The Biden administration and the Harris campaign are pitching their housing policies to the American people, while Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are competing for voters’ trust on economic issues. An August Financial Times/Michigan Ross poll shows Harris narrowly ahead of Trump on economic issues by one percentage point. While this is a very small lead, it represents a change from July, when 35% of voters approved of President Joe Biden’s job on economic issues, compared to 41% for Trump.

Plans would reduce bureaucracy, but housing stock is still low

The administration’s plans to improve supply and rising prices also include rezoning federal land in Nevada and limiting rent increases by commercial landlords, which would require a vote in Congress. Housing and homelessness experts say many of these changes are positive, particularly the zoning changes, while others argue some of these measures are insufficient for the current crisis.

On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced her plans to improve housing affordability if she wins the presidential election. Harris’ plans are similar to some of the Biden administration’s approaches to housing policy. Her focus is on stopping commercial landlords from driving up rents and reducing local zoning barriers to building affordable housing. She also announced a policy that would provide first-time homebuyers with up to $25,000 in payment assistance, on the condition that they pay their rent on time for two years.

“We will break down barriers and eliminate red tape, including at the state and local levels, and by the end of my first term, we will end America’s housing crisis by building three million new homes and rentals that are affordable to the middle class,” Harris said Friday at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Indivar Dutta-Gupta, who focuses on policy research and seminars at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, welcomed developments in the Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing program, which aims to make building affordable housing easier and less expensive. The program provides funding to communities to remove obstacles such as “outdated” zoning plans and a “lack of neighborhood amenities.”

“It’s very difficult for a developer to just copy and paste their plans from one community to another. And secondly, it’s not just the special permit and land use requirements that are burdensome,” he said. “They’re time-consuming and they dramatically increase housing costs. So if you can shorten a process that takes 12 months to six months, that can make a huge difference to housing affordability.”

Kenneth Chilton, a professor in Tennessee State University’s school of public administration, said housing is being built, but in the area where he lives, Nashville, there are not enough affordable homes between $100,000 and $300,000. Wages have not caught up with those prices either, he added.

“The market has shifted toward the wealthier households, so new homes are being built, but they’re costing millions of dollars and more, and they’re for people who can afford it or are willing to put themselves under financial strain to afford a million-dollar home,” he said. “…It’s getting harder and harder to come up with the disposable income you need to save the down payment.”

The Biden administration and Congress have also recently focused more heavily on corporate landlords influencing the housing market. Dutta-Gupta and Chilton said that even in situations where they make up a smaller percentage of landlords, their practices influence other landlords and drive up rents. Chilton, who has studied how firms that can quickly buy up all kinds of properties can affect regional housing markets, said it’s hard for the average homeowner to compete.

“There are many more companies and investors buying up housing,” he said. “Some of these are institutional investors, but there have been recent reports that even smaller local landlords are adopting the same business practices, namely one-year leases with cost-of-living adjustments built in. They act like corporate landlords.”

He said none of the Biden administration proposals he has seen take into account prospective homebuyers, who must apply for loans and cannot compete with groups and investors who pay cash and do not conduct inspections. Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill in Congress to limit the power of corporate landlords, but it has not passed.

Dutta-Gupta said the Biden administration’s recent efforts are putting “significant dollar amounts” into finding affordable housing through grants, even if they are likely to be below demand. He said it was also encouraging to see the U.S. Department of Transportation prioritizing communities with “more housing-friendly policies” in its discretionary infrastructure grants to give communities more incentive to promote affordable housing. But he said the administration needs to make sure it communicates that effectively through outreach.

“There needs to be a serious effort to explain to communities that there is a new preference and how these communities can potentially fall into that preference category,” he said. “You don’t want to just let them know there is a preference and then no behavior change occurs.”

Although Trump has talked about mortgage rates during his campaign, he has not provided many details on housing policy. The Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate influences mortgage rates, and Trump has said the president should have “at least some say” in Fed policy. The Republican Party’s 2024 platform also includes a section on housing affordability, mentioning tax incentives to “promote homeownership,” allowing new homes to be built on some federal lands, and reducing regulations that “increase housing costs.”

The challenge of accommodating people

Given the challenges of building affordable housing, the National Alliance to End Homelessness wants to see more comprehensive policy approaches to prevent more people from becoming homeless. Homelessness reached a record high in 2023.

Although the Biden administration has taken steps to expand access to housing for groups particularly vulnerable to homelessness, such as veterans and survivors of domestic violence, Steve Berg, chief policy officer at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, wants a more universal approach, such as housing vouchers that match the level of need. He said targeted emergency rental assistance combined with eviction moratoriums in places where homelessness is particularly high and rising rapidly would also be an effective way to reach the people who need it most.

“The eviction moratorium combined with subsidies for landlords to help people with rent arrears were very effective measures,” Berg said of previous measures during the pandemic to help people find housing.

Why housing is so important to policymakers

The Federal Reserve has signaled that it is close to cutting interest rates as inflation has eased and the housing market begins to cool in response to high mortgage rates. The Fed began raising rates in 2022 and raised them 11 times by the end of 2023, putting pressure on the housing market at a time of high demand for housing and a shortage of affordable housing.

In May, rents in the U.S. rose 3.2 percent year over year, the largest increase in over a year for single-family homes, according to CoreLogic’s rent data. A lack of affordable housing is also closely linked to homelessness. From 2019 to 2023, the number of people who went into shelters for the first time rose more than 23 percent, according to a 2024 report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

“The Federal Reserve is slowing the economy primarily by making it more expensive to build homes and borrow in general. People are certainly experiencing the higher cost of housing right now because of higher interest rates, so the timing (of the measures) could be good,” Dutta-Gupta said.