LAS
VEGAS (AP) — Like many, Mario Wolthers was lured to Las Vegas a decade
ago from California by cheaper housing costs. But when his apartment
managers tried to raise his rent last spring, he moved in with a
roommate.
“I’m a responsible taxpaying
citizen,” said Wolthers, a 38-year-old elementary school teacher and
Democrat. “I help a lot of kids out. I should at least be able to rent
an apartment on my own or even afford a home.”
As
the Democratic presidential candidates hustle for votes in Nevada, the
third state on the 2020 voting calendar, they have been trying to answer
Wolthers’ complaint. The contenders are cranking out housing plans,
meeting with advocates and pledging to help bring down prices.
Their
proposals have not dominated the campaign in the way that health care
or immigration has. Still, they represent the seeds of a political
debate likely to grow as high rents and home prices spread from
expensive cities such as Los Angeles and New York to once-affordable
pockets like Las Vegas and Reno.
“It’s
affecting the overwhelming majority of the population here,” said Aria
Overli of the housing-focused activist group Actionn, in Reno. Overli
said she has lost track of the number of presidential campaigns she’s
talked with about real estate costs.
It’s not just Nevada.
Houses
cost more than five times the typical household income — meaning
they’re probably out of reach of most families — in one-seventh of the
metro areas in the United States, according to Harvard’s Joint Center
for Housing Studies. Rents are rising at twice the rate of inflation
nationally.
On the West Coast, soaring rents
and home prices have helped trigger a new wave of homelessness and a
debate over solutions. President Donald Trump has used the crisis to
criticize Democratic leadership in California. He’s suggested it may
require federal intervention.
Democratic candidates have their own ideas.
Vermont
Sen. Bernie Sanders recently came out with a plan in Las Vegas to spend
$2.5 trillion over the next decade to improve public housing, combat
homelessness and establish national rent control. Mayor Pete Buttigieg
of South Bend, Indiana, who has proposed letting families “homestead” on
abandoned land in cities, toured Reno with Actionn on Saturday to
discuss housing.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of
Massachusetts released a plan in March to spend $500 billion over 10
years to build housing units. California Sen. Kamala Harris is proposing
a tax credit for families spending more than 30 percent on rent. New
Jersey Sen. Cory Booker also backs a renters’ tax credit.
Julian
Castro, housing secretary in the Obama administration, and Minnesota
Sen. Amy Klobuchar are among those proposing more money for federal
housing vouchers. Several candidates want to push local governments to
streamline restrictive zoning laws that prevent the construction of
units. Former Vice President Joe Biden has not released a plan.
The factors driving higher prices are varied.
In
northern Nevada, Reno is a growing technology hub and a refuge for
Californians fleeing that state’s high cost of living. Rents have
increased by 35% in the past two years. A recent study ranked Reno’s
county as the 66th least affordable in the nation, closing in on the
tier that features notoriously expensive places such as San Francisco
and Brooklyn, New York.
Las Vegas, once
known as a place where people priced out of the American dream elsewhere
could afford a house, is statistically more affordable than Reno. But
it is seeing a spike in real estate prices as new residents have moved
in. Home prices rose more than twice as quickly as wages in the past
year, sharper than the national increase.
The
city has among the highest rate of renters in the country, on par with
New York City and San Francisco. That’s a sign that people cannot afford
a first home, according to Jed Kolko, chief economist at the jobs site
Indeed.
“Las Vegas had always been seen as a
transient city but as we’ve grown and we’ve become more established, we
have families staying here,” said Lalo Montoya of the activist group
Make the Road Nevada.
Montoya moved to Las
Vegas in 2016 from Denver, fleeing another once-affordable city that had
become too expensive. He just found a new apartment after hunting
around climbing rents and high move-in fees. “We’re all just one
emergency away, a lot of us,” he said. “If it’s hard for me and that I
have a stable job, then I can’t imagine how it must be for other
hardworking folks.”
Nevada Democrats, who
won control of the Legislature in November, passed laws to restrict late
fees and offer tax credits for builders of low-income housing.
Housing
proposals may play well in a Democratic primary. The party’s base of
younger people, minorities and urban dwellers cares about housing and
bears the brunt of the problem.
Analysts
note that significant swaths of the country don’t have widespread
housing pinches — including politically pivotal Rust Belt states.
Highly
technical solutions for housing also rarely fire up voters, said Jenny
Schuetz of the Brookings Institute in Washington. “I don’t imagine
anyone’s going to get up in the middle of a national debate and say we
need to double HUD’s budget for vouchers,” she said.
But
the signs of a political shift are there. Housing is no longer just a
headache for the poor or big-city dweller, communities that rarely get
attention in presidential campaigns.
“The
problem of housing affordability has been moving up the income scale,”
said Chris Herbert of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “It’s a
problem of the working class who can’t afford housing. It’s taking on a
different political tenor.”
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Riccardi reported from Denver. AP Economics Writer Joshua Boak in Washington contributed to this report.
