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Roland Martin and David Dworkin talk about the Harris housing plan, and the affordable housing shortage on Roland Martin Unfiltered.

On October 21, I had the opportunity to join Roland Martin on his show Roland Martin Unfiltered to discuss Vice President Kamala Harris’s housing plan and the nation’s affordable housing crisis. We talked about the shortage of affordable homes, the importance of Black homeownership, and a range of other issues. Martin has a longstanding interest in housing and featured several important guests in the past, including Vice President Harris and Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).

A transcript of the interview is provided below, and you can watch the segment here.

Roland Martin (RM): All right folks welcome back to Roland Martin Unfiltered here on the Black Star Network. Let’s talk about housing.

There’s a stark contrast between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Harris actually has a housing plan, Donald Trump doesn’t even have concepts. He literally has nothing. I’m going to play for you in a bit a soundbite from my interview with Vice President Kamala Harris a week ago.

Let me right now though, go to my next guest David Dworkin, the president and CEO of the National Housing Conference who joins us from Washington, DC. David appreciate it – have you actually seen a housing plan from Donald Trump because I haven’t.

David Dworkin (DD): Well, I’d rather talk about her plan because it’s actually one of the most detailed housing plans I’ve ever seen out of a candidate.

RM: Oh yeah, no we absolutely going to talk about her plan but I’m starting off by making the point she actually has one. I haven’t seen one from him and it reminds me of 2012.

David I’ll never forget, I’m on CNN, the Republican National Convention and I get to this thing with John King and he’s like, well no Mitt Romney has a housing plan and I’m like dude he doesn’t. I literally wrote a column on it last week. And then Anderson Cooper’s like well you know we’ll sort it out. I’m like no we’re not going to sort it out I’m telling you it doesn’t have one. We go to the commercial break, they come back and I go hey during the break I check – he ain’t got one.

And so this is a one of the most fundamental issues that impacting the country right now. People are complaining about high rent. When I interviewed the Vice President everybody keeps talking about the $25,000. I think the major part of her plan is the building of 3 million units because we have a deficit of housing stock in America.

DD: Well that’s absolutely right and the reality is that the two major proposals that she has in her plan already have significant bipartisan support. And one of them, building more affordable rental housing, actually passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. And we need to get these bills passed and have the President sign them so that we can build those homes.

That is the core issue for housing prices. It’s the law of supply and demand. We just don’t have enough houses. We need to build a lot more and I’ve heard you talk about it in the past. You get it.

I mean since the Great Recession we have not built nearly enough homes. Millions short and the other piece of this is that we also lost a lot of home builders in the Great Recession and we haven’t really replaced that capacity.

So we need to create more homes. We also need to build more companies and jobs and frankly that’s where, as you know everybody needs to step up. And there’s a huge opportunity to become a home builder these days especially if you’re already doing home repair renovation.

RM: In fact, during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation I ran into a sister who’s actually building micro homes on 75 Acres in Alabama because this is an opportunity. I know of some churches that are looking to do the exact same thing and so people are looking at creating different opportunities from traditional home builders.

DD: Yes, and there are churches around the country. I’ve been working with Black churches for over 30 years on housing issues and in Detroit and other cities around the country people are really making a difference. They already own some land. They have experience in development. You know there’s a lot of moving parts to building a church and they have credibility in the community. That’s a really big deal.

RM: I guess what’s frustrating to me David is like again my question off the top. All I keep hearing from these mainstream media outlets is where are her policies, where are her policies, where are her policies. And so, here’s one that she laid out and they act like okay it doesn’t exist. And I’m sitting there going this is real. This is a fundamental problem and again I keep showing that chart that we built the fewest number of homes between 2010 and 2020 since the1940s. That’s real so you got increasing demand and the price is going up and it’s crazy.

DD: Yeah you’re absolutely right. I have to say that we’re a nonpartisan organization but anybody who knows housing will look at that plan that she put out there and say this is the most detailed housing plan from a presidential candidate in history.  She lays it out. She says exactly what she’s for. Two of the major housing supply engines are already in bills and are ready to pass. So it’s pretty impressive.

And the other thing I’ll just note is that – and you don’t hear this talked about nearly enough – but we lost a horrific number of Black homeowners during the Great Recession. And anybody who lives in a community that’s predominantly people of color, they know exactly what I’m talking about. And it’s a tragedy.

Just a few years ago the homeownership rate for Black Americans was lower than it was in 1968 when the Fair Housing Act was passed. So, we’ve got to move that number. It’s one of the reasons we created the Black Homeownership Collaborative, 3by3.org, and we work with the National Urban League, the NAACP, but also Realtists, and Realtors and Mortgage Bankers and fair housing advocates and community development groups to build Black homeownership because that’s how we build wealth.

