In contrast to the Trump administration’s annual requests to hollow out HUD, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have asked Congress to expand the agency’s budget each year. Moreover, current HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge has wisely declined to continue the Opportunity Zone boondoggle. Fudge has also reversed Carson’s egregious rule changes and is working to strengthen new AFFH regulations. That’s not to suggest that Fudge—who takes a “supply-focused, all-carrot-no-stick approach to rent prices,” as my colleague Emma Marsano put it recently—is above criticism.
When it comes to making working people’s lives better amid the worst housing affordability crisis in decades, some of the most consequential moves the Biden administration could make would come not from HUD but from other agencies. The Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for instance, could crack down on software companies and corporate landlords accused of rent gouging. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA, could also play a major role. FHFA manages Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which purchase hundreds of billions of dollars in multifamily mortgages that banks issue to landlords, assuming the risk of nonpayment and lowering financing costs. As the Homes Guarantee campaign has stressed, FHFA Director Sandra Thompson could impose conditions on federally backed landlords who benefit from this government financing, including a limit on rent hikes and a prohibition on evictions without good cause.
The “rent was too damn high” even before inflation became such a widely expressed concern, and the issue is even more pressing right now. America is building too little new housing and doing far too little to ensure that existing or new housing is affordable for all. Progressives need to push on Biden, Harris, Fudge, Thompson, and others to do more.