Kamala Harris Has A Swing State Housing Problem

You'd like to think Kamala Harris, a career prosecutor, has a fighting chance of defeating a four-times indicted convicted felon in this year's US presidential election. Particularly considering that during the felon's first try playing president, he managed to get himself impeached not once, but twice, the second time for summoning a Cracker Barrel parking lot to the Capitol in a botched coup. Or who knows, maybe you wouldn't like to think that. Maybe you're stoked for another four years of c

Join institutional investors, analysts and strategists from the world's largest banks: Subscribe today for as little as $7/month

View subscription options

Already have an account? log in

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

22 thoughts on “Kamala Harris Has A Swing State Housing Problem

          1. I don’t understand why this is so hard to solve. You don’t even need to give people houses. Just give them cars to live in. It looks like that’s what I’m going to be doing.

  1. It’s game on. The electorate is cranky worldwide. That’s true in France, Canada, Germany and already changed a party governing in the uk (although admittedly the Tories were a long time train wreck).
    Yes housing is a problem. But I believe it is bigger than that. It’s down to real incomes which have only started to turn around in the last 6-12 months. It’s other things too, but on the economic side, it is real incomes. Housing is a symptom of that.

  2. If Trump were president during a bout of inflation he would have spent every available opportunity blaming it on the prior president, saying how the mishandling of covid, supply side problems, etc. caused the problem until finally his followers accepted it as gospel. Trying to take the responsible high road and not shift the blame has left it solidly on Biden.

  3. Don’t forget when housing cost exceed 30% of income there is a dramatic rise in homelessness that the voters in those swing states will physically see all around them like I’ve witnessed over the last twenty years here in California.

        1. Obviously anecdote isn’t singular for data, but from where I sit As a 20+ year IT professional who has now been unemployed for over 15 months, it’s less about the food and more about all the professionals going 12 months, 18 months, 24 months without work and losing their homes. Or even among those who haven’t lost their jobs and homes yet, the married couples having to live hundreds of miles apart because they can’t find work in the same city. Hop on LinkedIn and ask a recruiter who’s been out of work for two years and says they’ve never seen a job market this bad in 20 or 30 years in the business—go ahead and look, they’re not hard to find anymore—whether they think it’s the “food” That’s making people question how good the economy actually is.

  4. Buyers pay prices; owners have value. “Home values increase”, is always a welcome statement.

    Looks like if the 2016-2018 pace had been maintained, we’d still be at the same place.

    I dont think swing state voters would feel better about anything if prices/values were to decline by 20 or 30%.

    1. “‘Home values increase,’ is always a welcome statement.”

      I understand where you’re coming from, and I sympathize with the sentiment, but there are millions upon millions of people (and not just in America, by the way) who don’t agree. And I gotta tell you, after moving back to the city and seeing people living on the streets in person again, I’m no longer of the mind that “home values increase” is everywhere and always a “welcome statement.” We can’t keep putting people out on the streets. We just can’t. Eventually, those people will kill us for it. And I won’t blame them.

    2. “Equity increase”, not “home values increase”. I sympathize with the Gen-Z/millenial cohort, despite being from the tail end of the boomer cohort because even if I wanted to downsize (and another health issue might require that), it would be very financially painful.

    1. No, I can’t. Because it’s 110 degrees there and it’s now tornado prone, too. An island prone to tornados. Most of my neighbors down there told me climate change was a hoax. They’ll be screaming that when they’re whisked away to Oz in a twister or floating out to sea on the roof of their unmoored house.

        1. Exactly. One thing (among many) I’ve learned from being around wealthy people is that the old adage about the rich only despising socialism when it applies to the poor is absolutely true. Rich people will take all the handouts and de facto taxpayer subsidies they can get their hands on, while preaching about meritocracies and begrudging lower-income households food vouchers. It’d be maddening if it weren’t so comical. And they (rich people) are almost completely oblivious to the hypocrisy and irony. In some cases, they’ll even try to turn the tables: “I succeeded, so I deserve handouts.”

          1. I might be late to this one, but I recently learned a new phrase: “just-world hypothesis”. It’s a keeper.

NEWSROOM crewneck & prints