When it comes to the housing crisis, the simple villain narrative is appealing, but will it help us actually see a way out?  Daniel Herriges  Feb 21, 2024 (Source: Tierra Mallorca on Unsplash)

Housing
In politics, a good, simple story sells. And one of the oldest and simplest stories in American politics is that corporate avarice is at the root of our shared woes. It’s certainly one that I grew up steeped in. Scratch a bit below the surface of a pervasive social problem; find bankers and CEOs making money off that problem.
This narrative persists because it’s emotionally satisfying, but also because it’s true often enough. It can be true in subtle ways that are hard to communicate to the public because they involve deeply entwined systems of power and influence. But then sometimes it’s true in really sensational, obvious ways. It’s easy to explain who profits and who loses from an industrial polluter covering up a toxic spill; a pharmaceutical company pushing opioids; an automobile or airplane manufacturer getting lax about safety standards. It’s easy to see the villain in these stories.
When it comes to housing, the simple villain narrative is likewise appealing to many people. We all witnessed the near collapse of the American financial system in 2008, a story which was rooted in the rise of arcane and risky investment products, and in some cases wholesale financial fraud, tied to the home mortgage market.
Today, home prices exceed even the peak of the pre-2008 bubble, and stories abound of deep-pocketed investment firms cashing in on the same forces squeezing ordinary Americans. The latest round of these stories began, in fact, in the direct aftermath of the 2008 crash. Around 2012, giant funds like Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent popped up seemingly overnight to buy vast numbers of foreclosed homes and operate them as rentals.
Politicians love a good populist / pander move that targets a widely loathed villain, and one I’m seeing more and more of is proposed legislation to ban or heavily restrict the corporate ownership of single-family homes. On the federal level, there’s the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act, proposed jointly in both houses of Congress in December 2023 by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Representative Adam Smith (D-WA). It would prohibit “hedge funds” (defined, according to a New York Times report on the bill, as “corporations, partnerships or real estate investment trusts that manage funds pooled from investors”) from owning single-family homes and give them 10 years to divest their current holdings, imposing stiff tax penalties in the meantime. The revenue raised from those taxes would go to down-payment assistance for individual homebuyers.
There are a number of state analogues of this bill, including most recently in California, where Assembly Member Alex Lee of San Jose has introduced AB 2584, which would prohibit the purchase of single-family homes in California by any “business entity that has an interest in more than 1,000 single-family residential properties.” Similar bills have been introduced in Nebraska and Minnesota.
I’m very skeptical of these bills. It’s not where I’d like to see housing-focused politicians spend their energy. And look; that’s not because I’m on team Hedge-Funds-Owning-Houses. I’m not calling it a pander move because corporate ownership of single-family homes is desirable, or because corporate landlords aren’t particularly problematic in certain ways.
It’s just that these bills attack something that is ultimately a symptom of the housing crisis, not a cause. If written too broadly, these laws could have negative consequences for the availability of badly needed rental homes. And those who think this will “solve” affordability for prospective homeowners in any meaningful way are likely to be disillusioned.

