What’s fueling distress over the economy and anxiety over financial security has less to do with paying an extra $1 for eggs or cereal (fattening the wallets of producers and retailers like Kroger that admits to price-gouging), but rather the really big ticket necessity: housing. What could be a more kitchen-table issue than a roof over your family’s heads?
People at the mercy of landlords and real estate developers and, yes, NIMBYism, have been complaining about the lack of affordable housing (for themselves, not others) for decades. Amd there have been responsible government officials (like Gov. Kathy Hochul) who have recognized that the lack of affordable housing also impedes economic development because workers cannot afford to live anywhere near the jobs. But the Biden-Harris administration, Hochul and now presidential candidate Kamala Harris have shown real commitment to tackling the affordable housing crisis, even at the risk (in Hochul’s case) of triggering political backlash.
Home ownership is a keystone of the American Dream, but also promotes community stability and engagement, and voting (especially when you have vigilantes challenging people’s voter registration, intimidating their right to vote and partisans purging rolls to gain advantage). More than that, home ownership has been key to “legacy equity” that has been denied certain groups by decades of redlining and housing discrimination. It is a shanda (Yiddish for disgrace) that one’s career success and lifespan too closely track to the zipcode where they grew up.
Joe Biden, from the day he came into office, has been fanatical to insert “economic justice” across his administration and in every policy and program, especially those financed by the landmark Bipartisan Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction acts. And all of the efforts by the Biden-Harris administration to increase affordability – lowering prescription drug costs, giving student loan relief, attacking junk fees in order to give families – to give families “more breathing room” and financial security, and will also ease the way to eventually own their own home.
Harris has made housing affordability a key part of her “Opportunity Economy” agenda and it’s clearly not empty promises nor pandering rhetoric – the Biden-Harris administration has already implemented scores of policies and programs and unleashed investments to spur housing construction and protect renters and owners against predatory landlords and vulture capitalists and proposed legislation that Harris intends to take up in her administration.
Harris draws on her own experience growing up and moving around a lot from one rental to another, before her mother could save enough money after 10 years to finally be able to purchase their first home. By then, Harris was already a teenager. She appreciates what stability and security of home ownership can mean to a child and to anxious parents.
Harris is proposing legislation to create new tax incentives for builders who construct affordable units and starter homes for first-time home buyers, and address the barriers to building including at the state and local level (think zoning and permitting), expanding upon the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, in order to build 3 million homes and rental units in four years.
In a nutshell, her plan is to “build, baby, build”.
She advocates legislation to prevent corporate landlords from using algorithms to collude to raise rents; block Wall Street investors from buying homes in bulk to resell or rent at premium rates; and, most significantly to provide $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers.
“We will take down barriers and cut red tape, including at the state and local levels, and by the end of my first term, we will end America’s housing shortage by building 3 million new homes and rentals that are affordable for the middle class,” Harris declared at a campaign event in Raleigh, N.C.
While Vice President Harris is running to lower costs, end the housing shortage and put more Americans on track to achieving the American Dream, Donald Trump, who likes to represent himself as a billionaire real estate mogul (never mind the six bankruptcies and business frauds) has a long history of exploiting tenants as a landlord and using racially discriminatory housing practices.
Reminder: Trump’s $2 trillion tax giveaway to the wealthiest individuals and corporations, which he intends to renew, capped deductions for state and local taxes which specifically harmed homeowners in New York, California and Massachusetts, and put homeownership that much further out of reach.
He’s already shown what he would do as president because when he was in office, he proposed cutting HUD’s budget by 20%; tried to eliminate programs to aid affordable housing development and community development block grant programs that fund affordable housing construction and improvements; proposed eliminating the National Housing Trust Fund that assists state and local efforts to develop affordable housing; weakened the ability to bring discrimination claims under fair housing rules; and made it easier for predatory lenders to charge small businesses high interest rates.
If he gets back into the White House, his Project 2025 plans are even worse: he would repeal the Fair Housing Act and revoke rules that prevent discrimination; reverse fair housing and tenant protections put into place by Biden-Harris administration; slash federal assistance to help Americans purchase a home; privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which would drive up mortgage costs for homebuyers; reverse all housing initiatives taken by the Biden administration to reduce closing costs during refinancing; and repeal rental assistance that helped 100,000 access affordable rent.
But while it is clear that the affordable housing crisis cannot be solved by a President Harris without Congress, the reality is that if Trump or any Republican becomes president, the crisis will only become more dire, more desperate under an administration that sees its strength and hold on power in fostering inequity in opportunity, insecurity and instability among working and middle-class families.
