Rent relief: A winning policy issue for the Harris campaign

(Trice Edney Communications) – Renters account for approximately 34% of the U.S. population, with 44 million housing units in the U.S. currently being rented. Talking directly to this constituency is a winning formula. The Department of Labor recently released new Consumer Price Index data. It showed that while inflation has cooled down in many areas of the economy, rent prices continue their upward ascent across the country, with the annual increase now exceeding 5%.Home prices have risen 47% since the pandemic, and according to a report released this year from Harvard University, over half of renters are now spending more than a third of their income on housing. Since 2020, the average rental price has risen 17% to $1,713 monthly, and in cities like New York and San Francisco, average rents now top over $3,000 a month.Related Stories As the former chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, I know all too well the need for balanced and properly enforced legislation and regulations to remedy this problem. But the keyword here is balance.The fact that rent prices are now falling in the U.S. markets where business owners have developed new rental units has proven that when the economy...