{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://flood.house.gov/media/press-releases/congressman-flood-harris-housing-plan-makes-housing-crisis-even-worse", "Congressman Flood: Harris Housing Plan Makes Housing Crisis Even Worse", "2024-09-24", "2024", "2024-09", "Republican", "House", "NE", "Mike Flood", "F000474", "flood.house.gov", "flood", "https://flood.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Congressman Mike Flood delivered remarks on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives laying out the case against Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019 housing plan.\n\nVideo of Rep. Flood\u2019s comments can be found here. News outlets are welcome to use the footage for their reporting purposes. A transcript of his remarks can be found below.\n\nThank you, Mister Speaker. I rise to discuss Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s housing plan.\n\nFirst, let\u2019s talk about the broader problem. Housing is less affordable and less available today and it\u2019s bringing costs onto the American people.\n\nOverall, housing underproduction costs the U.S. economy over $1.6 trillion in lost wages and productivity every year.\n\nThe U.S. needs to build 4.3 million more apartments by 2035 to meet the demand for rental housing. This includes 600,000 units to fill the shortage from after the 2008 financial crisis.\n\nUnderproduction of housing has translated to higher housing costs \u2013 resulting in a decline of 4.7 million affordable apartments from 2015-2020.\n\nHousing underproduction also increases cost of living for families, inhibits geographic mobility, burdens both renters and buyers, and stifles economic productivity. According to one estimate, from 1964-2009, our national housing shortage lowered aggregate economic growth by 36 percent.\n\nAll of that is to say, there\u2019s no question that we have a housing supply problem in this country. Unfortunately, Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s plans would make the problem much, much worse.\n\nThe Harris plan\u2019s goals are to \u201clower housing costs for working families and end America\u2019s housing shortage.\u201d The problem is the Biden-Harris policies and Harris plan will actually raise housing costs and worsen the housing shortage. I\u2019d like to break it down piece by piece to demonstrate why.\n\nLet\u2019s start with Harris\u2019s proposal to add tens of thousands of dollars in new downpayment assistance for homebuyers.\n\nLarge amounts of downpayment assistance might sound nice, but it is exactly the wrong answer in an environment with housing shortages across the country. More government subsidies won\u2019t bring housing costs down. They will continue to increase demand and drive prices even higher.\n\nThe great irony is that this policy would hurt the very people it\u2019s intended to help. Think about a young person who is currently renting but planning to buy a home. He and his wife maybe they\u2019re looking at prices on Zillow and diligently saving up for a downpayment on a nearby house. They\u2019ve financially planned for this goal, and they\u2019ve been working towards it for years.\n\nIf the Harris plan\u2019s subsidy were to go into effect, the prices of those homes would increase. They could find themselves further from their goal \u2013 even if they were able to receive the promised subsidy themselves.\n\nIt\u2019s a classic example of why progressive economic policies fail. Instead of working through a market-focused solution, the Harris plan simply throws money at the problem and hopes for the best. That\u2019s not leadership, and that\u2019s not going to solve the problem.\n\nNext, let\u2019s talk about rent caps. Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris Administration announced their intention to impose rent caps on \u201ccorporate landlords.\u201d\n\nRent caps are a failed policy with a long track record of exacerbating housing shortages by dissuading developers from building new rental units in high-demand areas.\n\nIf investors know that future rent increases will be capped, they shift their capital elsewhere. That means less building. Less housing supply. This results in fewer options, driving demand for existing units even higher, which pushes rents up in buildings that aren\u2019t subject to the caps.\n\nWe\u2019ve seen how these policies work in New York and San Francisco, where rent control has been in place for decades. According to the American Institute for Economic Research, rent control policies in New York City resulted in more rental units being abandoned than built in the 1970s and 80s. We can expect more of the same under the Harris plan, which will replicate these failures on a national scale.\n\nSo, to recap, the Harris plan would implement an expensive downpayment assistance subsidy. It would hamper new development by putting in place rent caps that disincentivize investment. In other words, Harris would both increase demand and limit supply \u2013 the exact wrong combination of policies if you want housing costs to go down.\n\nThe result is a housing market where both renters and potential homeowners are squeezed, leaving everyone with fewer choices and higher prices.\n\nVice President Harris has said previously that \u201cBidenomics is working.\u201d For those that are concerned about rising housing costs, her words should be taken literally and taken as a warning.\n\nHarris plans to continue the inflationary policies of the Biden-Harris Administration. Her housing plan would only exacerbate our housing affordability problems, leaving renters with less options and future homebuyers with ever-higher costs.\n\nIf America wants to boost housing supply and end the inflationary policies of the Biden-Harris era, we need to cut red tape, streamline federal housing programs and removing barriers to building new units.\n\nUntil we move towards solutions that encourages private investment in new development, we can expect that our country\u2019s housing shortage will persist, leaving the American dream out of reach for everyday working families.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T21:43:57Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://flood.house.gov/media/press-releases/congressman-flood-harris-housing-plan-makes-housing-crisis-even-worse"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.807556789368391, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}