Can We Break Private Equity's Stranglehold On Housing?

In its most recent year-end letter, the private equity firm Blackstone gave its stockholders a seemingly counterintuitive assurance: the lack of new housing stock was reason for optimism.

Why does a stagnant growth in new living spaces benefit Blackstone? Because it is the nation’s largest corporate landlord. For the firm and its investors, chronic housing shortages mean more power to set prices and more leverage to extract wealth from vulnerable working-class tenants.

Blackstone’s letter reveals the malevolent and distortionary role private equity plays in our residential real estate market and underscores the fundamental problem with housing commodification writ large.

Our market-based system simply does give the private sector incentives to meet the public’s demand for high-quality, permanently affordable housing. Providing it would be against the sector’s economic interests since new supply would bring down prices and negatively impact profitability.

The negative effects of housing commodification are all around us. For-profit investors are snatching up properties at an alarming rate – 1 in 6 of all residential homes in the second quarter of this year – giving them the power to charge residents junk fees on top of rent increases.

As a result, a record number of renter households – 22.4 million individuals and families, half of all renters – are now paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent and other housing-related expenses. This places a significant strain on household budgets and contributes to a range of problems related to mental health including anxiety and depression.