Saving America’s Aging Homes: Inside the Bipartisan Push for HUD Repair Grants

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is warning that badly needed home repairs are blocking housing from reaching the families that need it.In a Sept. 30 letter urging the Department of Housing and Urban Development to implement a new federal home-repair program, Sens. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Rep. Nikema Williams (D-GA) pointed to seniors who might otherwise downsize but cannot afford to update their homes before selling.“This is an issue that disproportionately affects America’s seniors, many of whom would like to downsize but do not want to sell the home at a steep discount due to the updates required,” they wrote.But their warning points to a much larger supply problem.The U.S. is already losing an estimated 350,000 to 400,000 housing units every year to deterioration, demolition, and severe weather, according to the Center for Community Progress.If losses continued at roughly that pace, 3.5 million to 4 million units would disappear over a decade—nearly as many homes as the country is currently estimated to be short.That creates a second front in America’s housing crunch. At the same time the country needs to build new homes, it also has to preserve the o...