Biden administration to unveil new actions aimed at lowering housing costs

WASHINGTON — The White House plans to unveil new actions to lower the cost of housing, according to a fact sheet obtained by NBC News.

President Joe Biden will call on Congress to pass a law that would ensure landlords capped rent increases at 5% or faced losing out on federal tax breaks.

If it is taken up by Congress, the plan would apply to landlords who hold more than 50 units, meaning more than 20 million units nationwide could be affected, according to the White House.

There would also be exceptions for new construction and certain renovations.

“The policy is a bridge to rents stabilizing as President Biden’s plan to build more takes hold,” the White House said in a fact sheet. “The President believes that this combination of anti-gouging policies and historic levels of support to build more affordable housing effectively balances the needs of tenants without limiting incentives for more supply.”

Separately, the Biden administration is looking to sell extra federal land to be repurposed into affordable housing, according to the White House.

The housing policies will be made public Tuesday as Biden visits Nevada, a key swing state in the election. Local officials in the state have identified more than 560 acres of public land that could be used for housing, the White House said, estimating that the land could be used to build up to 15,000 “affordable rental and homeownership units for Nevadans.”

The White House’s actions come against the backdrop of the first night of the Republican National Convention, where former President Donald Trump officially became the GOP presidential nominee.

The economy and the cost of living is one of Biden’s primary vulnerabilities in his re-election bid. An NBC News poll conducted in April found that voters preferred Trump over Biden by 22 percentage points on the issue of who would better deal with inflation and the cost of living.

At the same time, the poll indicated that 23% of registered voters found inflation and the cost of living to be the most important issue facing the country.

Biden won Nevada in 2020, though by a narrow margin. Multiple polls indicate Trump is slightly ahead of him in the state.

The overall race remains closely competitive, and an NBC News poll this month found that Biden trails Trump by 2 points nationally. The July poll’s results are similar to polling before Biden’s widely criticized debate performance.