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What We’re Following
Housing is 2020: On New Year’s Eve, Senator Elizabeth Warren announced that she plans to enter the 2020 race for the White House. Even several months before that, she had hinted as much by releasing a slew of ambitious legislative proposals outlining her platform, and one of those bills could put the nation’s affordability crisis center stage in the next presidential election. Warren’s bill, the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act, would establish funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to address the deep racial disparities left by redlining and to help borrowers in communities hit hard by foreclosures. CityLab’s Kriston Capps has the rundown on the housing policy that, by any other name, might be called reparations.
It also looks like Senator Warren won’t be running alone for long. Julián Castro, who served as HUD secretary for President Obama, is set to make a campaign announcement next Saturday in San Antonio, where he was born, raised, and served as mayor from 2009 to 2014. Meanwhile, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti is contemplating whether he can govern America’s second-largest city while running for president. Throw in other prospective candidates like South Bend’s Pete Buttigieg, New Orleans’s Mitch Landrieu, Newark’s Cory Booker, and New York’s Michael Bloomberg and the 2020 Democratic field could be packed with current and former mayors.
More on CityLab
What We’re Reading
Uber is boring now (Quartz)
These rural panhandle towns should be shrinking. But thanks to immigrants, they’re booming (Texas Observer)
Seattle made a dead-end street into a basketball court (Streetsblog)
Video: Why fixing the U.S. bail system is tricky (Vox)
Nearly two dozen people are running to be New York City’s public advocate (New York Times)
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