Vice President Kamala Harris presented housing policy for a Harris-Waltz administration at a campaign event on Friday. Her top priority? Loosening the reins on institutional investors and rental management platforms.
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In a campaign speech on Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina, Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled a housing program that would support first-time homebuyers, provide additional federal funding for local affordable housing projects and crack down on corporations and institutional investors that drive up housing costs.
“The housing market can be complicated, but I’m not new to this,” she said. “…I know how to fight for people who are being exploited in the housing market, and I know what home ownership means,” she added. “It’s more than a financial transaction. It’s so much more than that. It’s more than a house. Home ownership and what it means – it’s a symbol of the pride that comes with hard work.”
“It’s about financial security,” she added. “It shows what you can do for your children.”
Harris highlighted the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act and the Stop Predatory Investing Act, two bills introduced in Congress in 2023 to crack down on institutional investors and landlords.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has introduced the Preventing Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act in January 2023. The bill targets rental management platforms that use algorithms to set rent prices and would prevent landlords from using those platforms to set rents. This is another measure to improve housing choice and access for renters. Wyden cited RealPage and Yardi as the biggest examples of the problem, saying both companies coordinate rent increases that the average American cannot afford.
“In fact, Realpage boasts about raising rents for its clients by 5 to 12 percent in every market where they coordinate rates,” Wyden said in an accounting summary last year. “When rents skyrocket in a market, more people become homeless.”
Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced the Stop Predatory Investing Act in July 2023 to prevent investors who purchase 50 or more new single-family homes for rent from deducting interest or depreciation on those properties unless they sell one of those properties to a homebuyer or qualified nonprofit. If they sell to a homebuyer or qualified nonprofit, they can deduct the interest and depreciation for the year the property is sold.
Harris said that if these bills are passed, they would help “reduce barriers and reduce red tape” for millions of Americans who struggle to afford housing.
“By the end of my first term, we will end America’s housing shortage by building three million new homes and rentals that are affordable to the middle class, and we will do it together. We will do it together,” she said. “And we will make sure that those homes actually go to working- and middle-class Americans – not just investors.”
“Because some corporate landlords buy dozens, if not hundreds, of houses and apartments,” she added. “Then they rent them out at extremely high prices, and that can make it impossible for ordinary people to buy or even rent a home.”
“Some commercial landlords work together to set artificially high rents, often using algorithms and price-fixing software. This is anti-competitive and drives up costs. I will fight for a law that stops these practices.”
In addition to pushing for passage of both bills, Harris also proposed a $25,000 down payment for first-time buyers and a $10,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. Both measures, she said, would open the path to homeownership for over a million Americans.
“We can do this,” she said to applause from the crowd. “We can do this so that more Americans can experience the pride of homeownership and the financial security it represents and brings.”
If elected president in November, Harris said she would take over the Biden-Harris Innovation Fund and double it from $20 billion to $40 billion. The fund would give local governments the money they need to build more affordable housing and support developers who use “innovative methods” to build housing developments. The Innovation Fund also supports the reallocation of unused federal lands for housing.
“Harris will work in partnership with labor and the private sector to create the housing the country needs, both to rent and to buy, and remove barriers to building new housing, including at the state and local levels,” a campaign official told ABC on Friday. “That will make rents and mortgages more affordable.”
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