As the 2020 election nears, presidential candidates are sharing their platforms and Elizabeth Warren is tackling housing policies in the rental market. She recently shared her proposal for a bill that will chip away at predatory mortgage-flipping practices, initiated during the recession by Wall Street firm. The goal is to require the Federal Housing Authority to sell a minimum of 75 percent of single-family properties acquired through foreclosure to owner-occupant buyers or to community groups who will rehab the properties and sell them to owner-occupants.
The Pacific Standard reported on this proposal and utilized research by Urban Studies Institute’s professor Dan Immergluck to understand the prive-equity practices within the market. Dr. Immergluck has collected data on single family rentals across the US metropolitan areas. His research highlights that the market took off, increasing rentals by 52 percent in the decade following the mortgage crisis. This figure is nearly double the percentage of multifamily rentals, which would have been less likely to be converted from foreclosed homes.
Additional fair housing questions concern the advertising and screening practices of SFR landlords, including the practices of some institutional investors. For example, are owners marketing properties in low-poverty and predominantly white neighborhoods broadly? Do they accept Housing Choice Vouchers from tenants? These and other issues have become more important as the SFR sector now constitutes a larger portion of the rental landscape, particularly in many communities that had not been accustomed to substantial amounts of rental housing.
The report goes on to further detail the crisis of the rental market and predatory practices, debating whether Warren’s proposal would solve these existing problems. Read the full article here.