The New England Labor Housing Initiative is a new project, premised on a simple proposition: the labor movement is essential to solving the homelessness and housing crises.

Why The New England Labor Housing Initiative?
Housing affordability is out of control; house prices have continued to increase and half of all renters nationwide were cost-burdened in 2022, meaning they spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing-related costs. Homelessness too has risen dramatically; according to the 2024 annual Point in Time report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), homelessness spiked by 18 percent from the year before.

Meanwhile, despite significant gains by the labor movement in recent years, unions struggle to negotiate pay rises that can keep up with housing inflation; even large pay increases can be quickly devoured by even larger rent increases. At the same time, tax breaks and other economic incentives are funneled into the construction of affordable housing, and the projects are often built with non-union labor and by an industry rife with labor exploitation and low pay. And the failure of homelessness policies to solve the problem have made more difficult the jobs of union members such as teachers, nurses, and social workers.

The connections between labor and housing are clear. In both past and present, unions have acted. During the New Deal, Catherine Bauer Wurster led the AFL’s Labor Housing Conference, pushing for social housing. And various unions sponsored cooperative housing in New York City during the mid-20th century. More recently, the AFL-CIO’s Housing Investment Trust uses union pension dollars to fund union-built housing, unions following the Bargaining for the Common Good model have allied with community groups to address housing and homelessness, and organized labor’s political muscle helped push through a major affordable housing initiative in Los Angeles.

Together, labor can lead the fight for affordable housing and policies to address homelessness, with the New England Labor Housing Initiative acting as a convener, incubator, resource hub, and more.