With California’s housing affordability crisis spreading across the U.S., Vice President Kamala Harris last week unveiled her economic agenda, aimed at lowering housing costs for both homeowners and renters around the country.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee seems to be pulling a few moves from California housing advocates’ longtime playbook, stressing the need to increase supply and cut the red tape that’s holding back new housing construction.
“There’s a serious housing shortage,” Harris said during a speech last week in Raleigh, N.C. “In many places, it is too difficult to build, and it’s driving prices up.”
In her plan, Harris pledged to build 3 million new homes and rentals within her first four-year term. Here are some of her major policy proposals:
— Provide up to $25,000 in downpayment assistance for first-time homebuyers, as well as a $10,000 tax credit. This builds on President Joe Biden’s proposal to provide $25,000 in downpayment assistance to 400,000 first-generation homebuyers.
— A first-ever tax incentive for homebuilders who build starter homes sold to first-time homebuyers. This could be particularly important in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2025 budget recently cut $152.5 million in funding for CalHome, a program aimed at building affordable owner-occupied homes, said J.T. Hareshmak, senior policy manager at Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California.
— Expansion of existing tax incentives for businesses building affordable housing.
— Removing tax benefits for major investors who acquire large numbers of single-family homes. Wall Street investors have come under fire for scooping up single-family homes around the country since the Great Recession, with critics saying their intrusion into the market has limited the number of homes available to first-time buyers. It’s unclear how much supply this could unlock here in Harris’ home state: the California Research Bureau has found that less than 2% of single-family homes are owned by investors with 10 properties or more statewide.
— Banning algorithm-powered rent-setting tools. Landlords around the country use software programs to analyze huge amounts of data on apartment rental prices and vacancies, then get recommendations for what to charge for their units. RealPage, the company that makes the widely used software YieldStar, has faced antitrust investigations in several states on allegations of price-fixing.
— Making it possible to build new affordable housing on federal land.
The housing plan is relatively light on details and leaves many questions unanswered — most notably, how it would all be paid for. Many of the proposals would require the support of Congress, which isn’t guaranteed.
Still, the plan has earned the attention of Bay Area housing advocates who are seeing the policies they’ve pushed for years at a local level finally reach a national audience.
“The pockets of affordability around the country are drying up,” Hareshmak said. “It’s becoming a nationwide issue in a way that it hasn’t been for a while.”
The California Republican Party has criticized Harris’ economic agenda, arguing that under Democratic control, housing costs in the state have still skyrocketed.
In addition to the policies laid out in her economic agenda, Harris has also endorsed Biden’s call for legislation that would withhold key tax breaks from landlords with more than 50 units if they don’t agree to cap rent increases at 5%.
Laura Foote, executive director of the pro-housing advocacy group YIMBY Action, said she believes Harris’ focus on supply is more likely to help renters in the longterm than a rent control measure.
“It’s a good harm mitigation policy, but it’s not going to fundamentally solve the problem,” Foote said. “The only thing that makes the rent go down is increasing supply.”
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