Radical way to reduce poverty: Virginia should invest $1B in affordable housing

Kim Bobo at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy has an idea for how Virginia can better use the $1 billion deemed “available” in Virginia’s budget.

Republicans want to throw the billion dollars in tax breaks to companies and the well-off.

To be fair, that’s good politics. Companies, the bigger ones, flow money back to politicians to run for re-election, and wealthier people are more likely to vote than those from low-income backgrounds.

Democrats, for their part, want to put the billion dollars into public schools and Medicaid.

Not necessarily good politics there, especially the part about Medicaid. A lot of folks who need Medicaid otherwise think of themselves as Republicans who look at social-safety-net programs like, you know, Medicaid, as socialism, so they’re not going to reward Democrats with votes for helping them out.

Anyway, at least society gets something out of putting money into healthcare and schools, but Bobo has another, more radical idea.

“Virginia could make a serious stab toward reducing poverty in the Commonwealth by putting the $1 billion ‘available’ in Virginia’s budget toward investments, like affordable housing, that would dramatically reduce poverty in the state,” Bobo said.

Hmmm.

Why is this so radical?

Because it would be a direct approach at reducing poverty.

Too many things we do in the name of government to benefit people beat around the bush instead of getting to the point.

We throw money at studies, put together a bureaucracy, and by the time we identify the problem and begin working toward implementing the solution, we’re out of money, the world moves on, and the cycle continues.

Bobo points out that “we could solve poverty if we wanted to.”

“The expanded child tax credit reduced child poverty by 30 percent in less than six months. It worked. We didn’t continue it federally, but Virginia could,” Bobo said.

Evidence that politics gets in the way here is there in the supposition from Bobo that state lawmakers, who have tabled their budget discussions for the spring, will likely return to Richmond after the June primaries to take final action on the 2023-2024 state budget amendments.

“Urge them to use the money to invest in families and reduce poverty in Virginia,” Bobo said.