There aren’t many people at the policy level who give a shit about the poor:
Will Fischer, a housing expert at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, notes that in 2012 we spent about $270 billion in federal money subsidizing housing. Most of that didn’t go to the poor.
The part of this picture that gets the most attention usually is how heavily weighted upper-income subsidies are toward homeownership at the expense of renting. But more important is that households making over $100,000 a year — who represent less than 1 percent of households with severe cost burdens — get about 57 percent of the benefits from the programs included in the above chart. Our housing policy isn’t just heavily biased against renters. It’s hugely regressive too.
H/t Thomas Soldan.
