Landlords rarely escape the machinations of politics. Just how far will tinkering with free markets go this election cycle?
In an election-year effort to shift responsibility for the nation’s high costs of living away from economic policies, President Biden is adding corporate landlords to the list—targeting what he calls “rent gouging by corporate landlords.”
U.S. consumer price index Feb. 2024
0.4% FEB 2024
3.2% FEB 2024
The Biden Administration claims that corporate landlords are keeping rents artificially high
Logical fallacy Landlords aren’t a homogenous group of mindless corporations. Fewer than a fifth of rental properties and less than half of rental units are owned by for-profit businesses.
Landlords are just the latest of a long list of business sectors erringly blamed for inflation. Other targets include finance, food, drug, energy providers.
Most landlords are individuals who own a few units U.S. landlords by number of units owned, 2018
units:1-4
14.4M individual investors
3.4M businesses
1.2M non-profits, coops, trusteeships, etc
665k not reported
units: 5-24
130k individual investors
190k businesses
40k non-profits, coops, trusteeships, etc
14k not reported
units: 25+
16k individual investors
105k businesses
19k non-profits, coops, trusteeships, etc
11k not reported
Campaign 101
Incumbents with problematic track records sometimes try to broadly assign economic pain to the illusive “big businesses” versus taking responsibility for their policies.
Could the blame strategy work? The share of respondents who said “large corporations taking advantage of inflation” deserved part of the blame for price increases climbed 9 percent from Nov. to March, reaching 63 percent (Financial Times poll).
In an era of big government and the welfare state perhaps the property-centered vision of the framers cannot be reclaimed. But any change must start by fundamental rethinking the vital place of Heightened awareness may be the first step toward the restoration of constitutional safeguards for property owners. (Property Rights in American History, James W. Ely, Jr., Vanderbilt University)
Source: Biden to target ‘rent gouging’ landlords as high housing costs factor into 2024 race, Rebecca Picciotto, CNBC; White House fact sheet; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED (March 12, 2024); Pew Research Center using Census Bureau data from 2019 (the last year the census has reliable data, rental housing finance survey, 2018; Financial Times Michigan Ross nationwide March survey, Feb. 29 – March 4, 2024, margin of error of +/-3.1 percent.