Investors in the Housing Market: Myths Versus Reality

Back in 2015, I lived in a backyard cottage (ADU) behind a small apartment building of eight units in a walkable neighborhood of Sarasota, Florida. The owner of the complex was a middle-aged Canadian who came down a couple times a year. The owner and I liked each other. We’re still Facebook friends, in fact. I was able to call him and plead my case personally when my wife and I wanted to adopt a second cat (not allowed in the lease) and later a dog.
Our rent check was written to “[Street Name] Investments, LLC.” Technically, our landlord was a corporation, even though it was a guy whose personal cell phone I could call. This is a common arrangement for small-time landlords.
The reason I bring this up is not because the proposed laws in California or federally would directly target a mom-and-pop operator like my former landlord; they are written to explicitly focus on larger-scale investment funds. Rather, I bring it up because some very misleading statistics on home purchases have driven the populist narrative about investor owners.
If you’ve read the factoid that “investors” purchase over 1 in 5 American single-family homes sold, this is true. For much of 2023, it was over 1 in 4, according to CoreLogic. The catch is that “investors” is an extremely broad category that includes both my former landlord and his one-off Sarasota apartment building, as well as giant hedge funds and REITs.
In fact, rental properties, from standalone homes to apartment buildings. are almost by definition owned by investors. (The exception would be something like a duplex where the owner lives in one of the units.)
And yet, “investor” gets casually conflated with “institutional investor” or “large-scale investor” in reporting on the subject and in the popular understanding. Even a one-pager on the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act from Senator Merkley’s own website makes the eye-popping claim that “in 2021, large hedge fund investors bought 42.8% of homes for sale in the Atlanta metro area and 38.8% of homes in the Phoenix area.” This stat, from a House Financial Services Committee report, rang immediately false to me: those are simply unbelievable numbers, even for two cities that have high levels of mega-investor activity.
The actual imprint of very large-scale investors on the single-family home market is much more modest, though not insignificant. The Urban Institute released a report in April 2023 called “A Profile of Institutional Investor-Owned Single-Family Rental Properties” and it is very clarifying. As of June 2022, the report estimates that roughly 574,000 single-family homes nationwide were owned by institutional investors, defined as entities that owned at least 100 such homes. This comprises 3.8 percent of the 15.1 million single-unit rental properties in the US. Those single-family rentals, in turn, are about a third of the total rental housing units (46.6 million) in the country; the other two-tSure enough, I was able to find a debunking of the claim in an article by The Atlantic’s Jerusalem Demsas, who found the source material. The figures refer not to “hedge fund investors” but to all investors—that is, to say, anyone at all who is buying a home in order to rent it out rather than live in it.hirds are in multifamily apartment buildings. And single-family rentals are only about 17% of America’s 90 million single-family homes.
Nearly everywhere, the overwhelming majority of what would be classified as investor-owned homes are owned by guys more like my Canadian landlord in Florida and less like a hedge fund or giant REIT.
Giant investment firms are not harmless. They are expanding their small share of the single-family rental market; in many places, they are buying much more than 3.8 percent of the homes currently being bought by investors. And they’re troublesome landlords. A study in Atlanta found that large corporate landlords were 68% more likely to file eviction notices than small landlords, even after controlling for things like tenant and property characteristics. They nickel-and-dime tenants with exploitative fees; the imbalance of power between a giant and anonymous corporation and an often-low-income tenant means recourse for poor conditions is almost impossible.
Investor buyers, including institutional investors, target specific neighborhoods and cities, often places where rent growth is above average. (The aforementioned Urban Institute report says investor purchases “tend to lag, not lead, rent increases.”) These are often places that are relative bastions of smaller, less expensive “starter” homes; this has certainly been the case in Atlanta, where the initial wave of activity from big funds like Invitation Homes also focused on heavily black neighborhoods. Investor buyers are, without a doubt, a source of frustrating competition for would-be homeowners, who often find themselves outbid by all-cash offers.

It’s just that the investors aren’t the root cause of all this, but rather a symptom of a housing market characterized by chronic shortages and mismatches between the homes Americans are looking for and the ones that are available. If you want to understand why it’s profitable to snatch up starter homes by the thousands, do some renovations and jack up the rent, it helps to understand why we have almost entirely stopped building new starter homes. Or why we underbuilt homes by the millions over the course of the 2010s.
Our housing market is built on the expectation that policy makers will not allow housing prices to fall—not significantly or for long, anyway. The financial markets are in fact dependent on that outcome, specifically on the investment performance of mortgage-backed securities. So it’s not wrong to say that Wall Street is deeply implicated in the problem of unaffordable housing. But not in the sense that “Wall Street owning too many homes” directly through real-estate investment funds is a central cause. That’s a misconception.
Big rental home investors are among the ongoing beneficiaries of a broken status quo. The causes of that status quo, though, are deeply complex. We have a housing crisis because we have a wholly broken paradigm—of housing finance, of local zoning and land-use laws, even of cultural norms and assumptions about what we should want out of our neighborhoods. It will not be resolved by one neat solution.
The danger inherent in a good, simple story about who is to blame for intractable, wicked problems is that it can lead to public policies that are an ineffective distraction at best, and that suck attention away from the deeper systemic reforms we need.

