Construction in Reno on Feb. 21, 2022. David Calvert/The Nevada Independent
In Nevada, where a burgeoning population and housing inventory that hasn’t kept pace have contributed to a particularly acute crisis, a new poll shows that residents favor robust federal intervention to make housing more affordable.
According to a survey conducted in Spanish and English by the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, bipartisan majorities of Nevada residents indicated support for federal spending and tax incentive plans to create and maintain affordable housing options, $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homeowners, reducing corporate ownership of housing, offering incentives to reduce single-family zoning and increasing funding for public housing vouchers.
Pollster Steven Kull, a political psychologist at the University of Maryland and director of the Program for Public Consultation, said in an interview that the support comes as housing prices have increased far more rapidly than the general rate of inflation in the last few years and after Americans interacted with sweeping rent and mortgage assistance programs created during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It seems that there's been some increased comfort with the idea of [the] federal government taking strong actions to mitigate the cost of living to help both middle-income as well as low-income people find more affordable housing,” Kull said. “I think it's a combination of the [financial] stress [families are facing], of a perception that it's a unique period in the post-pandemic era.”
Open-ended answers from respondents encapsulate that sentiment.
“Simply ignoring the millions of low and middle-income families will not make the lack of housing [or] crisis go away,” one respondent wrote. “I think that policies that are incentives are a good way to get local and state governments to actually start making some changes.”
Anecdotal statements about the lack of affordable housing underscore estimates from The National Low Income Housing Coalition indicating that Nevada is nearly 80,000 affordable rental homes short of meeting the needs of extremely low-income renters — those who are at or below the federal poverty guideline or earn less than 30 percent of the area median income.
The average home sale price in the Silver State has risen nearly 57 percent since the pandemic, from about $300,000 in 2019 to nearly $470,000 today. It’s one of the main reasons voters are feeling pessimistic about an economy that other metrics show is generally strong.
Though written responses largely discussed the need for government support, some respondents disagreed.
“Poor people get lots of help from the government and it's usually the middle class that pays,” a respondent wrote. “How will this be funded? We need affordable housing but not at the cost of [the] middle, they are getting squeezed out. If getting housing [subsidized] you should have to do an amount of public service to defer cost if possible.”
The University of Maryland survey is the last of 10 issue-focused polls the group is conducting in six swing states ahead of the 2024 general election. In Nevada, 609 adults were polled in online opt-in surveys from Oct. 4-14, with a margin of error of 4.5 percent.
Survey respondents were informed of the arguments for and against each proposal before indicating their final stance.
“Ultimately, they came down quite definitively in favor of federal government action on a wide range of options,” Kull said.
Offering down payment assistance
Approximately 66 percent of respondents, including 53 percent of Republicans, said they were in favor of a proposal to provide low- and middle-income people who are purchasing a home for the first time with up to $25,000 to help cover their down payment, with more assistance for people whose parents never owned a home.
Congressional Democrats have tried to pass legislation providing such assistance, but those efforts have stalled.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is pushing a similar proposal that would also offer the aid to families who have paid their rent on time for two years and are buying their first home. The campaign estimated this would benefit more than 1 million homebuyers annually.
In open-ended responses, one respondent noted that if her husband hadn’t been a veteran, they wouldn’t have been able to buy a home and the down payment assistance is “NEEDED.”
Another respondent described homebuyers as the “backbone of the country” but had qualms about whether those who receive the money could find a home to purchase. A third wrote that offering $25,000 in down payment assistance doesn’t address broader issues.
“A better question would be to ask why is it so high in the first place. It's like treating the symptoms and putting on a bandaid but not searching for the root cause,” the respondent wrote.
Reducing large corporate ownership
As part of the survey, respondents were told that some experts believe housing prices have increased because large corporations have purchased wide swaths of housing, while others disagree that the trend is driving an increase in prices.
Respondents were then given two proposals to review. One would require corporations with more than $50 million in assets to sell all their single-family houses, townhouses and duplexes within the next 10 years and prohibit them from buying any more, with substantial financial penalties for noncompliance. The other proposed denying corporations that own more than 50 single-family houses, townhouses or duplexes any federal tax deductions related to their ownership of those houses.
More than 71 percent of Nevada respondents supported both policies.
Nevada politicians, including Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) have repeatedly called for crackdowns on corporate investors buying up limited housing stock.
“They already make a lot of money and they don’t need those homes,” one respondent wrote about corporate homeownership. “People that actually want to live in it and have it as their own do.”
Increasing federal support for public housing vouchers
As for whether the federal government should provide more people with public housing vouchers that cover some or all of their rent, which would cost an additional $24 billion and be available for use until 2031 or 2033, depending on the project, a bipartisan majority of Nevada respondents, 71 percent, indicated they were in favor, including 64 percent of Republicans and 78 percent of Democrats.
The proposal would not change who qualifies for a voucher, instead making more money available for those who already qualify but may not have applied. Housing vouchers are available to low-income people, the disabled and the elderly.
Incentivizing cities to increase housing density
When distributing funding for infrastructure repair, the federal government has begun to prioritize local governments that allow for more dense and mixed-use housing, defined in the survey as apartments above stores.
Most Nevada respondents, 58 percent, said they support continuing this policy, with 72 percent of Democrats in favor. Republicans were divided with 48 percent in favor and 51 percent opposed. Asked whether they support local governments allowing developers to construct more dense and mixed-use housing, a bipartisan majority of 67 percent in Nevada indicated they were in favor, including 56 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Democrats.
New federal spending and tax incentives for affordable housing
A bipartisan majority of Nevada respondents indicated they support a series of proposals to increase the supply of affordable housing, defined as housing that costs a household no more than 30 percent of their income.
Support for each of the four proposals hovered between 64 and 69 percent, and when broken out by party, Democrats favored them more strongly than Republicans.
One of two proposals that received the highest overall level of support was for the federal government to provide up to $40 billion to build or repair affordable housing through grants to cities and states and support for more low-interest loans to home builders.
About 69 percent of Nevadans said they supported the proposal, including majorities of Republicans.
The same percentage of respondents said they would also support a tax credit for building or repairing rental housing as long as 60 percent of it was affordable to low and middle-income households.
A slightly lower percentage of respondents, 68 percent, said they would support up to $25 billion in federal funding to repair housing affordable to low and middle-income voters throughout the states.
The lowest percentage of support came for a tax incentive proposal to build or repair affordable housing for low- and middle-income people to purchase homes built in low-income, non-urban areas. About 64 percent of respondents support the idea.es built in low-income, non-urban areas. About 64 percent of respondents support the idea.
This story was published Oct. 22 by The Nevada Independent and is republished with permission.
