Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled her housing policy plan Thursday that includes a pledge to construct three million new housing units in her first term as president and to create an expanded version of down payment assistance for homebuyers.

The Democratic presidential nominee’s plan, shared with The Nevada Independent and The Wall Street Journal Thursday afternoon, seeks to address housing shortages and soaring rental prices — building off plans pushed by President Joe Biden by calling for more home construction and greater financial relief for homeowners. It also calls for federal lawmakers to pass stalled legislation seeking to address the rise of corporate housing purchases.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are rolling out their policy planks during an accelerated campaign after Biden stepped down from the top of the Democratic ticket last month and immediately endorsed Harris. On Friday, Harris is expected to unveil the campaign’s economic policy platform.

Notably, the housing plan did not include any calls to free up federal land for affordable housing development, a topic that is a rare source of agreement for Nevada’s Democratic congressional delegation and Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo. Some housing advocates have argued that simply providing land is not enough to address the state’s housing crisis, especially in a state where expanding outward requires additional, often costly, infrastructure.

Prior to Harris’ rise as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, Biden had embraced housing language on the campaign trail — holding a housing-focused event in Las Vegas earlier this year that underscored his commitment to the issue in a swing state with a particularly acute housing crisis.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that Nevada is nearly 80,000 affordable rental homes short of meeting the needs of extremely low-income renters — those who are at or below the federal poverty guideline or earn less than 30 percent of the area median income. The average home sale price in the state has risen dramatically since the pandemic, from about $300,000 in 2019 to nearly $460,000 today — one of the main cost of living challenges that have voters feeling pessimistic about an economy that metrics show is generally strong.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign also includes a plan to address housing affordability — calling for reducing mortgage rates to help new home buyers, transferring federal land for home construction, offering tax incentives for homeowners and first-time homebuyers and cutting “unnecessary regulations that raise housing costs.”

Construction of new housing units

To aid in the construction of 3 million new units — 1 million more than Biden pledged in his 2024 State of the Union address — Harris plans to establish a new tax incentive for building starter homes sold to first-time buyers.

Her policy plan also calls upon expanding existing tax incentives for new housing development — an action the Biden-Harris administration also proposed — and establishing a new federal housing innovation fund.

The fund would be about $40 billion, twice what was proposed under Biden. However, in differentiating the innovation fund proposal, Harris’ campaign says the money would “empower local governments to fund local solutions to build housing.”

Down payment assistance

Congressional Democrats have tried to pass legislation providing down payment assistance worth up to $25,000 to first-generation home buyers, which are people whose parents did not own a home, but those efforts have stalled while other Democrats have pushed for more expanded relief.

Under the campaign’s proposal released Thursday, the down payment assistance would be expanded to include families who have paid their rent on time for two years and are buying their first home. The campaign estimated this would benefit more than one million home buyers annually.

The plan also called for “more generous support for first-time home buyers” but did not elaborate.

“Many Americans work hard at their jobs, save, and pay their rent on time month after month. But they can’t save enough after paying their rent and other bills to save for a down payment—denying them a shot at owning a home and building wealth,” the campaign said in an announcement. “This plan will significantly simplify and expand the reach of down-payment assistance.”

Reducing rental prices

The campaign’s efforts to lower rent prices revolve around pushing for existing legislation to crack down on policies benefiting corporate investors and major landlords.

The plan calls for Congress to pass the Stop Predatory Investing Act, legislation that would prohibit investors who acquire 50 or more new single-family rental homes from deducting interest or depreciation on the properties. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced the bill in April, but it has stalled in the Senate.

The issue of cracking down on predatory investing is well-known in Nevada, where Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) has repeatedly called for crack downs on corporate investors buying up limited housing stock, thereby driving up rents and squeezing out potential first-time home buyers. 

Following the 2008 Great Recession, and again after the COVID-19 pandemic, private equity firms and subsidies have flooded Nevada’s single-family housing market. As cash prices have reigned supreme, data from the real estate website Redfin shows that 75 percent of homes were purchased with cash across the country in 2021, giving more power to larger, corporate investors and leading to more cries from advocates for reform measures.

To address these calls for reform, the campaign said it supports for the passage of the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act, a Senate bill introduced in January that aims to crack down on companies that allow landlords to collude to set high housing prices via software and price-setting algorithms.  

“Corporate landlords are using private equity-backed price-setting tools to jack up rents dramatically in communities across the country,” the Thursday announcement said.