Argentum has joined a coalition of housing providers working to advocate for policies to address the nation’s housing supply and affordability.
The Housing Affordability Coalition, which also includes the American Seniors Housing Association, represents several real estate-related organizations that are encouraging Congress to pursue solutions to increase the housing supply in all markets, and at all price points.
In a letter to Congress in May before Argentum joined, the coalition recommended the passage of several bipartisan bills and proposals that included incentive-based programs to repurpose vacant commercial properties into housing and the streamlining of regulatory burdens for developers.
“Housing has always been a bipartisan issue,” the coalition wrote in that letter. “Policymakers at every level of government have a role to play in removing obstacles to housing production and preservation, and in addressing the housing affordability challenges that have faced this country for decades.”
Overall improvements, expansions and the creation of new policies being called for by the coalition would greatly benefit the senior living industry as well, according to senior living experts.
More than 11 million older adults (72%) in the “forgotten middle” — individuals whose incomes or assets are too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to pay privately for senior housing — will not have sufficient financial resources to pay for assisted living by 2033, and they likely won’t qualify for Medicaid to pay for their long-term care needs either, according to a report from NORC at the University of Chicago released last year.
In a Milken Institute panel discussion in December, long-term care experts said that affordability and connected health services were the two most critical policy interventions that local leaders must prioritize as the aging population grows exponentially in the coming decades.
US Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge testified before Congress this spring that older adults are the fastest-growing group of people moving to the streets due to the lack of affordability of housing.
