With rent and housing prices an economic burden for many voters, Vice President Kamala Harris introduced incentives Friday for first-time homebuyers and policies to fuel the construction of new homes, promising to build 3 million homes by the end of her first term if she wins the White House in November.
The vice president and her campaign unveiled her housing plans in the battleground of North Carolina, calling for the new units to address the housing shortage, and $25,000 in down payment assistance for 400,000 buyers. Her policy proposals on housing were part of a broader policy speech aimed at the cost of living, including the price of groceries and child care.
“I know what homeownership means. It’s more than a financial transaction,” Harris said during her speech in Raleigh, N.C. “It’s a symbol of the pride that comes with hard work. It’s financial security. It represents what you will be able to do for your children. And sadly, right now, it is out of reach for far too many American families.”
Among other policy proposals, Harris will curtail “rent-setting data firms,” according to a preview of the policies released by her campaign before the speech. She said she intends to take action against corporate landlords using price-setting software that she said was squeezing renters.
In May, the FBI raided the headquarters of Atlanta-based multifamily property developer Cortland Management as part of a criminal investigation into the rental industry. And Cortland is named in a lawsuit which alleges the company used RealPage’s tech to artificially inflate the price of rent.
The DOJ is expected to file an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, Politico reported in July.
Harris wants Congress to stop institutional investors from buying up properties through legislation called the Stop Predatory Investing Act. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution exposed the impact of institutional investment in the single-family rental market in its investigative series American Dream for Rent.
“Some corporate landlords buy dozens, if not hundreds, of houses and apartments, then they turn them around and rent them out at extremely high prices,” Harris said. “Some corporate landlords collude with each other to set artificially high rental prices, often using algorithms and price-fixing software to do it. It’s anti-competitive and it drives up costs. I will fight for a law that cracks down on these practices.”
Still, David Howard, CEO of National Rental Home Council, a trade group for the single-family rental home industry, said the Stop Predatory Investing Act would make housing “less accessible and less affordable.”
“The challenge in today’s housing market is supply and affordability, not providers of single-family rental homes. We need to build more housing and we need to invest more in housing,” he wrote in an email.
Housing was already a campaign issue before President Joseph Biden dropped out in July and endorsed Harris.
A combination of low inventory and high interest rates has increasingly pushed homeownership out of reach and rents have been high. Recently, however, there have been reasons for buyers and renters to feel slightly more optimistic as the market in Georgia appears to be cooling. But the median home price in the Atlanta area is still $415,000, and the median rent for a one-bedroom is $1,650, according to Zillow.
Rep. Kasey Carpenter, a Dalton Republican, and lead sponsor of a bill passed earlier this year to protect Georgia renters called the Safe at Home Act, said supply and demand is still the enduring issue.
“While it may sound good that you’re going to offer somebody $25,000 to first-time homeowners, taxpayers are paying for that,” he said of Harris’ proposals. “I don’t know in the long run if that’s a good policy.”
He said he would like to see local, state and federal lawmakers make changes so it is easier to build homes.
“Adding a bunch of different programs doesn’t solve the problem. You’ve got to figure out a way to make it cheaper to build houses. The only way I see to do that is to change the regulation around the industry,” he said.
To build three million homes, Harris plans to offer a tax incentive for homebuilders who construct starter homes and would expand an existing tax incentive to build more affordable rental properties.
A Harris administration would propose a $40 billion innovation fund to support new ways of financing construction and free up federal land for more affordable housing developments, the campaign said.
Former President Donald Trump has focused on federal land in his policy proposals, as well as blaming people entering the country illegally for driving up the cost of housing.
“To help new homebuyers, Republicans will reduce mortgage rates by slashing inflation, open limited portions of federal lands to allow for new home construction, promote homeownership through tax incentives and support for first-time buyers, and cut unnecessary regulations that raise housing costs,” a document for the Trump campaign states.
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