And, I don’t have to tell you that. You know that as well as anybody. I hear it on your show.

RM: Well, I’ll tell you what and I know somebody watching right now that they think I’m crazy what I’m about to say. But the home I bought here in the Dallas area in 1999 I got it for $122,100. I would say property taxes probably was 25, 27, 2800, something like that. Well because of this demand, and I’m about to say people may think I’m crazy, one of the reasons the numbers show how wealth has increased is because home prices have soared. The same house today I believe when I last checked it’s around $320,000 the value of the home. Property taxes are close to $8,000 okay. And the reason that number has shot up is because of the lack of housing.

I have gotten calls, text messages, phone calls damn near every day and because my parents are on the same plan my sister gets them, my dad gets them, my mom gets them, my wife gets them, and my answer is, no I ain’t selling. My parents are retired, they live in my home, and my niece lives there as well. But I’m like no this is what’s going on. And so yes if you add stock it might actually bring the housing, it might bring of course the value of housing prices down, but it’s also going to alleviate all of the pain people are suffering.

You know and again thank God though I own that home. If my parents and my niece and her husband had to live in apartments right now, I can’t even imagine what they would be paying combined to be renters as compared to frankly living in my house rent free.

DD: That’s exactly right. And, you know the difference is and there’s nothing wrong with renting when that’s the right thing for you. But when you’re owning a home and you’re paying your mortgage, you’re paying your rent to yourself and that’s why it’s such a major engine of growing wealth, because the payment you’re making to live is also your investment payment and you can’t get that with any other kind of investment.

RM: Last point here. Again we talk in terms of what we’re seeing. Talk about how serious this problem is with private equity estimated to own 40% of all single-family homes by the year 2030. That’s just six, that’s just five, almost five, a little more five years away. That’s unbelievable.

DD: Well, we have to be careful when we look at trend lines. A lot of these companies are moving into Build to Rent and we need more rental properties. I don’t care whether you build them side by side or stack them on top of each other.

What I’ve got a real problem with is when people are in neighborhoods buying up all the homes off of the Multiple Listing Service and homebuyers can’t compete with that cash. That’s the thing we need to really pay attention to and we’ve worked with some of these companies to say you know y’all need to be selling those homes not to other investors but into the market.

And for first-time home buyers it’s also true that this is one of the areas where the Harris plan and certainly JD Vance’s attitudes about housing converge and the reality is that there’s a reason why people have been so worked up about this. And it’s because folks who want to be homeowners have been struggling to compete and it’s not an even playing field. We need to help folks become homeowners.

RM: I’ve been covering this I tell you. I mean people thought I was crazy in 2009 when I was on CNN, when I was like yo, don’t let these banks off the hook with these toxic assets because of what happened. We bailed them out, they took the money, took care of their bottom line, they held on to those homes, and then turned around and sold 25,000 lots to private equity and a regular ordinary person who was waiting to buy their own home they couldn’t compete with that.

DD: Yeah, we need to do better. And, I also just want to say I really appreciate your leadership and certainly appreciate you having me on the show. But this is something that everybody’s got to be thinking and talking about.

And, I will also say if you own your own home and somebody calls you saying I want to give you cash for that home, you should think about that because there’s a reason they’re coming there and trying to offer you that. And talk to your family, talk to your pastor, talk to people you trust, because nobody gives you something for free.

And we need to take care of ourselves and protect our wealth and I think your listeners are good at that. But in housing it sometimes just hard to focus the way I might think about other stuff. And that’s your most important asset frankly.

RM: And then also what’s happening is you have a lot of children when their parents pass away, grandparents pass away, they don’t want to live there. And so what do they do, they just offload it to anybody and then we see what happens when you do that so is an asset.

I can just tell you this from personal experience having multiple generations my parents, different nieces nephew going through my home, again that has actually been greatly beneficial to my family because they’re not having to spend that 15, 18, 25, 3,000 a month renting they can actually get their life together and be able to save that money and then move on and so that’s also how we have to think about when you own a home how it also can extend to your family.

DD: You know I’m always a little offended when people talk about financial literacy because it implies that people are financially illiterate. If you’re paying your bills off the back porch in cash you definitely have a financial literacy issue. But what we’re talking about here is wealth growth and wealth management. And that’s the key and folks need to get past that and say you know what I’m really talking about how, I’m going to grow where I am today and homeownership is going to be a big part of that.

RM: Absolutely David. We certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much and we’ll be sure to have you back.

DD: Thank you.

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