HARRISBURG —More than one million Pennsylvania households spend over 30% of their income on housing. And over the next decade, the state’s housing crunch is slated to intensify, with the estimates that Pennsylvania will have nearly 185,000 fewer new homes than it needs to keep up with estimated demand.
Read more Does the American masculinity crisis have roots in Valley Forge?
State legislators have pushed to address the need, introducing bills that would increase the housing supply through accelerated approval processes and lifting restrictions on new developments — and urged leaders to include those initiatives in this year’s budget negotiations.
Gov. Josh Shapiro also put housing at the forefront of his budget address in February, asking the General Assembly to ease restrictions for rental applications and cap costs on manufactured home increases.
But none of the proposed policies were included in the final budget deal, passed last month. Instead, the budget included the creation of a housing database — a move which some lawmakers and advocates say falls short of addressing Pennsylvania’s burgeoning housing crisis.
“I think the budget generally left a lot of questions unaddressed. And housing, one of the top three issues in terms of the cost-of-living crisis, was one of them,” said Sen. Nikil Saval, (D., Philadelphia).
Saval was one of six senators who voted against the budget. He’s since said that was because it left many key policy issues, including housing, unaddressed. Sen. Katie Muth (D., Montgomery), the only other Democratic senator to vote against the budget, has also said she believes the budget left issues like housing, rising energy costs, and affordability unanswered.
Shapiro’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The new housing database — incorporated through a bill sponsored by Saval and authored by fellow Philadelphia Sen. Vincent Hughes — will be overseen by the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency. Saval said it’ll ensure more robust data collection to provide transparency on how much affordable housing is available across the state.
Under the new legislation, the agency will be required to create an online searchable database of all publicly financed housing that is subjected to public assistance programs. It will include anticipated termination dates on properties’ affordability restrictions and notes if the property has been granted an extension on those restrictions.
Saval said the publicly available database will ensure lawmakers have a better idea of the state’s affordable housing stock. Much of the affordable housing in the state was created with the help of low-income tax credits that are subject to expiration dates. As termination dates on these housing units loom, with many set to expire within the next five years, Saval said the database will keep lawmakers aware of when housing is no longer affordable and allow them to see if restrictions can be extended.
The database will be updated annually by the PHFA, with local housing agencies submitting data every year.
Chris Anderson, communications officer for the PHFA, wrote in an email that the database is still in the early stages of being built, but said it won’t pose any significant costs to the agency and existing resources will be used to create it.
There are no penalties if the PHFA doesn’t update the database, and the new law does not make it mandatory for local agencies to report information to the agency. The intended audience is primarily housing advocates and organizations, as well as policymakers, Anderson said.
Saval said the database will help lawmakers know how much affordable housing there actually is in the state.
But he said the state budget — where legislators often pass policies in addition to the yearly spending plan — was still a missed opportunity to address Pennsylvania’s housing concerns.
“Anytime there’s a set of budget negotiations where there’s the potential to allocate funding, or create policy that would increase the supply of housing, or address the concerns faced by renters, and anytime that opportunity is missed as it was in this budget, I think it’s a step back,” he said.
‘Missed opportunity’
Carrie Rathmann, vice president of strategic partnerships for Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia, said one initiative notably absent from the final budget deal was the PA Home Preservation Program, a grant administered by the DCED to provide funding for construction cost gaps and keep homeowners in their houses through repairing outdated buildings. The initiative was last funded when it was signed into the budget in 2022, but has not received funding since.
Previously known as the Whole-Home Repairs Program, the state allocated $125 million toward the program using American Rescue Plan dollars, repairing more than 2,600 affordable homes across the commonwealth.
Housing advocates have pushed for the state to renew the funding, with the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania calling it one of the organization’s biggest priorities.
Read more House of the week: A condo in Washington Square West for $350,000
In an email, spokespeople from the housing alliance noted that the state funding in 2022 was not enough to support the number of people that applied for it, meaning there are still people waiting to have their homes repaired.
“The program received far more applications from qualified homeowners than available funding could support, highlighting both the scale of unmet need and the importance of preserving existing housing,” the spokespeople wrote.
The program hasn’t returned in a line item in the state budget since 2022. Companion bills in both chambers supporting the program have received bipartisan support — the House bill passed 122-80 — but are sitting in the Senate Urban Affairs and Housing Committee.
“That felt like it represented a huge missed opportunity to help thousands of Pennsylvanians stay housed and to keep homeowners safe and healthy in the homes that they already own, because without that dedicated investment, this crisis will only grow,” Rathmann said.
Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit that doesn’t rely on state dollars, but Rathmann said state money goes to counties and housing providers like the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation. The money helps an “ecosystem” of housing organizations in the Philadelphia area, and Habitat uses it for a portion of the organization’s work. That included the Built to Last program, an initiative spearheaded by the Philadelphia Energy Authority that inspired the statewide initiative of Whole-Home Repairs in 2022.
Rathmann said state initiatives that increase efficiency on building houses are key to developing homes faster and cheaper, which in turn increases the housing supply and can keep people in high-quality houses. This includes incentives like building lower density “by right,” meaning property owners can build low-density housing without special approval.
“We see every day at Habitat that that impact is real, it’s tangible, it crosses different sectors like kids can get to school and do better,” Rathmann said. “Seniors are healthier. People are healthier, people feel less stressed. They have more money in their pocket for medication and food.”
‘Risk aversion on all sides’
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Pennsylvania’s divided state legislature have pushed for their own housing initiatives. Bills have passed through the Democratic-controlled House or Republican Senate, but have yet to move forward in the opposing chamber.
Democrat-backedHouse bills sitting in the Senate’s Urban Affairs and Housing Committee include proposals to remove barriers to building accessory dwelling units, lift restrictions on how many unrelated people can live in one home, and seal eviction records to help tenants.
And the Senate GOP also has a number of bills sitting in the House’s committee, like creating an accelerated approval process for new housing, or establishing a Housing Regulatory Compliance Officer.
Beth Rementer, spokesperson for House Democrats, wrote in an email that the House has sent 22 bills to the Senate’s Housing Committee, while the Senate sent two in June.
The state’s lack of housing action marks a difference from the Republican-controlled federal government. In early July, Congress sent the ROAD to Housing Act to President Donald Trump’s desk — a bill that reduces barriers to home construction and modernizes housing programs alongside other initiatives, including a pilot of Whole-Home Repairs.
Saval attributed the Pennsylvania legislature’s inaction to a desire to pass the state budget quickly without debate on hot-button policy issues ahead of the November election, when half the Senate and all members of the House are on the ballot.
“Essentially, there was risk aversion on all sides,” Saval said. “And understandably an unwillingness to get into a budget discussion that would prolong the budget negotiation process.”
Kate Flessner, spokesperson for the Senate Republicans, said in an email that the Senate supports a number of housing initiatives, but underlying issues lie in how the state will pay for them in light of the roughly $5 billion structural deficit.
“As we continue working to address the state budget’s serious structural deficit, we will be primarily focused on ways we can improve housing access that do not require vast sums of taxpayer money — and there are many of them,” Flessner said.
Natalie Javitt is an intern with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association. She can be reached at [email protected].
Read more 🎡 Relics from Gillian’s Wonderland Pier | Inquirer South Jersey