ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
No conversation about politics this year is complete without affordability.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability.
SCHMITZ: President Trump has called the affordability crisis a hoax, but the data show it really matters. Jennifer Ludden is an NPR correspondent who talks to Americans who cannot find affordable housing, and the word comes up a lot.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: Affordability - everyone is talking about it now. Everyone is concerned about this. With housing specifically, there's a record number of people for whom rent or the mortgage is out of whack with their income. It is unaffordable.
SCHMITZ: For this week's Reporter's Notebook, it's getting harder to live with less in America. For the past year or so, the Trump administration has cut back a range of federal assistance programs. I started by asking Jennifer how she reported on one of those programs.
LUDDEN: So early on, I got a tip, actually. I think it was the first to report on a program that was completely eliminated. It had been started under the Biden administration. It was to upgrade affordable housing, make it energy efficient and climate resilient. This is part of a historic investment...
SCHMITZ: Right.
LUDDEN: ...And a bigger picture push. And so I'm like, OK. But it's this wonky program with acronyms. Like, how do I make - become real?
SCHMITZ: How do you make this interesting?
LUDDEN: Yeah.
SCHMITZ: Yeah.
LUDDEN: So where are the people being affected by this? And I learned through a nonprofit that works with seniors that there was this - a senior residence down in a tiny town in Virginia on the North Carolina border. Their air conditioning had conked out three years ago. And they were so excited they were going to get air conditioning. And now, it had been taken away. So I'm like, OK, I'm going there.
SCHMITZ: Wow.
LUDDEN: And I drove down, and I met one of the residents, Linda Morgan - took me up to her apartment. It was April. It was already starting to get pretty warm.
SCHMITZ: Right.
LUDDEN: And she showed me how she manages to keep herself cool during the hot months.
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LINDA MORGAN: This is my portable air that I'm going to hook up this weekend in that window. And this is what you call the swamp cooler that I just put water in.
LUDDEN: Then she opened her closet, and there were, like, three more fans stuffed in there that - she had, like, a fan for the kitchen, a fan for the other part of the living room. I mean, seven - six or seven in all. You know, she was a nurse and said she really worries for all the people with asthma or lung issues. And then I talked to a lot of other people, and it turned out the community room was also a real issue. Their community room was too large to cool with the fans. They're like, we can't even play our Bingo in this summer.
SCHMITZ: You know, here you are talking about the lack of air conditioning in an area of the country that gets really, really hot and humid during the summer months. You used to cover and edit climate reporting. This is a climate issue as well, is it not?
LUDDEN: Absolutely. The solar panels that this program would have put on - would put on - bring down people's utility bills, right?
SCHMITZ: Right.
LUDDEN: Look at what - look how high utility bills are now. People are really stressing about...
SCHMITZ: That's right.
LUDDEN: ...Gas and oil and solar. It's an investment, but then it makes it cheaper for the people living there. And I should say, there have been tons of lawsuits, and I'm told that some of this funding for this program is being restored.
SCHMITZ: How did you approach her? I mean, I'm curious. How did she first respond to you?
LUDDEN: You know, this is the thing. I walked in, and several people who had volunteered to speak...
SCHMITZ: OK.
LUDDEN: ...Were at a table in that community room. I just walked in, and all of a sudden - I just started making introductions, and then they started talking and going on and on about - I'm like, oh, wait, wait, I got - let me get my headphones on and let me get my mic. And they just...
SCHMITZ: So they came very prepared.
LUDDEN: They were eager to share.
SCHMITZ: They just started...
LUDDEN: Yep.
SCHMITZ: ...Talking, immediately telling you what was wrong...
LUDDEN: Yeah.
SCHMITZ: ...What needs to be fixed.
LUDDEN: Yeah. And one guy was like, you know, I didn't have a home...
SCHMITZ: Yeah.
LUDDEN: ...Before I came here, and I can't lose this one. You know, we - this is very important to us. It affects us every day.
SCHMITZ: Now, you know, in that situation where you have a room of five folks and they're eager to tell you their stories, what are their expectations of how your story is going to impact them?
LUDDEN: I think they like the idea that other people are going to relate and - or maybe learn that something they hadn't thought about before. That is what we want, right? We're reflecting. We're reflecting what is going on in the country and trying to bring to our stories what a lot of people are grappling with. And we all need that. That's what story is. That's what community is. It helps people connect with complete strangers.
SCHMITZ: So, Jennifer, part of your job is also to talk to people who are trying to find solutions. What's it like to talk to them right now?
LUDDEN: I went to recently a - Petersburg, Virginia. I'd found a developer who is making - putting in manufactured homes. Heard - I kept hearing how manufactured homes - you know, it's like the modern version of the old mobile home. They've really been updated, much higher quality.
SCHMITZ: Yeah, these are prefab homes, prefabricated homes.
LUDDEN: Prefab.
SCHMITZ: Yeah.
LUDDEN: And they're just - they're really exploding. They're doing a lot. They're tweaking laws to allow them in more places so they're not confined to trailer parks. And this developer was putting them all over this town of Petersburg, where there'd been just really economic collapse. So I go down, and we timed it so that I could be there when a home arrived on these two big trucks, kind of two halves of a home arrive on the trucks from Pennsylvania. Like, that's an awesome scene.
SCHMITZ: Yeah, it's crazy.
LUDDEN: We'll get some photos...
SCHMITZ: Yeah.
LUDDEN: ...Do some video, and show, like, whoa, it just drives in, and poof, you put it there. And I meet him, and across the street, I go to interview, and I'm thinking, oh, there's a lot of noise going on. What's up? And I look, and there's this incredible scene. I didn't know it was going to be happening. It looks like this house has been, like, ripped apart right down the middle. But it turns out it was the opposite. It was being pushed together. Two sides of a manufactured home were being squeezed together. Tom Heinemann...
SCHMITZ: Yeah.
LUDDEN: ...The developer, explained to me how this was going to work.
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TOM HEINEMANN: And then they're going to take off the wheels - you can see them under there - and then lower it onto block piers.
LUDDEN: And then by the time they'd be done, it would not be a mobile home, and it would be able to be rented out or sold with the land underneath, just like any other home. And it was just incredible to see. You know, this is why we travel...
SCHMITZ: Yeah.
LUDDEN: ...'Cause you can know something or read about it, but there's nothing like seeing it.
SCHMITZ: Yeah, that's right. So, Jennifer, is affordability the most important story in your beat now?
LUDDEN: Yes. I mean, everyone is concerned with it now. It's a political buzzword. And we think about affordability as making ends meet. Obviously, that's important. You have people who are buying food with credit cards - right? - deciding which bill not to pay.
But it's really so much more than that. It's, do you feel like you can afford to have children? If you have children, can you afford child care? Are you going to have to leave your career for a while to raise kids? Are you going to be able to live in the place where you grew up, close to your family, or have you been priced out? Are you going to be able to buy a house ever, to retire, stop working?
These are questions that really get to affordability and the ripple effect it has. The more you're spending and all these things, the less and less you have left over. And there's just no room to save, save up, to do other things in life.
SCHMITZ: And these are questions more and more Americans are asking.
LUDDEN: Absolutely.
SCHMITZ: That's NPR's national desk correspondent Jennifer Ludden. Jennifer, thank you.
LUDDEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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