Kamala Harris has a new advertising push to draw attention to her plan to build 3 million new homes over four years, a move designed to contain inflationary pressures that also draws a sharp contrast to Republican Donald Trump’s approach.
Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, highlights her plan in a new minute-long ad that uses her personal experience, growing up in rental housing while her mother had saved for a decade before she could buy a home. The ad targets voters in the swing states including Arizona and Nevada. Campaign surrogates are also holding 20 events this week focused on housing issues.
In addition to increasing home construction, Harris is proposing the government provide as much as $25,000 in assistance to first-time buyers. That message carries weight at this moment as housing costs have kept upward pressure on the consumer price index. Shelter costs are up 5.1% over the past 12 months, compared to overall inflation being 2.9%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Vice President Harris knows we need to do more to address our housing crisis, that’s why she has a plan to end the housing shortage” and will crack down on “corporate landlords and Wall Street banks hiking up rents and housing costs,” said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director.
All I’m saying is I think people’s preferences are influenced by the prevailing culture, which certainly impresses on people that owning a home should be the ideal. We’re all influenced by culture, and we’re not necessarily always consciously aware of it.
It should be, I agree. And that’s a big part of the problem: in many cities, a large percentage, or even a majority of the land is zoned exclusively for single family development. There is no choice to build anything else. If the zoning was changed to allow any and all forms of housing to be built, I’m sure neighborhoods of detached, single family homes would still exist, but there would likely be far fewer of them, and/or they would be further from the city center.