Democrats blame landlord ‘collusion’ for high rent prices
Senator Elizabeth Warren and fellow Democrats have introduced a new bill to tackle the housing crisis.
On July 29, Warren and dozens of Democratic co-signers introduced the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act, which aims to lower housing and rental costs by increasing the housing supply.
Warren said the plan would be “paid for by getting America’s wealthiest families to chip in.”
In a virtual press briefing introducing the bill, Warren and representatives from the government watchdog group Accountable.US blamed corporate greed for the spike in rental costs since the pandemic.
They alleged that corporate landlords have colluded to keep prices elevated using property management software RealPage.
“The cost of housing is one of the driving inflationary pressures. And our research shows a major reason why prices continue to be too high: big corporate landlords are gouging tenants for more profits,” said Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone.
“Where there is smoke, there is fire, and any big property company that has used RealPage should face a probe,” said Accountable.US’ Liz Zelnick. “No renter in America should be price gouged under a potentially illegal rent-fixing scheme.”
The RealPage allegations aren’t new.
Over the past two years, the Texas-based company has faced more than 30 lawsuits in federal and state courts alleging that the software platform enables landlords to fix rent prices using algorithmic price estimates.
As the probes into RealPage intensify, many experts agree that America’s housing shortage has made rents much less affordable.
Not just any supply will do
Although there's an undersupply of homes across the board, it's the affordable homes that are in chronic deficit.
According to researchers at the University of Kansas and The New School, housing affordability challenges “stem more from the collision of low incomes with housing prices, rather than from any absolute shortage of homes.”
This means America “can’t simply construct our way to affordability” and needs to incentivize the development of more affordable units instead.
The National Low-income Housing Coalition estimates that the country needs 7.3 million affordable rental units to alleviate the cost of living crisis faced by lower-income households.
A separate study from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that the U.S. lost 2.1 million affordable rental units between 2012 and 2022.
For these and other reasons, Zillow’s database shows that average rent prices across the country have swelled to $2,150, based on data from 549,000 available rentals.
Meanwhile, data from RentCafe shows the average rent for a 900-square-foot apartment is $1,713 per month. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of rental units across the country have a monthly price of $1,501 or higher.
Although rent prices have stabilized from the rapid gains seen during the pandemic, they remain close to record levels. Redfin’s senior economist, Sheharyar Bokhari, said that strong general supply keeps prices from rising even faster.
This is true “even in the busiest time of year for the rental market,” said Bokhari.