Vice President Kamala Harris has promised to build three million new homes, targeting “corporate landlords” who use software to set rents.
Harris said in a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, that she would “work with industry” to “end America’s housing shortage.” If elected president, she would build three million new homes, both for rent and for sale, by the end of her first term.
Harris also promised to cut red tape at the local and state levels, the stages in which restrictive zoning and other regulations often cause delays in home construction.
“In some places it is too difficult to build and that drives up prices,” she said.
She did not elaborate on how she plans to influence local governments’ decisions, even though the Biden administration just announced a second round of funding for municipalities that prioritize housing-friendly policies.
It is unclear whether the 3 million are just government-funded homes. Addressing the housing shortage nationally is no easy task, and even if that many homes were built within the tight four-year timeline, some estimates put the national housing shortage at somewhere between 4 and 7 million homes.
The Biden administration has pushed forward a housing plan that is estimated to build and preserve 2 million homes, so perhaps Harris’s goal is exactly that projection. Harris is expected to provide more details on her policy priorities in the coming weeks.
In her speech, Harris also said she would support legislation to crack down on corporate landlords who use algorithms and price-fixing software to drive up rents. Companies like RealPage, which provide management software to real estate companies, have come under fire for the way that technology influences rental prices. Lawsuits against RealPage allege that the company’s software allows landlords to collude to set rent prices artificially high. The Justice Department is also reportedly investigating the company and others over price-fixing allegations.
San Francisco could become the first city to ban such software and has played a role in the mayoral race.
RealPage and other software companies have rejected that narrative, arguing that large-scale collusion among multifamily property owners is implausible and that the rental market is influenced by myriad other factors. The course of the litigation and criminal investigation could affect how laws governing them withstand legal challenges.
Harris did not mention President Joe Biden’s proposal to temporarily cap rent increases across the country, but her emphasis on the fact that commercial landlords are buying up housing and then driving up rents reflected Biden’s rationale for this form of rent control.
Friday was Harris’ first policy-oriented speech since announcing her candidacy. Housing policy has not been a focus of the presidential election so far. Former President Donald Trump emphasized lowering inflation to help homeowners in his platform and praised the Opportunity Zone program introduced under his administration. In a speech this week, Trump blamed the influx of migrants for “absolutely driving up” rents. He also said he would work with Nevada to free up federal land for housing.
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