s a good model,” U.S. Rep. André Carson, Indiana’s only Black U.S. representative, told Capital B Gary during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago shortly after Harris’ plan was made public.
“That kind of assistance and proper use of taxpayer dollars, not only will instill confidence in our markets and our communities, but it could also change the trajectory of someone’s life,” he said.
The recently released Harris-Walz plan has striking similarities to a Biden-Harris plan released earlier this year, notably its reliance on congressional action to enact these sweeping changes. With Congress deeply divided, the likelihood of passing comprehensive housing legislation remains uncertain.
“The biggest issues federal and state governments have to address is the shortage of housing generally,” said Richard Rothstein, former senior fellow of the Thurgood Marshall Institute at the NAACP Legal Defense fund and author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America. “If the state and federal governments are going to do something about the supply of housing, that would be a big contribution. But there’s not much citizens can do to make that happen in the current political climate,” Rothstein told Capital B Gary.
“That’s what keeps most Black families out of homeownership,” he added. “It’s unaffordable, and it’s unaffordable because we have a housing shortage, so higher-income families are bidding up the price of housing and making them unaffordable for lower-income families.”
According to the Northwest Indiana Realtors Association, home prices in Gary have increased dramatically, with values rising nearly sevenfold in the past decade. And it’s not just higher-income families driving up prices; corporate investors and hedge funds are also part of the equation, making it even more difficult for average residents to compete.
In response to these mounting challenges, Indiana’s Black Legislative Caucus made housing the cornerstone of their 2024 legislative session. Titled “Fair Housing, Fair Futures,” the caucus proposed several bills to address housing affordability and prevent companies from driving up prices.
State Rep. and caucus Chair Earl Harris Jr., D-East Chicago, whose district includes part of Gary, said the caucus was very intentional with its legislative plan.
“One bill that I filed, which was House Bill 1176, had to do with investor ownership of single-family residences. And that’s really aimed at these big massive hedge funds or these massive companies with a value of $50 million. They’re going to people who’ve put their house on the market and offering them $20,000 more. They’re doing it in a lot of parts of the country, and it’s come here to Indiana,” Harris told Capital B Gary.
The bill also established a down payment assistance program, a key component of the Harris-Walz plan.
While battles wage on for legislative action at the state and federal levels, the effect residents can have locally is often overlooked.
Leah Rothstein, who co-authored the solutions-based book Just Action with her father as a follow-up to The Color of Law, pointed to community land trusts and equitable property tax assessments as effective tools for creating and maintaining affordable housing options.
“Down payment assistance programs are especially important for addressing the homeownership gap between Blacks and whites,” Leah Rothstein told Capital B Gary.
“What my dad and I focused on in our book is local policies and programs, mostly because that’s what local residents have the most sort of influence over.”
Leah Rothstein emphasized the need to address the property tax assessment system, which is locally controlled by counties. Because of how that system is designed and implemented, she says, African American homeowners overpay in property taxes relative to the value of their homes compared to whites.
“So if you’re paying more in property taxes than your fair share, you can build less wealth through that homeownership experience. So we need to address that disparity,” she said.
According to data from the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance, in 2022 Gary was home to the three highest taxing districts in Lake County.
She highlighted community land trusts, similar to Northwest Indiana’s Habitat for Humanity, which provide lower-income families a pathway to homeownership by ensuring long-term affordability through limited equity arrangements.
These homes have a limited equity arrangement so that when the buyers eventually become homeowners and want to sell that home, they are limited in how much they can sell it for, ensuring that the home is affordable to the next homebuyer.
“There are so many solutions out there, and I think it’s easy for us all to think that there’s nothing that we can do, or we don’t know how to affect change on this, but there’s really a lot we can’t really use that excuse anymore,” she said. “There’s so much available for us in our own communities to make a dent on this.”
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