AUSTIN (KXAN) — Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump met Tuesday night for their first debate of the 2024 campaign. A question about housing policy was asked of both, but experts tell KXAN that they hope for more details from the candidates.
Vice President Harris briefly spoke in broad strokes about her housing plans, but former President Trump did not answer the housing question or mention his housing policy plans. Urban Institute research Jung Choi said that she had hoped to hear specifics from the candidates.
"I think Harris was able to mention some of her plans on housing supply and the down payment issue," Choi said. "I don't think the former President Trump actually spoke about specific details on what he would do to increase housing affordability. We're looking forward to having more details coming from the Republican party so we can do more research and analysis on the feasibility of those plans."
Real estate company Zillow estimates that the U.S. has a shortage of more than 4.5 million homes.
Trump and Harris overlap on reducing regulations to lower construction costs and providing incentives for first-time homebuyers.
University of Texas at Austin law professor Mechele Dickerson said that either candidate would need to be careful not to erode building and worker safety standards.
"What you will often hear from [builders] is that affordable housing is too expensive for them. It's just more efficient for them to build high-end housing because the cost of complying with the regulations exceeds the profit that they would get from building affordable housing," Dickerson said.
As for incentives, Trump and the GOP haven't promised specific numbers for tax credits or first-time homebuyer support. Harris has said her administration would give first-time homebuyers $25,000 in down payment assistance.
"It is, I think, very smart to focus on young home buyers, because the reality is for a lot of current homeowners, they will need to sell their homes at some point," Dickerson said. "Some of them may pass [homes] down to children or grandchildren. But we don't have a whole lot of turnover in the market, and one reason is young people just can't afford to buy homes."
Choi said she worries that down payment assistance without supply-side increases could lead to further inflation of home prices.
"I think they need more details on the timing of implementing those policies, and whether they are going to target the down payment assistance to a specific subgroup first to lower the inflationary pressure," she said.
A key goal of Harris' policy is building three million affordable homes and apartments in four years. Currently, the yearly rate of building new residential units is around 1.5 million per year; however, only a small share of those are considered affordable. Real estate company Redfin estimated in 2023 that just 15.5% of homes at that time were affordable.
To meet Harris' goal, builders would need to either triple their output, or have a reduction in permitting and construction costs that drive up a unit's price. Dickerson said that restrictive zoning, a set of construction rules with a racist legacy, are a major obstacle.
"One of the huge challenges that we have in cities like Austin, is we have so many neighborhoods that are zoned for single family housing, and that necessarily means that it is not going to be affordable to people," Dickerson said.
Choi said that Harris' goal is possible, but that the federal government doesn't have much control over zoning and permitting rules. Such a change would require buy in from state, local and industry leaders.
"In terms of historical data, we once did build that amount of homes," Choi said. "The problem of the current market is...that land use and zoning regulations are done at the state and local level."
Harris lists two other policy points unique from her overlap with Trump.
One is to ban "new forms of price fixing by corporate landlords." This may be a reference to rental software that allows landlords to input pricing and occupancy data and outputs recommendations for rent price changes based on data from other users.
Her policy also said that she will "penalize firms that hoard available homes," but does not elaborate on the point. Institutional ownership by investors has been an existing factor in the U.S. housing market by its converting homes into rental properties, according to a New York University researcher.
Trump's policy page doesn't mention housing, but it does link to the Republican party's platform. In that document, the party said it will "reduce mortgage rates by slashing inflation." Those rates are highly dependent on the Federal Reserve's interest rates, and that entity is independent of the White House.
"The Biden administration would love to have been able to slash interest rates a year or two ago, but that is not what a president does. That's what an independent agency does," Dickerson said. "So short of destroying the independence of the Fed, I don't know how that would work."
The platform also wants to "open limited portions of Federal Lands" for construction. But the problem faced by the U.S. isn't one of available land, Choi said.
"It's not that we don't have any land that we can develop. It's that all these zoning and land use regulation imposed makes it difficult, especially for the more dense housing construction that is needed to have more affordable housing," Choi said.
Such lands may also be unfeasible for development and require massive infrastructure work before homes could be built.
"We'd need to quantify how much of the land is actually feasible to develop," Choi said. "Some of those lands are in desert areas with no infrastructure; in that case, it's going to take more time to build all the things that are needed to build housing. Also, you have to think of whether people actually want to live in those areas."
The platform also claims undocumented migrants are to blame for rising home prices, and calls for deportation as a way to open up more housing supply. But this could freeze the U.S. construction industry, Choi and Dickerson both warn.
"There's zero data that support the view that undocumented workers have anything to do with the housing unaffordability crisis," Dickerson said. "We have to keep in mind, particularly in a state like Texas, is many undocumented workers are heavily involved in the construction trades. So if we want to build new housing, we need to have workers to build that housing."
An estimate by the Department of Homeland Security claims that, in 2022, 10.9 million undocumented migrants lived in the U.S. It is highly unlikely that they each have what the campaign calls "luxury housing," and [WHO] said that many immigrant families share homes with another family.
"I'm struggling to take it seriously, because it seems to me as if the proposal is more of a way to denigrate migrants than it is to do anything else," Dickerson added.
The campaign said it would "shelter homeless veterans" in homes taken from immigrants; however, it doesn't say this would mean a permanent home for those veterans.
