Trump’s “Homes for People” Plan Distracts From Failing Policies, Experts Say

President Donald Trump pledged on the 2024 campaign trail to “end inflation” and bring down housing costs “with the goal of cutting the cost of a new home in half.” That messaging, which resonated with swing voters frustrated with inflation, helped propel Trump back into the White House.

Nearly a year into his term, Trump’s approval ratings have hit new lows as he calls the continuing affordability crisis a “Democrat hoax.” Now, as the president is attempting to deliver a positive economic message ahead of the midterms, he’s turned his eye to the costliest necessity — and one of the most complicated: housing.

In November, experts panned Trump’s initial housing proposal for 50-year mortgages backed by the government as a policy “gimmick.” In a social media post on January 7, Trump announced his latest idea, a vague proposal to prohibit wealthy corporations and other “institutional investors” from buying up more single-family homes in order to lower costs and free up supply for first-time buyers.

“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream,” wrote Trump, who went on to blame inflation on Democrats and former President Joe Biden.

Private equity firms and real estate corporations have increasingly invested in single-family homes over the past decade, particularly since 2020. They often use them as vehicles for rental income, which can reduce housing stock and increase prices for first-time homebuyers. Trump’s plan comes with a nifty slogan — “People live in homes, not corporations” — but experts say the proposal would do little to bring down costs without additional reforms.

“It’s mostly a distraction from the fact that he has done numerous things to make the housing situation much worse in this country,” said Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project, in an interview with Truthout.

Experts have largely suggested the housing affordability crisis is primarily driven by demand outpacing supply, with the U.S. facing an estimated shortage of 3 to 4 million homes. Trump spent much of his first year in office focused on tariffs that raise the cost of construction materials and a brutal mass deportation campaign that is exacerbating labor shortages in the homebuilding industry. Both policies can only increase supply shortages over time, pushing up costs for renters and first-time homebuyers who are already struggling.

The Trump administration has also taken a sledgehammer to policies that more directly impact housing, such as slashing federal subsidies for low-income renters and gutting regulations prohibiting discrimination by landlords, putting millions of people at risk of eviction and homelessness.

Trump’s post about the proposal to ban institutional investors from buying up single-family homes (as opposed to multi-family homes, such as apartment buildings) was short on specifics, but the president said he would share more details ahead of his speech at the World Economic Forum this month. In a rambling speech on Tuesday that included numerous false claims about the economy, Trump pledged to provide more details on the institutional investor ban and other housing proposals next week.

Roller said the plan appears populist by identifying greedy Wall Street investors as the problem but will likely amount to little more than an empty political gesture in an election year.

“It’s an attempt to make people ignore the fact that his administration has decimated federal housing programs, made it easier for landlords to discriminate based on race and other factors, imposed taxes on construction materials, and deported much of the badly needed construction workforce,” Roller said. “Compared to these things he could turn around now that are within his power, this is a non-proposal.”

Indeed, two career civil rights attorneys from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will testify before the Senate Banking Committee on January 13 that they faced unlawful retaliation for exposing the Trump administration’s efforts to hamper enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits housing discrimination based on race, religion, gender, and other factors. Trump claimed in a recent interview that civil rights laws such as the Fair Housing Act led to white people being “very badly treated.”

“Our job at HUD was to enforce the Fair Housing Act and protect families from discrimination,” said Palmer Heenan, one of the HUD whistleblowers, in a statement on January 12. “The fact that we were stopped from doing so has nothing to do with helping Americans and everything to do with the politics of this administration.”

Trump’s housing proposal has also garnered criticism from Wall Street and corporate media, who say that “institutional investors” impact a small share of the market. One estimate from John Burns Research and Consulting, a real estate consulting firm, which was shared by CNBC, found thatcompanies that own 100 or more single-family homes control roughly 2 percent of the single-family units nationwide. While proponents of reining in institutional investors argue wealthy companies often outbid first-time homebuyers in local markets, some analysts suggest their role is overstated.

However, Roller pointed to research showing that corporations now own nearly 9 percent of residential parcels in 500 counties across the U.S., and in some working-class neighborhoods, corporate ownership exceeds 20 percent. Trump’s proposal won’t solve the housing crisis alone — if the president is even able to turn the proposal into actionable legislation in the first place — but Roller said it’s an issue that policy makers should examine. The plan would likely require congressional approval, but legislation aimed at reining in corporate real estate investors has consistently failed to gain traction.

“For a lot of working-class folks who are trying to buy a home, they feel this intensely. They are getting bid out over and over again, and they are just pissed about it,” Roller said. “And that is not a partisan thing.”

Institutional investors are also a problem for renters, who are organizing tenant unions across the country to fight back against abusive corporate landlords. Roller said tenants with institutional investor landlords are more likely to be evicted, file complaints about problems with the rental property, and be forced to pay hidden junk fees when rent comes due.

“The rent does not look any higher on paper, then you get into a lease and get into the pace of living there, and it drives you bonkers and you don’t feel in control,” Roller said, referring to junk fees that inflate rents beyond what is advertised.

Roller said Trump’s proposal does identify one factor pushing up the cost of buying or renting a home for some people but won’t solve the housing crisis on its own.

While Roller is skeptical of the neoliberal, deregulatory proposals pushed by the so-called “abundance” movement, there’s a deep need for policies at the federal and local levels to rapidly expand housing stock and support people at risk of becoming homeless.

“What I don’t want is to try and fix the housing crisis all with one policy, because it can’t be done,” Roller continued. “But I do want to reform things that make it worse, especially things that are only padding the pockets of billionaires and rich people — and this is one of those things.”

This piece has been updated to include more information from Donald Trump’s speech on January 13.