House lawmakers are reportedly balking at one provision in the bipartisan Senate housing bill — and they’re completely right: Penalizing “build to rent” projects would only shrink the new-homes market.
Sen. Tim Scott did a great job assembling a broad coalition for a wide-ranging housing-reform bill that aims to boost the supply of homes nationwide, thereby increasing affordability.
But the “Homes are for People, Not Corporations” provision inserted by far-left Sen. Liz Warren (D-Mass.) only limits construction, thereby making it harder for people to find housing at a reasonable price.
This exploits the myth that private-equity firms and large institutional investors have cornered the market on American single-family homes in some supposed plot to eliminate the American dream of homeownership and reduce everyone to peonage by forcing them to rent forever.
This is nonsense: It simply makes sense for some families to rent rather than buy a home; letting investors build to feed that market doesn’t harm anyone else — indeed, relieves some pressure on the home-buyers’ market.
Warren backs forcing companies that build or buy single-family homes to sell those properties to an individual homeowner within seven years, or face million-dollar fines.
Sadly, President Donald Trump backed a similar proposal in his State of the Union address, but that doesn’t make it right or even logical.
The bill doesn’t penalize multi-unit constructions like quadplexes or apartment buildings; they can remain rentals forever: Why discriminate against the single-family-home rental market?
Yes, the standard dream of homeownership focuses a detached house with a yard, but that’s not for everybody, and never will be.
And past federal efforts to make it be for everyone are exactly what led to the 2007-8 mortgage meltdown.
Ironically enough, that collapse led to major investors snapping up bargain-basement foreclosed homes — the chief cause of the myth Warren’s now playing off of.
Congress should, by all means, make it easier for investors and developers to increase housing supply by eliminating needless regulations and other barriers to build, as most of Scott’s bill would do.
The House of Representatives will be doing the nation a favor by stripping out Warren’s poison pill: Reject social engineering, and let the market do its work.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
