A maintenance worker sweeps the road in front of a row of new homes in Fairfax, Virginia, on August 22, 2023.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday unveiled a new slate of funding initiatives to support housing growth, including a $100 million fund specifically for affordable housing.
The announcement comes just days before President Joe Biden faces former President Donald Trump in the first presidential debate, where inflation is likely to be a key point of contention.
The past several inflation reports have shown that prices eased slightly, but housing costs remained persistently high. June’s consumer price index found headline inflation held steady in May, even as consumer inflation rose 0.4%.
As part of its new actions, the Treasury Department will provide $100 million over the next three years to fund affordable housing projects. It also calls on several agencies that help finance housing to step up their support for new development.
Yellen will make formal remarks on housing initiatives in Minneapolis later Monday. The speech is part of a tour of Minnesota where he is dining with CEOs and holding roundtables with state housing officials.
As the president hunkers down at Camp David to prepare for Thursday’s debate, Yellen is among Biden cabinet members touring the country in an effort to push the president’s economic agenda.
Deputy Housing and Urban Development Secretary Adrianne Todman and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for example, have traveled the country to tout Biden’s infrastructure investments.
The economy has proven to be a major sticking point for Biden among voters since the race for the White House hit a high note.
Driven by pandemic-era supply chain congestion and labor shortages, the record inflation that followed lingers for consumers, who are still feeling the squeeze from higher prices. Polls show that many of them blame the president who has been in power through it all.
In particular, housing costs, which make up some of the largest percentages of consumer spending, have remained stubbornly high even as other sectors have declined.
Biden has tried to pin the blame for high housing costs on corporate landlords, accusing them of being “rent wreckers” by keeping consumer rents artificially high even as their own costs have fallen.
“People are tired of being played for fools,” Biden said in March. “And I’m tired of letting them be played for fools.”
The National Association of Condominiums, a major landlord lobby, issued a statement earlier in June rejecting Biden’s campaign rhetoric against landlords.
“Politics has no place in housing, and it is long past time for policymakers to act on housing,” the group wrote in the statement. “Over the coming months, the NAA will continue to champion housing providers on the campaign trail.”
