Join the Pennsylvania Housing Choices Coalition

The Pennsylvania Housing Choices Coalition is a new advocacy coalition of organizations from across the Commonwealth convened by 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania. We are coming together to support smart, bipartisan statewide legislation that will bring about more housing choices for all Pennsylvanians.

We support building more starter homes, workforce housing, and homes with access to transit in the right places close to jobs and opportunities. Our coalition will be asking state lawmakers to support legislative changes that remove barriers to creating more housing choices in communities across Pennsylvania.

What We Believe

• Housing is a basic human need, and everyone should have a safe and affordable place to live

• Housing is unaffordable today because there are not enough homes to rent or buy that meets peoples needs

• The lack of homes is creating competition and driving up prices

• More housing and more neighbors are a benefit, not a cost

• A diverse state requires a diversity of housing choices at all price points

• Fairness requires every community to do their part to provide more housing

• Our housing challenges are regional – each town’s policy decisions impact those nearby – which requires action from both state and local governments to solve.

The Problem

Pennsylvania is facing a severe shortage of housing all across the Commonwealth that is harming our economy and the livelihood of our communities.

According to the 2024 ‘Housing Underproduction’ report from Up for Growth, Pennsylvania needs more than 105,000 homes to meet today’s and tomorrow’s needs. Homes are needed across the state, with Up for Growth identifying the shortage of homes for six metropolitan regions in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia (83,167 homes), Lancaster (8,270), Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton (11,993), York-Hanover (8,966), Reading (6,607), Harrisburg-Carlisle (4,712), Chambersburg-Waynseboro (2,891), and East Stroudsburg (2,609).

Anyone who has tried to buy or rent a home in Pennsylvania recently knows that there are simply not enough housing options available, and that the cutthroat competition over existing homes is pushing prices out of reach for working people. This problem requires urgent action from our state elected officials.

When there are not enough homes, the wealthy will always outbid working people, and everyone else has to move farther away. Unless we build more homes to buy or rent, people will be priced out of the places where they grew up or built their lives.

• Rising housing costs, eating up workers’ wages as they spend more and more of their paychecks on mortgage payments and rent

• The shortage of housing close to job centers results in longer commutes, wasted personal time, and more unnecessary pollution

• Seniors and empty-nesters are stuck in houses that are too big, too hard to care for, and challenging to move around in, but they can’t find an affordable alternative that better meets their needs without moving far away.

• Young adults can’t find an affordable place to live near their family or job, or can’t get a foothold in the cities and towns they grew up in, so they are stuck living with their parents or
  moving far away.

• Even the cheapest housing available is becoming too expensive for the lowest income earners, contributing to rising homelessness

The Solution

The housing shortage persists in large part because of exclusionary zoning and land use rules designed to suppress the construction of less expensive housing types. The Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) has been calling attention to the role these policies play in inhibiting affordable housing in their report “Reducing Land Use Barriers to Affordable Housing”, last updated in 2015.

Despite widespread knowledge of these common policy barriers, little action has been taken to challenge them outside of a handful of municipal jurisdictions with exceptionally motivated and courageous policymakers. With over 2,500 municipal governments operating throughout Pennsylvania – each of whose decisions impact municipalities nearby – winning majorities for change town-by-town is not a viable solution to the housing shortage, which is why our campaign is seeking to pass statewide zoning standards to raise the standard for everyone.

We are calling on the Pennsylvania legislature to pass legislation that would

• Restore housing choices by re-legalizing townhomes, duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes in larger municipalities across the state.

• Bring back starter homes by allowing houses to be built and sold on more modest plots of land.

• Allow more housing near jobs by legalizing apartments and mixed-use buildings in commercial areas.

• Legalize accessory dwellings aka ‘granny flats’ and make it easy for homeowners to build and rent them out in their backyards.

These policies would create common-sense standards for larger cities and towns to follow in their zoning codes – instituting workforce and affordable housing best practices while giving municipalities a solid floor from which to innovate.

We believe that by legalizing homes of all shapes and sizes, especially in places with existing infrastructure and public transportation, the Pennsylvania state government can improve residents’ quality of life, grow more jobs and population, reduce the inconvenience and impact of long commutes, reduce pollution from transportation and buildings, boost the economy in older walkable downtowns and suburbs, and increase access to housing in high-opportunity neighborhoods and school districts across the Commonwealth.

How Your Organization Can Join

Fill out our short online form to join the coalition, or send an email to sreidenbaugh@10000friends.org with your organization’s name, logo, and the individual(s) who should be your point of contact.

Coalition members will be invited to participate in weekly virtual meetings, Days of Action in Harrisburg, media appearances, and smaller group meetings with legislators and other coalition partners or prospective partners as needed. If you're not sure if your organization can sign on for compliance reasons, please let us know so we can discuss it together.