Freedomz
The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs held a hearing titled How Institutional Landlords are Changing the Housing Market on February 10. The hearing explored the role institutional housing providers and private equity firms play in the rental housing market. Prior to the hearing, Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-OH) held a listening session that featured renters from across the country sharing their experiences living in rental properties owned by large, corporate owners.
This is the second hearing held in recent months focusing on the role private equity and corporate housing providers play in the rental housing industry—the first of which was held in October 2021 and focused primarily on single-family rental housing. This week’s hearing, however, primarily focused on multifamily rentals and is indicative of a broader national conversation around the private sector’s involvement in providing rental housing.
The hearing featured testimony from several housing advocates including Michael Waller, Executive Director of Georgia Appleseed Center for Law and Justice; Aneta Molenda, Tenant; Tobias Peter, Research Fellow and Assistant Director for AEI Housing Center; Joel Griffith, Research Fellow for Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity at The Heritage Foundation; and Sally Martin, Director of Building and Housing for the City of Cleveland, Ohio.
NMHC believes this was a missed opportunity for the Committee to bring together both housing providers and housing advocates for an important conversation on our nation’s growing housing affordability crisis and longstanding housing inequities. For decades, NMHC has argued that we must implement holistic housing policies that address both short-term affordability challenges as well as decades-long supply constraints. The widespread lack of affordable rental housing is holding our economy back. Over one-third of American households paid more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs in 2017, and the problem grows worse every year as supply fails to keep up with demand.
The apartment industry stands ready to help meet the rising need for housing, but we cannot do it alone. It’s imperative for lawmakers to work alongside the private sector to support our nation’s housing demand.
NMHC will continue to educate lawmakers on the importance of balanced housing policy—for the sake of the overall health of the industry and stability of the nation’s 44.1 million renter households. To stay up-to-date our ongoing actions in this space, please visit our housing affordability webpage.
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