This isn’t a policy election. There’s no defining issue like tax cuts in 2000 or health care in 2008 or trade in 2016. Democrats are focused on convincing voters that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to the American way of life, and vice versa. But policy remains the purpose of politics, and the choice of a president is also the choice of a housing policy.
Kamala Harris has a plan to address the nation’s housing crisis. Donald Trump (kind of) has one, too. And the differences say a lot about the two candidates.
Housing prices across the country have soared in recent years, dramatically outpacing income growth. Finding an affordable place to live is no longer a problem confined to a few big coastal cities. Millions of Americans cannot buy a place to call home. They cannot settle into a neighborhood, or move to a new city to take a better job.
The cause of the crisis is a shortage of housing. The solution is to build a lot more housing.
Ms. Harris is cleareyed about this need. She has proposed a target of three million new homes, and outlined a number of policies to move toward that goal, including tax incentives for builders, financial support for buyers and a necessary focus on opening land for development by removing state and local regulatory roadblocks.
Mr. Trump also talks about the high cost of housing, but ironically for a man who sees himself as a great builder, the former president hasn’t called for more construction. Instead, in his telling, the housing crisis is just one more problem caused by illegal immigration — one more problem to be fixed with mass deportations.
“I will also stop inflation by stopping the invasion, rapidly reducing housing costs,” Mr. Trump said in Wisconsin in June. JD Vance, his running mate, made the same argument in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in July. “Citizens had to compete with people who shouldn’t even be here for precious housing,” he said.
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