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Americans Want More Affordable Housing — Just Not Nearby
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AMERICANS WANT MORE AFFORDABLE HOUSING — JUST NOT NEARBY

By Zoha Qamar

Dec. 16, 2022, at 6:00 AM




PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY FIVETHIRTYEIGHT / GETTY IMAGES

A quarter of parents across the country have struggled to afford housing in the
past 12 months, reflecting a broader problem with housing access amid persistent
inflation. These conditions are only adding to America’s ongoing homelessness
crisis. While homelessness decreased nationally between 2007 and 2016, trends
have since reversed. More than half a million Americans were homeless in January
2020, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new era of uncertainty
and joblessness that still lingers.

Generally, Americans support tackling housing insecurity, with 71 percent saying
that it should be at least an important priority for Congress to pass
legislation growing the housing supply and improving housing affordability. But
research also suggests that while Americans want more kinds of infrastructure to
reduce homelessness, far fewer want those resources close to where they
themselves live.

Earlier this year, YouGov surveyed Americans about building almost 40 kinds of
developments, ranging from country clubs to waste management facilities.
Regarding social infrastructure, 85 percent of Americans supported building
homeless shelters somewhere in the United States. However, when they were asked
about building shelters in their own local area, support was over 20 percentage
points lower. Support for low-income housing followed a similar pattern, with
broad approval for building it someplace in the country (82 percent) but much
less for building it locally (65 percent).

This discrepancy isn’t necessarily new or surprising, however. More recently,
we’ve seen it play out in American cities throughout the pandemic. For example,
in New York City’s Upper West Side, the city temporarily housed homeless people
in unoccupied hotel rooms. But after local homeowners and renters protested, the
city relocated many of the people to other neighborhoods.

“At some level, people want to look good. And so when asked if they support
low-income housing, people say yes. But when that housing gets closer and
closer, then people start to think about tangible impacts,” said Shomon
Shamsuddin, a professor of social policy at Tufts University. “It no longer
becomes something they choose to support in theory. They perceive it as
something forced on them by somebody else.” 

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But it’s more than just optics. Ultimately, pushback against affordable housing
tends to draw on the assumption that such housing raises crime rates, because
people tend to believe the poor are more likely to commit crimes, Shamsuddin
said. However, research suggests that an increase in temporary shelters, like
tents, for unhoused people in a given area does not track with an increase in
nearby property crime. And that misconception points at an underlying question:
Do Americans view homelessness as a crime issue or as a poverty issue?

The aforementioned YouGov poll implies that Americans believe that the people
who need affordable housing options are less desirable to have in one’s
community. And this idea goes beyond individual citizens. For example, many
local governments have focused on using police force and the law to deal with
homelessness, destroying encampments of unhoused people.

“Even the term ‘affordable housing’ comes out of an effort to make people more
comfortable,” said Shamsuddin. “‘Low-income housing’ has certain [negative]
connotations.” 

And so stigma continues to lurk over affordable housing, even as access to it
has become a pressing concern for so many people.


OTHER POLLING BITES

 * Former President Donald Trump is the least popular he’s been since July 2015,
   according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll. Only 31 percent of
   registered voters had a positive opinion of him, while nearly twice as many
   (59 percent) had a negative opinion. Though much of that split is partisan,
   his numbers among Republicans are also on the decline: Only 70 percent of
   registered Republican voters see him in a positive light, his lowest in-party
   popularity since March 2016. And as Trump looks toward a 2024 presidential
   bid, 70 percent of registered voters said they would not like to see him
   become the Republican nominee.
 * This is the third holiday season since the World Health Organization declared
   COVID-19 a pandemic, and most Americans no longer consider the virus a factor
   in planning their festivities. A CivicScience survey conducted Nov. 13-Dec 12
   found that just 8 percent of Americans expected COVID-19 to affect their
   holiday plans “a lot” — down from 13 percent in 2021 and from 45 percent in
   2020. Roughly the same share said they’d “definitely” be spending Christmas
   with their friends and family this year (60 percent) as said so in 2021 (57
   percent); both these figures were notably higher than the share who reported
   the same in 2020 (29 percent).
 * About half of Americans either somewhat (22 percent) or strongly approved (26
   percent) the United States’s prisoner exchange with Russia that freed
   American basketball player Brittney Griner last week, per a YouGov survey.
   Support for the exchange was especially high among Democrats (71 percent),
   compared with only 34 percent among Republicans. Additional YouGov data found
   that 49 percent of Americans believed that the Russian justice system
   unfairly treated Griner, who was arrested early this year on drug trafficking
   charges related to carrying a personal supply of medical marijuana and was
   subsequently sentenced to more than nine years in a penal colony.
 * A recently released survey from Pew Research Center found that 25 percent of
   American parents of K-12 students said racism and racial inequality come up
   in conversations with their kids very or fairly often. Meanwhile, around 7 in
   10 parents said the topics either arise sometimes (39 percent) or rarely, if
   ever (28 percent). Among Democratic parents of K-12 children, 34 percent said
   race-related topics come up at least fairly often, while the same frequency
   was reported by just 15 percent of Republican parents.


BIDEN APPROVAL

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker,1

As of Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern.

43.0 percent of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president, while
51.3 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -8.3 points). At this time
last week, 42.1 percent approved and 52.6 percent disapproved (a net approval
rating of -10.5 points). One month ago, Biden had an approval rating of 41.7
percent and a disapproval rating of 53.3 percent, for a net approval rating of
-11.6 points.


FOOTNOTES

 1. As of Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern.

Zoha Qamar is an ABC News fellow.

Filed under

Pollapalooza (240 posts) Economy (159) Housing (15) Homelessness (3) Polla (3)


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