One Community Update
April 11, 2025

Source: RisMedia

Housing remains out of reach for too many Americans, according to former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Marcia Fudge.

Fudge, who served as HUD secretary from 2021-2024, gave her thoughts on housing in the U.S. in a talk on Thurs. April 10, 2025, hosted at Harvard University. (The talk was co-sponsored by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.)

Interviewer Dr. Howard Koh opened the conversation by citing the high number of Americans cost-burdened by housing, asking for Fudge’s assessment on how this happened. Fudge answered that there are three primary causes: not building enough affordable or low-income housing stock, not building enough housing stock in general and lack of ease for both builders and developers due to too many regulations and “people who don’t want low-income housing near their neighborhoods.”

“We were building things that were a lot more expensive that people made money building. So we were building mini-mansions, we weren’t building four-unit properties. We were building things on big lots. We were doing all the things that the people in America thought that they wanted. But as a consequence, we were not taking care of the people who needed real care from the government,” explained Fudge when describing trends that led to a lack of low-income housing stock.

“There’s a belief today that on the low end we need probably 1.5 million units of housing,” Fudge continued, saying that even strides made in boosting housing construction aren’t pushing the market to the needed numbers. “We have people who are on the streets because we don’t have enough housing. And the housing we have because of the supply and demand, the supply is so low and the demand is so high, they’re being priced out of living in a decent home, and so they’re being pushed to the streets.”

Asked about which groups are feeling the shortage the worst, Fudge answered that senior citizens, and then women and children, are the two groups ever more likely to be impacted.

“The fastest growing groups of people who are being pushed to the streets are senior citizens because they cannot live on Social Security. And if we cut it even more, you’re going to see more (become homeless),” said Fudge.

The Social Security Administration has been facing cutbacks under the Trump administration, although Trump has also promised not to cut benefits.

At the same time, Trump advisor and Special Government Employee Elon Musk compared the program to a “Ponzi scheme” and claimed it is rife with fraud and inefficiencies—claims that have been disputed.

Calling the housing and homelessness issues “two sides of the same coin,” Fudge walked through efforts at addressing them she made while HUD secretary—primarily focusing on tax credits and incentives to make low-income housing more attractive to developers and neighborhoods.

“You look at low-income housing tax credits, there needed to be more of them. We tried to put in place a neighborhood tax credit that we couldn’t get past Congress. We tried to put in place more public private partnerships, so we started a rental assistance demonstration (RAD) program where we allow private developers to take over previously public housing initiatives. That has worked quite well, but it is a tedious process. It’s an expensive process,” Fudge elaborated.

Fudge described local opposition to zoning reform for more affordable housing, and resulting lack of political will to reconsider zoning laws, as a major roadblock that has allowed the affordability crisis to fester. She has in the past described zoning laws as a barrier to housing development and homeownership equity.

“What we find is that people come to planning meetings, etc., and say, ‘No, we don’t want you to change the zoning in our neighborhood. It needs to be only residential, which means that you can’t put even a small four-unit building that is rental,’” said Fudge, citing local building codes that keep neighborhoods solely residential. “But the biggest problem is most cities haven’t even looked at their zoning for years and years. So we want them to take a look at it and make a serious effort to try to change it.”

Fudge in turn disputed a comparison that Koh made invoking the recent loss of housing in the Los Angeles wildfires to the lack of inventory creating more homelessness.

“Most of the people who lost their homes, especially in the Hills, they’re fairly wealthy people with insurance, they’re going to be able to rebuild,” said Fudge. She praised Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ lifting of certain zoning and building regulations to spur reconstruction efforts, but maintained it is a “very different” issue, impacting different people, than the ongoing housing supply shortage.

In addressing that housing shortage, Fudge maintained that the cost of doing so means it must be carried out via public-private partnerships.

“The difference being with trying to put in place the public-private partnerships is that the government knows that it does not have the resources to maintain or to build new housing. It would cost $80 billion just to bring all public housing up to code. The government is not going to spend it. So what we did (while I was at HUD) was create an environment in which we could say to a private developer, ‘We can convert this public housing building into a building that you own, but you have to meet these kinds of requirements that you manage,’” explained Fudge.

However, Fudge also emphasized the role of the “public” side of that partnership, saying government should take a more active role in rehabbing low-income communities and preventing the “segregation” of poverty.

“What we are trying to do is say that it is not necessarily the purview of the government to determine where a person lives, but I think we do have an obligation to help them live in that place safely,” said Fudge.

As one step in addressing the supply crisis, Fudge reiterated that she is a “big fan” of manufactured housing, which can be built, bought and maintained at affordable rates.

“(Manufactured homes) are energy efficient. They are inexpensive, if you can say a house is inexpensive. We have modular homes. We have 3D printed homes. We have homes that you put together almost just like a puzzle. They ship all of the pieces in and just basically put them together. I mean, people think about trailer homes, right? I would never think about living in a trailer. But today, what you see as trailer homes, they’re so nice, but think about the fact that they can be built very, very quickly. They don’t take a lot of land,” she said.

Asked for her opinion about what people can do directly to help alleviate the housing crisis, Fudge said the solution should “bubble up” from both concerned citizens to public servants.

“Do your part…that means not just everyday people, that means also mayors and county commissioners and governors and all of the people who deal with this on a daily basis,” she said, before explaining how she took a proactive approach while leading HUD. “Because the one thing I realized in the president’s cabinet, if I did not go and travel every week, which I almost did, the people that didn’t, they didn’t know what was going on out in the community. They never talked to people, touched people, listened to people and saw how people lived. They were isolated. Get your feet wet, get in the water and then I think when we do that, we’ll all be so much better.”