Kamala Harris has a new advertising push to draw attention to her plan to build 3 million new homes over four years, a move designed to contain inflationary pressures that also draws a sharp contrast to Republican Donald Trump’s approach.
Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, highlights her plan in a new minute-long ad that uses her personal experience, growing up in rental housing while her mother had saved for a decade before she could buy a home. The ad targets voters in the swing states including Arizona and Nevada. Campaign surrogates are also holding 20 events this week focused on housing issues.
In addition to increasing home construction, Harris is proposing the government provide as much as $25,000 in assistance to first-time buyers. That message carries weight at this moment as housing costs have kept upward pressure on the consumer price index. Shelter costs are up 5.1% over the past 12 months, compared to overall inflation being 2.9%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Vice President Harris knows we need to do more to address our housing crisis, that’s why she has a plan to end the housing shortage” and will crack down on “corporate landlords and Wall Street banks hiking up rents and housing costs,” said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director.
There are plenty of homes already.
Plenty of homes where? In my city, which is a major job center, there are hardly any houses for sale. It doesn’t really matter if there are plenty of houses 1+ hours away from my job.
How many of the 3 million houses will be built in your area and what impact do you think they will have?
The problems that are causing the crisis are corporate greed and Airbnb-esque rentals.
Are you looking to fight the symptoms or the cause?
Edit: I live in a major city and there is plenty of housing, just not affordable
I’d be curious to get some good numbers on this. From a cursory search I got the impression that a very small proportion of homes are AirBnB rentals, but I’m definitely open to looking at conflicting data. Corporate ownership of homes is definitely a problem, and I certainly hope that part of this plan is to prevent these homes from being sold to investors rather than residents. No one is saying we can’t build more homes and address the underlying cause of the shortage at the same time. I know that 3 million homes is not a lot relative to the country’s population. However I am not ready to write them off as useless, since strategically placing these homes in the right areas may still have a significant impact.___
I live in a small city outside a major city. I do not know what Harris plans but I have hope for a recent state law encouraging multi-family housing near transit. We do have a train station at the center of town that’s also a bus hub and a great walkable area with shops and restaurants. We already have larger condo and apartment buildings here, and more of those are our best hope to affordability. While those new places won’t be affordable, all the surrounding older three deckers should drop in price, with increased supply
Going from suburban to urban was a major quality of life upgrade for me. It still blows my mind how much safer cycling is in the city than in suburbia. I’m hoping the 15min city idea gains momentum because it’s such a better use of space. Transit and micromobility initiatives would be a great thing to hear more about from Harris.
In my city, there’s hundreds of empty homes for sale, valued at 250k-500k more than what they were a decade ago.
The houses an hour away in the burbs are all in the middle of nowhere, supported by stripmalls and a single big box store. Those houses are also the same price.
Have you checked to see how many AirBNB houses you have in your area? There are over a thousand in the area where I live. Of course, AirBNB knows how bad the real number would make them look, so they obfuscate it, but every AirBNB listing can represent a house where a couple might get started. But why sell a home at even 400k when you can rent every room in that house for $250 a night. $250 * 3 (Bedrooms) * 7 * 52 = 273k a year to START, and that number keeps going up and up and up…
Same here. Prices are high because so many more people want to live here than there are houses for. There’s almost no unoccupied buildings, but also no undeveloped land. So housing prices are high but no one wants to sell until interest rates come down. Average home prices are racing toward $1M …. And we’re the “affordable” town surrounded by expensive places.
Sure, I’ve seen places with empty houses …. In the Adirondacks where there are no jobs, in the upstate NY town I grew up in where there are no jobs, where my cousin lives near Buffalo where there are no jobs, etc. Do you see a pattern?
