Just a few months after New York passed historic reforms that infuriated landlords and thrilled tenants — with California following suit — several Congress members and presidential candidates are throwing their weight behind even more aggressive proposals.
Mostly promoted by Democrats on the far left, those policies include the mid-September doozy from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders calling for nationwide rent control under his $2.5 trillion housing plan.
Despite more than two dozen states prohibiting limits on what landlords
can charge, Sanders wants to cap annual rent increases around the
country at 3 percent, or 1.5 times the consumer price index, whichever
is higher.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who’s also gunning for the White House,
has a slightly less contentious proposal: adding more supply to help
lower prices in the rental housing market. But Warren hopes to build millions of new apartments with tax hikes on the wealthy, and her call to relax zoning rules for more construction could rankle rich and poor alike.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the first-term
congresswoman who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, is another
high-profile politico with lofty goals.
Ocasio-Cortez recently took aim at “market-controlling landlords” with her $16.5 billion housing plan
and wants to greatly expand tax relief for middle-class home loan
borrowers at the expense of tax deductions for the wealthy.
Additionally, the sweeping Green New Deal bill, which she and Sen. Ed
Markey of Massachusetts co-sponsored this year, could force landlords to
make big energy-efficiency upgrades to their buildings. And with a projected cost of between $50 and $90 trillion, the federal plan would be mostly covered by tax revenue.
The millennial congresswoman, widely known as AOC, has
quickly become a national force with close to 5.5 million Twitter
followers. In her rapid rise, she’s also earned the wrath of Republican
critics, while other political upstarts have followed in her footsteps.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the hotly contested real estate agendas coming out of Washington in 2019.
$1T
An estimate of the total damage to coastal properties and
public infrastructure if global temperatures rise 2°C above
pre-industrial levels, according to the Green New Deal. The bill calls
for no more fossil fuels and the switch to 100 percent clean energy by
2029, while new and existing buildings would need to adopt “maximal
energy efficiency.” A similar proposal in New York City became law in May.
7.4M
The amount of affordable housing units
that would be built or fixed up under Sanders’ proposal, at an estimated
cost of $1.48 trillion. The Vermont senator has also vowed to create 2
million new mixed-income apartments and make Section 8 vouchers an
entitlement for all Americans, while national public housing would get
$70 billion in improvements, including high-speed internet access.
$4B
“Emergency
funds” to be set aside for middle-class rental housing, outlined in
Warren’s American Housing and Economic Mobility Act. For borrowers who
owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth — a casualty of
the last recession — the Massachusetts senator wants to allocate $2
billion. She is also promoting a $500 million investment in rural
housing and $2.5 billion in grants for apartments for Native Americans
and Native Hawaiians.
The number of families expected to pay
higher inheritance taxes under Warren’s proposed housing plan. Lowering
the trigger for inheritance taxes to $7 million — where it stood during
George W. Bush’s presidency — from $22 million could generate as much as
$500 billion over a decade, Warren says. The new revenue would lead to
“millions” of new homes and reduce housing costs by 10 percent, she
argues.
1968
The year Congress passed the Fair Housing Act
— which bans discrimination in home sales and rentals. But Republican
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah wants to cut off the funding to enforce the law.
His Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act of 2017, co-sponsored by Sen.
Marco Rubio of Florida, would prohibit the use of federal money to
investigate compliance, which Lee and Rubio call ineffective and
wasteful.
100%
Presidential candidate and former HUD
secretary Julián Castro has vowed to award generous tax credits to
renters who earn up to 100 percent of their area median income. The
promise is part of his sweeping housing plan, which could cost close to a
trillion dollars over a decade. Like several of his peers, Castro wants
to cap the max amount renters spend each month on housing costs at 30
percent of their income.
8M sq. ft.
The size of Amazon’s proposed Long Island City campus — before the e-commerce giant killed its offer in the face of local opposition. AOC and State Sen. Michael Gianaris
came out against the plan to award Amazon $3 billion in subsidies for
the creation of up to 25,000 new jobs. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other
proponents of the deal argued that those incentives were necessary since
Amazon was considering other locations. The company now plans to anchor
its “HQ2” in Arlington, Virginia.
https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/hefty-lefties/
No comments:
Post a Comment