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The presidential candidates are rolling out their plans to make housing more affordable.

Kamala Harris is pitching tax incentives to encourage development, plus down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers. Donald Trump’s housing plan is less detailed — he points to his other goals of reducing immigration and “slashing inflation” as ways to address housing costs.

Key 2024 election dates

Nov. 5 general election

The general election is Nov. 5, with a new set of deadlines.
Oct. 19 to Nov. 1: Early voting from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Main Public Library, 613 Pleasant St.
Nov. 5: General election. Polls open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

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Get additional info on voter registration, eligibility, requirements, etc., at the Massachusetts Secretary of Commonwealth website.

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Learn more about voting in New Bedford and find applications for absentee ballots and applications for voting by mail at the New Bedford Election Commission website.

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The housing crisis is primarily a supply and demand problem, economists say. Housing production hasn’t kept up with population growth in many cities. Greater New Bedford is short 4,100 housing units, according to a recent Economic Development Council report. And the Harris campaign cites an estimate that the country needs 3 million more homes than it currently has.

The shortage has led to skyrocketing rents and home prices as more and more people compete for a stagnant number of homes.

Trump’s plan

Most of Harris’s plans are geared toward building up the supply of housing. But Trump’s main housing strategy takes a different angle: What if there were fewer people?

The former president and his running mate JD Vance say that immigration is driving up the cost of housing, and point to Trump’s plan to deport millions of immigrants.

In theory, reducing the population of immigrants would help ease demand for housing, said Ben Forman, a MassInc researcher who has studied housing in New Bedford and other gateway cities. But deporting immigrants would also remove an important part of the young workforce in an aging country.

“You can’t have it both ways,” he said. “There would be huge consequences for our economy.”

Other economists have cast doubt on whether immigration is a major contributor to housing costs. And some experts have said Trump’s strategy could backfire because immigrants make up a significant part of the workers that help build new housing.

Trump’s plan says the former president would reduce mortgage rates by “slashing inflation.” His inflation strategy calls for lifting restrictions on fossil fuels, reducing “wasteful” government spending, cutting unspecified unnecessary regulations, and securing the border with Mexico. But 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists have said Trump’s overall plans would make inflation worse. 

The former president’s platform mentions “Tax Incentives and support” for first-time homebuyers, but doesn’t go into detail.

Both Trump and Harris have called for opening limited portions of federal land for housing developments.

Harris’s plan

The vice president’s housing plan includes $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, with more available for first-generation homebuyers.

Some economists have warned that the proposal could worsen the housing crisis by increasing demand without addressing supply, driving prices even higher.

“We need more production, or else we will lose much of the impact of the $25,000 with price increases,” Forman said.

Harris’s plan does have a set of tax incentives geared specifically at increasing production. 

The plan calls for adding 1.2 million income-restricted apartments through an expansion of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit. This credit helped make New Bedford projects such as Cliftex II, the scattered-site Wamsutta Apartments, and 117 Union Street possible.

The vice president also wants to create a new Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit, allocating funding for over 400,000 construction projects to rehabilitate and build single-family, owner-occupied housing. And her plan would create a tax incentive specifically for so-called “starter homes,” or affordable single-family homes sold to first-time homebuyers.

Forman said the Low Income Housing Tax Credit should be expanded, but he was concerned that promoting more single-family home production would not benefit cities like New Bedford. 

“I think the last thing we need right now is an incentive to produce new single-family homes,” he said. “I think we’d rather see more two- and three-family homes in our urban areas.”

Forman also cautioned that tax credits might not be the most efficient way to increase housing production. He suggested that programs like grants to state and local governments, or aid to renters and homeowners, could stimulate production without subsidizing profits for the real estate industry.

“Are you providing a public subsidy in a way that provides the most housing possible, or gives a significant chunk of change to lawyers and bankers?” he said.

Forman was a fan of another Harris campaign proposal: the vice president plans to launch a $40 billion housing innovation fund for state and local governments to draw from. The proposed federal fund would provide support for innovative programs to increase new construction, lower costs, and make regulations less burdensome for housing developments.

The proposal would mean new federal funding for cities, similar to the money doled out in the 2021 pandemic relief package. New Bedford has invested a significant amount of its pandemic relief funds into housing projects, including three new buildings on Union Street and renovations to convert historic buildings throughout the city into apartments.

Harris’s housing plan includes a section on lowering costs by “taking on abusive corporate landlords,” but both proposals in that section would require Congress to act. Harris has endorsed a bill that would ban companies from using rent-setting algorithms, which have become the focus of antitrust lawsuits.

Another bill Harris supports would bar real estate investors from key tax deductions after they acquire 50 or more single-family homes.

Forman said it’s important to increase homeownership instead of letting homes fall into investor hands. Subsidizing homeownership is cheaper than subsidizing rentals, he said. He added that homeowners tend to move less often than renters, so a housing market with more homeowners doesn’t need as many vacant homes to keep prices stable.

“When you look at the pros and cons, there is a lot of benefit to creating more ownership housing in cities,” he said.

Email housing reporter Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org.