Gov. Josh Shapiro is unveiling a housing plan that includes protections for Pa. renters, homebuyer support and more

In September 2024, Gov. Josh Shapiro came to Philadelphia to sign an executive order directing Pennsylvania to create a plan to increase and preserve the state’s housing supply.

On Thursday, he will return to the city to unveil the state’s Housing Action Plan, which offers recommendations meant to guide Pennsylvania into 2035.

Much of the plan relies on action from lawmakers and other stakeholders rather than Shapiro’s administration exclusively. It does not assign dollar amounts to proposals, but calls on local governments to allow more housing and housing types, on builders to build more, and on both to work together to remove barriers to housing construction.

In a copy of the plan previewed by The Inquirer, Shapiro highlights that more than a million Pennsylvania households are spending more than 30% of their income on housing. These households are “cost burdened,” according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s definition. Building more can lower housing costs.

As the state faces a housing shortage, the plan aims to increase and preserve the state’s housing supply, expand residents’ access to homes they can afford, connect residents to resources to keep them housed, make homebuilding faster and less costly, and improve coordination of housing efforts across agencies and levels of government.

In Shapiro’s budget address last week, he previewed his housing priorities, calling for a $1 billion fund, supported by the issuing of bonds, to pay for infrastructure projects. He also called for a bevy of new renter protections. These proposals would need the approval of the state’s split legislature.

“Like energy, one of the most effective ways we can lower costs is by simply building more housing,” Shapiro said in the address.

During that address, the governor acknowledged Mayor Cherelle L. Parker for her signature initiative to help build or preserve 30,000 homes in the city.

Some of the plan’s suggestions mirror efforts by officials in Philadelphia and New Jersey, from renter protections to funding to help households sort out unclear legal ownership of properties.

To help implement the recommendations laid out in the report, the plan calls for the administration to appoint a deputy secretary of housing and create a “housing one-stop shop” to help residents and builders access the state’s existing housing resources.

Here are other key takeaways from Shapiro’s proposed housing action plan, the first of its kind in Pennsylvania.

If Pennsylvania doesn’t take action to build and preserve more housing, it will be short about 185,000 homes by 2035, according to the plan. To keep up with anticipated demand, the state needs to add 450,000 homes to its supply by then.

The housing plan has a stated goal of turning Pennsylvania into a leader in home construction.

As it stands now, Pennsylvania is one of the states that has allowed the least amount of new housing. It ranked 44th for the share of homes approved to be built from 2017 to 2023, the Pew Charitable Trusts said in a report released last year. Pew said Pennsylvania’s lack of housing supply is hiking prices for homeowners and renters.

Pennsylvania’s housing plan recommends that Pennsylvania:

The housing plan calls for Pennsylvania to bolster protections for households that either rent their homes or rent the land their homes sit on, including protections Shapiro called for in his budget address last week.

Suggestions include:

Manufactured homes are single-family dwellings often built off-site and placed on a lot. These households own their homes, but many of them rent the land.

Manufactured homes represent one of the most affordable forms of homeownership. But homeowners are often left vulnerable, because they have no other option than to pay increased rent costs if they want to keep the homes they own. Manufactured-home communities are increasingly being bought by private equity companies and other institutional investors, and rent hikes tend to follow.

The housing plan says Pennsylvania should:

Recent laws in New Jersey limit annual rent increases for manufactured-home lots and make it easier for residents to buy their communities.

Across Pennsylvania, 56,000 households live in manufactured-home communities, Shapiro said in his budget address last week.

The plan calls for Pennsylvania to pursue new ways to help residents become homeowners, including creating programs to reduce homebuying costs and allowing local governments to exempt first-time homebuyers from local realty transfer taxes.

It also calls for the state to impose a transfer tax when corporate investors buy single-family and certain other types of homes to help households compete for properties.

To protect Pennsylvanians’ generational wealth, the plan calls for the state to allow transfer-on-death deeds to provide a streamlined process for passing down homes. This would help prevent cases of tangled title — or unclear legal ownership of property. This mostly occurs when a homeowner dies and the deed is not transferred to a new owner.

Tangled titles keep people from qualifying for help to repair their homes and can prevent them from being able to sell properties.

In Philadelphia alone, tangled titles threaten more than $1 billion in generational wealth, according to a 2021 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The plan also calls for funding for legal services to help low-income Pennsylvanians resolve tangled titles. In 2022, Philadelphia officials pledged to give $7.6 million over four years to legal aid groups that are tackling this problem.