“Senator Elizabeth Warren is right” are words rarely spoken in Washington, but they fit, in this case. As Senator Warren said on August 7 while eating avocado toast in a video on X, “Housing costs are so high, because we have a national shortage of housing.”
But despite this obvious fact and admission from a progressive lawmaker, the Biden-Harris administration decided that it needed a scapegoat to blame for the high cost of housing.
On August 23, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit alleging that software company RealPage allows landlords to collude and unfairly raise rents, and Senator Warren piled on, despite earlier acknowledging the true cause of high housing costs via social media. The administration’s boogeyman has become algorithmic software that helps property managers find the right price for units and manage supply.
Instead of constantly pointing fingers at innovators in the private sector to deflect, lawmakers should focus on obvious and accessible solutions that can lower the barriers and costs to building housing to keep rents affordable for all.
The latest government effort to blame technology for our housing problems accomplishes nothing and distracts policymakers from the real problem. In 2022, the U.S. had 4.5 million fewer homes than consumers needed, a number that had increased from a 4.3 million housing deficit in the previous year.
That shortage is heavily impacting today’s renters, with Gen Zers on track to pay an average of $145,000 for rent by the time they reach age 30 – which is about $18,000 more than the adjusted cost for Millennials when they were the same age. What’s more, half of all renter households in 2022 were termed “cost burdened,” meaning they paid more than 30% of their income for rent, and half of those families paid in excess of 50%.
Read full article here:
