Broad Coalition of Housing Providers and Lenders Cautions White House Over Anti-Housing Affordability Regulations
Ten associations representing America’s housing providers, lenders and residents today sent a letter to the White House urging caution over a series of counterproductive regulations that would hurt consumers and ultimately exacerbate the shortage of affordable housing nationwide.
The administration’s recent Fact Sheets, “Biden-Harris Administration Announces New Actions to Boost Housing Supply and Lower Housing Costs” and “The Price Isn’t Right: How Junk Fees Cost Consumers and Undermine Competition,” propose additional federal regulation on top of what is already an overly complicated set of regulations and housing provider-resident laws at the state and local levels that will disincentivize investors, further exacerbate the supply shortage and ultimately hurt our nation’s renters.
Specific concerns include treating rental housing fees like typical consumer fees and removing consumer friendly broadband bulk-billing pricing options for housing providers. In addition, the groups believe it is critical that all sectors be involved – both for-profit and non-profit and resident owned manufactured housing communities – in the strategy to maintain affordable manufactured housing communities.
Rental housing fees are unlike other fees under the administration’s focus and are robustly regulated at the state level. A one-size-fits-all requirement would interfere with the breadth and differences in states’ fee requirements that already cover limitations in amounts of specific types of rental housing fees, refundability, return and disclosure requirements, just to name a few. Moreover, we encourage federal policymakers to study the actual utility and function of fees in the housing market, as the data does not support the justification for the purported claims of consumer harm.
Housing providers offer broadband bulk billing as a value-add service, providing negotiated broadband prices that are lower costs than typically available in the open market. Banning bulk internet agreements will harm residents, and disincentivize investment in broadband service, especially in rural areas as well as low-income, smaller, and more-affordable rental communities who struggle the most to get connected.
The preservation of manufactured housing communities is a critical tool to help address housing affordability. However, the administration arbitrarily excluded the private sector from critical grants offered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Investor-owned land-lease community owners have had an integral role in buying these communities and providing the capital for such improvements.
Read the full letter here. Letter signatories include:
CCIM Institute
Council for Affordable and Rural Housing
Institute of Real Estate Management
Manufactured Housing Institute
Mortgage Bankers Association
National Apartment Association
National Association of Home Builders
National Association of REALTORS®
National Leased Housing Association
National Multifamily Housing Council