Courted as “keys” to the White House, US tenants are showing their power

What is the context?

The election’s unprecedented focus on housing affordability gives renters hope for real gains

• Harris and Trump’s campaigns are focused on the housing crisis
• Tenant groups form first-ever national union
• A major national effort is aimed at encouraging renters to vote

WASHINGTON — As housing costs become a central issue in next month’s U.S. election, renters could be a crucial voting bloc, and activists are hoping that could lead to real gains.

“Housing is at the root of many people’s economic insecurity, so it shapes choice in ways that may not seem obvious,” said Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project (NHLP).

“There is a promising moment here,” he told Context. “We could see real housing policy change in the coming administration and Congress.”

Record increases in home prices and rents have created an “unprecedented affordability crisis,” a Harvard University analysis said in June, leaving the country in need of an estimated 7.3 million additional affordable homes.

But housing construction has traditionally received little attention in national election campaigns, while housing groups shy away from politics.

That has changed dramatically, Roller and others say, in ways that some say could prove game-changing, with the NHLP noting that about 36% of the country’s households are run by renters.

Ahead of the election, the group and others introduced a statewide tenants’ rights bill in June that called for ensuring reasonable rent increases, the ability to organize tenants, due process for evictions and more.

“Renters hold the key to winning the White House,” said nonprofit Popular Democracy in Action, a network that is launching a $2.5 million campaign to reach renters in five battleground states, focusing on is on 1 million minority voters who voted for it the first time in 2020.

“We need to use this moment to bring more awareness, to get people to build organizations that can actually speak for people who are either missing or uncared for in our society,” said DaMareo Cooper, co- Managing Director of the group.

She supports a bill unveiled in September that would create a national housing authority to oversee the construction or maintenance of 1.3 million new social housing units.

Housing costs are the biggest concern for renters, according to a swing state poll from Popular Democracy in Action. It also found that the housing market has the largest gap in the priority voters place on the issue over politicians.

Cooper stressed that voting in November is critical, but pre-election organizing that gives tenants new power is also critical.

What happens around the election, he said, “will determine what the next 50 to 60 years will look like.”

“The political discourse is catching up”

In July, President Joe Biden’s administration made waves by endorsing nationwide rent caps on certain properties and cracking down on so-called price gouging by landlords.

Since then, the campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have focused on housing affordability.

Harris has laid out a plan to build 3 million new homes, provide financial assistance to those buying their first homes and counter the impact of corporate investors and new technologies that are driving up rents, he said in an email their campaign.

Trump would ban mortgages for illegal immigrants, cut development regulations, cut the cost of new homes in half and open federal lands to large-scale housing construction, Republican National Committee spokesman Taylor Rogers said in an email.

Tenant organizers said the attention provides an unprecedented opportunity to solidify tenant influence.

In August, five city and state tenant unions formed the country’s first tenant union federation, which supporters say works with dozens of other local unions.

“Rent is the central economic issue of our time,” said Tara Raghuveer, a tenant organizer in Kansas City, Missouri, and director of the new association.

“It is the biggest bill that most working class people pay every month. It is the most persistent and substantial factor contributing to overall inflation and has been for years.”

Meanwhile, the real estate industry has changed significantly, she said, and needs a national voice for renters.

“Our landlords no longer operate businesses that can be regulated by state or city governments. Their business goes beyond national borders,” she said.

While housing affordability has long been dismissed as a local issue, Raghuveer said that was finally changing.

“As we walk around and knock on doors in buildings and neighborhoods, talk to tenants… this is more resonant than ever before. The national political discourse is catching up with what people have been feeling for a long time.”

In Bozeman, Montana, housing prices have tripled in the last decade, said Ozaa EchoMaker, 33, a mother and renter in low-income housing.

After a new landlord purchased the building in 2019 and failed to make necessary repairs in a timely manner, EchoMaker began organizing neighbors a year ago.

“I felt really empowered and like my voice was actually going somewhere,” EchoMaker said.

Four tenant unions have now formed across Bozeman, and all are paying close attention to the election locally and nationally.

“We’re seeing an increase in membership because people are fed up,” EchoMaker said. Tenants “work and keep the economy going. There are more of us and we deserve to have a voice.”

“Shifting priorities”

There’s also a shift away from the traditional reluctance of affordable housing groups to engage in voter engagement, said Courtney Cooperman of the nonprofit National Low Income Housing Coalition.

This year, she said, housing and homeless groups’ enthusiasm for this work is “greater than ever.”

Low-income voters tend to vote less often than other groups because of transportation barriers, voter registration issues, difficulty getting home from work or simply skepticism that their vote will count, said Cooperman, who runs a program called “Our Homes, Our Votes” leads.

That’s why Cooperman and her colleagues help trusted local organizations — such as a homeless support group or a soup kitchen — do nonpartisan voter outreach, and this year “we’ve really stepped up everything we’ve been doing.”

Candidates “need to recognize that low-income renters are their constituents,” Cooperman said. “This has the potential to change the political calculus and shift priorities.”

(Reporting by Carey L. Biron; Editing by Jon Hemming.)