Kamala Harris has supported affordable housing in the past.

As California Attorney General, Harris drafted and helped pass the California Homeowners Bill of Rights, a set of laws designed to protect homeowners from unfair practices. The California Homeowners Bill of Rights became law on January 1, 2013.

Harris secured an $18 billion settlement as part of a multi-state, nationwide settlement for thousands of homeowners who lost their homes due to improper foreclosure or fraud in 2012.

As a senator, Harris introduced the Rent Relief Act in 2018, a bill that provides tax credits to renters who earn less than $100,000 and spend more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities.

In 2019, Harris reintroduced a second version of the bill, which includes a mechanism for the Treasury Department to pay the tax credit on a monthly basis to eligible households. The latest version also caps the credit at 100% of fair market rents for small areas instead of 150% of fair market rents for small areas.

Last month, Harris announced the recipients of an $85 million grant under Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing, or PRO Housing, a first-of-its-kind project through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development aimed at increasing construction activity and lowering housing and rental costs for U.S. families.

The news comes on the heels of Harris’ announcement in May of $5.5 billion through the Department of Housing and Urban Development to promote affordable housing, invest in economic growth, build wealth, and address homelessness in communities across America.

Such policies come at a time when the country is facing rising rates of homelessness and the high costs of buying or renting housing. A record 653,100 people faced homelessness in 2023, up from 256,600 the year before, according to a report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Recent housing policies introduced by the Biden administration generally aim to increase the supply of affordable housing and lower costs for buyers and renters.

Harris was involved in housing policymaking for the Biden campaign, and her campaign is likely to have similar plans for housing, experts say.

“Overall, it seems like affordable housing and zoning have been a topic of discussion for a while now,” said Jacob Channell, senior economist at LendingTree. “If they continue on the same path that the Biden administration has been on, I think there’s potential for a lot of good.”

As Harris's candidacy looks more likely, people are starting to talk about a policy Harris originally floated in her 2020 presidential campaign: the “Lift Up the Middle Class” Act.

The bill would provide a refundable tax credit of up to $3,000 per person, or $6,000 per married couple filing jointly, to eligible middle- and working-class Americans.

Some experts suggest that the LIFT Act could be better for renters than the 5% rent cap increase that Biden proposed in mid-July.

The proposals call on Congress to cap rent increases from landlords with 50 or more existing units at 5% or risk losing federal tax breaks.

“The concern with a rent cap is that the supply of housing could change,” said Francesco D’Acunto, an associate professor of finance at Georgetown University.

While capping rents may lead consumers to believe that prices will not rise above a certain amount, it can have negative side effects, such as landlords pulling their properties out of the rental market, said Karl Widerquist, an economist and professor of philosophy at Georgetown University.

Channell explained that property owners who lose access to tax breaks will still be able to raise rents, and the plan will exclude new construction and buildings undergoing major renovations.

The tax credit would not create the same distortions as the rent cap, and it targets the negative effects of rent inflation, DaConto said.

Harris’s LIFT the Middle Class Act has certainly been heavily criticized in the past. While not a perfect policy, the LIFT Act “is essentially an expansion in the right direction,” says Widerquist.