Kamala Harris has a new advertising push to draw attention to her plan to build 3 million new homes over four years, a move designed to contain inflationary pressures that also draws a sharp contrast to Republican Donald Trump’s approach.
Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, highlights her plan in a new minute-long ad that uses her personal experience, growing up in rental housing while her mother had saved for a decade before she could buy a home. The ad targets voters in the swing states including Arizona and Nevada. Campaign surrogates are also holding 20 events this week focused on housing issues.
In addition to increasing home construction, Harris is proposing the government provide as much as $25,000 in assistance to first-time buyers. That message carries weight at this moment as housing costs have kept upward pressure on the consumer price index. Shelter costs are up 5.1% over the past 12 months, compared to overall inflation being 2.9%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Vice President Harris knows we need to do more to address our housing crisis, that’s why she has a plan to end the housing shortage” and will crack down on “corporate landlords and Wall Street banks hiking up rents and housing costs,” said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director.
Meh my suburb definitely helps my health. I border open space, have a great trail that goes all the way to the city center, and to a state park in the other direction. I either ride my bike or use a convenient bus line to get around, unless I have explicit cause to drive. Many of my friends live within a mile or so of me and we regularly meet at the neighborhood fenced off leash dog park, or walk over to the nearby brewery or coffee shop. My grocery store is easy biking distance.
It’s not all suburbs, many are just built shitty. I love where I live and I am definitely enriched by my neighborhood.
That said, it’s not for everyone, and to your point lots of higher density housing should be made.
Probably best not to do widely generalize what all Americans want, or suffer from. Edit the larger problem is corporate gobbling of houses as investments when homes should be a wellness, social stability thing.
Certainly some suburbs are better than others. I’m glad that your suburb does not negatively impact your mental and physical wellbeing. Indeed, I am generalizing. However, I would argue that even the best suburbs are still more expensive and worse for the environment than the best urban areas. The more concentrated human population centers are, the more wild land there can be, and that’s better for the planet.
That being said, I don’t necessarily want to outlaw detached, single family homes, or force people to leave their suburb and move into densely populated urban areas. If your suburb works for you, you should be able to stay there. I do think any tax policies that result in urban areas subsidizing the costs of suburban areas should be eliminated, though.
I think we can find shared agreement on the need to attack zoning and land use in urban areas where office space should be converted to housing.
We can also agree that rewilding open space, increasing the quantity and quality of public transit, modern energy production, polyculturing the suburban yard (from a grass monoculture) are all great things that reduce the impact of suburbs. In my area those topics are increasing popular. I’m regularly seeing people ripping out their grass, for example. But I acknowledge the current status quo of many suburbs which are just grass, detached pickup truck storage.