By Chuck Collins : inequality – excerpt

Our new report breaks down how wealth concentration is depriving Americans of access to affordable living spaces.

The housing affordability crisis – and how to solve it – has become a major focus during election season, for good reason. Millions of American families struggle to afford and keep a roof over their heads, find themselves unsheltered, or have become frustrated in the hope of owning their own home.

The over-focus on expanding housing supply through for-profit development misses a key contributor to the housing crisis: the concentration of wealth and power. The challenges of the U.S. housing crisis go beyond supply or fixing local land use regulations. The billionaire class and billionaire-backed private equity investors have become a driving force in the U.S. housing crisis.

A new report, Billionaire Blowback on Housing: How concentrated wealth disrupts housing markets and worsens the housing affordability crisis, coauthored by the Institute for Policy Studies and Popular Democracy, examines the myriad ways that billionaire investors are harming local housing markets and diminishing the supply of affordable housing… (more)

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Billionaire Blowback on Housing

A comment:

Here’s why they want to up-zone to build luxury units in mid- to high-rise buildings as this article correctly points out:

“Wealthy investors are acquiring property and holding units vacant, so that in many communities the number of vacant units greatly exceeds the number of unhoused people.”

Investors can hold luxury units vacant ONLY in buildings that come with doormen and security apparatus to keep empty units secure.  You can’t do this in a 4 to 6-unit building with only 4 floors and hence, the push for taller buildings.