HOUSING

Americans face a housing shortage, prohibitive costs for homeownership, and regulatory threats to neighborhoods.  The Biden administration and Democrats want to destroy suburbs in the name of “equity” while punishing consumers with good credit.  As the next US Senator, Frank will work to lower the cost of housing and protect the character of family-friendly neighborhoods.

Bidenonmics is the key driver of construction costs and interest rates putting affordable housing out of reach for millions of Americans.  The Biden-appointed Federal Reserve has covered the Democrats’ massive deficits first by printing money and then by raising interest rates to the highest levels in decades to try and address the predictable inflation that resulted from their spending spree.

This one-two punch makes building housing exorbitantly expensive. The high interest rates put new loans for purchasing or refinancing out of reach, and lock families into their current homes.  The Biden-Brown economic policies have devastated the middle class and made it incredibly difficult to live the American Dream of owning a home.

The most important thing the government can do to increase housing availability and affordability for Americans is to end Biden’s trillions in overspending.  The so-called American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and absurdly-named Inflation Reduction Act have resulted in trillion-dollar deficits, racking up debt as far as the eye can see. This overspending must be repealed to make housing affordable again.

On the regulatory front, the Biden administration has resurrected an Obama-era rule to effectively abolish suburbs as we know them.  The proposed “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” rule would require communities across the country to adopt “equity plans” with the ultimate goal of ending single-family home zoning.  The rule is set to become official in December 2023.  Congress must act to stop it.  In the Senate, Frank will work to keep Washington bureaucrats from socially engineering your community into an urbanized tangle of high rises.

Another “equity” rule proposed by Biden’s Federal Housing Finance Agency raises upfront fees for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages, meaning borrowers with the best credit scores will be charged more in order to subsidize borrowers with bad credit.  Schemes like this propelled the 2008 financial crisis by extending mortgages to borrowers who could not afford them.  In the end, we all paid for these harmful policies during the Great Recession.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended up in federal conservatorship.  It’s long past time to wind down these bloated taxpayer-guaranteed entities that distort the housing market and raise costs and risks for everyone.