Vice President Kamala Harris, now officially the Democratic Party nominee for the President of the United States, is hitting the campaign trail with housing affordability as a central theme.
“There’s a serious housing shortage,” Harris said at an event in battleground state of North Carolina, according to a CBS News reporter’s posting. “In many places, it’s too difficult to build, and it’s driving prices up. As president, I will work in partnership with industry to build the housing we need, both to rent and to buy. We will take down barriers and cut red tape, including at the state and local levels.”
She also expanded on previous comments she has made regarding corporate landlords and their purported impacts on rent prices.
“Some corporate landlords — some of them — buy dozens if not hundreds of houses and apartments,” Harris said. “Then they turn them around and rent them out at extremely high prices, and it can make it impossible then for regular people to buy or even rent a home.”
This week, the Harris campaign also released a TV ad designed to draw attention to a plan she previously laid out designed to spur the construction of 3 million new homes over the course of a presidential term, set to air across battleground states including Arizona and Nevada according to reporting by the Associated Press (AP).
Housing language from Republican nominee Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been largely focused on tying housing issues to immigration. In June during a campaign event in Wisconsin, Trump said stemming illegal immigration would serve to lower housing prices.
Trump has also accused Democrats — first President Joe Biden, and now Harris following Biden’s decision to bow out of the race — of waging a “war on the suburbs” that he has vowed to stop if elected.
“The Trump campaign has also opposed efforts by Democrats to encourage the construction of apartments and condominiums in suburbs and cities, which could alleviate the housing shortage,” the AP reported. “Trump has said in a video that such efforts are ‘Marxist’ and would be a ‘war on the suburbs’ that would destroy property values.”
At a rally earlier this month, Trump also said without substantiation that Harris’ $25,000 first-time homebuyer assistance plan would benefit illegal immigrants.
“She has no clue how she’d pay for $25,000 to every first-time homebuyer, including illegals,” he said at a rally in York, Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, the Harris campaign appears to be thinking that housing is an issue that could animate more voters to turn out for her this November.
“The Harris campaign plans to hold housing affordability events in the Pennsylvania cities of Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well as the Arizona cities of Phoenix and Tucson,” the AP reported. “There will also be events in the Nevada cities of Las Vegas and Reno and the North Carolina cities of Asheville and Charlotte, in addition to Savannah, Georgia.”
