ICYMI
NMHC President Sharon Wilson Géno penned an Op-Ed in The Hill yesterday on how rent control only serves to worsen housing affordability, hurt current renters and harm those that cannot even access the rental housing market.
We need real solutions, not failed approaches. Learn more below:
Our nation has never been more focused on the issue of housing as it is today.
In my 30-year career advocating for affordable housing, this is the moment we have all been waiting for: politicians, policymakers, and the public are finally focused on the critical question of how we, as a nation, best meet the basic human need of providing shelter for our citizens. Housing is critical to the economic and social wellbeing of our country, but we are in danger of losing this opportunity to political pandering and partisan politics.
A recent campaign to try to persuade the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to enact what would require multifamily mortgages financed through government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to adhere to a rent control regime is a perfect example.
Our current housing crisis is the result of decades of broken policy and repeated unwillingness to invest needed government resources in housing. The pandemic then drove the cost of housing way up due in large part to dramatic increases in uncontrollable costs, such as insurance and state and local taxes.
Rent control seems like a fix but feeds a “David vs. Goliath” narrative that disregards the legitimate costs and decades of research documenting its long-term, devastating consequences. Rent control allows politicians to shirk their responsibility by shifting the cost of providing needed housing opportunities to apartment owners for immediate political gain. This hurts current renters and those that cannot even access the rental housing market.
Staff Resource
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