We Should Be More Skeptical of Special Consideration for Single-Family Homes
One of the deep-seated causes of the housing crisis is the cultural and legal primacy that the American housing system gives to single-family detached houses. We moralize homeownership like crazy in America, despite not having actually achieved homeownership rates much outside the norm for a wealthy country. We also zone most parts of our cities to prohibit apartments completely, allowing only single-family homes to be built, even in high-demand areas where much more housing is warranted. This trend began with a widespread war on apartments waged by the early proponents of residential zoning in the first decades of the 20th century. It has only very recently begun to be reversed in some cities and states.
In that context, measures that would crack down specifically on a source of single-family rental homes look a lot more problematic. Already, renting a single-family home is the only way to live in many neighborhoods if you cannot afford to buy. Blanket criticisms of “investors” in such a neighborhood are, implicitly, criticisms of renters as well. Keep in mind the observation I made earlier that every privately-owned rental property is an investment property by definition.
The politics of this issue thus creates strange bedfellows. Alex Lee, who authored the California anti-hedge-fund legislation, is a self-described democratic socialist who has been a champion of reviving social housing in California. No one can describe Lee as anti-renter or pro-segregation. Yet many of the prevalent arguments against single-family home investors have this undertone.
I am constantly coming across the claim that investor buyers “take homes off the market.” They do not. Overwhelmingly, what they do is take homes off the owner-occupancy market and put them on the rental market. This, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. Making it harder to offer single-family homes for rent is, in some locations, only likely to deepen the shortage of rental housing that is already responsible for sky-high rent.
Senator Merkley’s fact sheet about the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act proposes that “[h]edge funds and investors must sell at least 10% of the total number of single family homes to families (not companies or any other businesses) per year. And they are banned from selling any single family home to other corporations.” In other words, even my small-time landlord from Florida would not be able to buy a home that a hedge fund or REIT was forced to sell. In some markets, this might produce a meaningful short-term increase in the number of homes available to would-be owner-occupiers. But it would come at the direct cost of a reduction in the rental housing inventory. Rental homes are still homes.
Concerns about the exploitative nature of large corporate landlords are valid, but coming from policy makers, it would ring truer to me if equally applied to the corporate owners of multifamily housing. Large-scale private equity ownership is a newer trend in single-family housing, driven by the wave of foreclosures in the aftermath of 2008. But it’s a much more established trend in apartment buildings. A widely circulated ProPublica exposé of Greystar, the largest apartment landlord in the country, revealed some of the company’s practices geared at maximizing investor returns: skimp on maintenance and services such as trash collection, charge exorbitant and arguably illegal fees, and force out existing households in order to bring in a new tenant at a higher rent.
I would love to see more legislative action to protect tenants from these kinds of abuses, whether they live in a detached home or an apartment building or anything in-between. When the focus is overwhelmingly on the evils of investors in the single-family home market, though, that doesn’t sit right. Nor when the highest policy priority is preventing them from owning homes instead of regulating how they operate them.
It reeks of one of the underlying cultural problems that has driven the housing crisis for decades: in America, we believe single-family homeownership is something that deserves preferential public policy attention, legal protection, and government subsidies. Renters get no comparable consideration for their interests.

What We Can Do Instead
If you want to stick it to large investors and actually promote housing affordability, this zero-sum approach is not the way. Instead, work locally to legalize the next increment of housing in every neighborhood, and support the growth of a community of small developers who will thicken up those places with new units at competitive price points.
Creating a market which more responsively delivers the housing Americans need in the places where there is local demand will undercut the ability of large, distant investors to profit from scarcity. There will still be landlords—”investors” if you will—because there will still be people who need or want to rent their homes. But the corporate REITs and hedge funds, specifically, are a problem we can largely solve or contain if we focus on treating the cause, not the symptom.
Written by:Daniel Herriges
Daniel Herriges has been a regular contributor to Strong Towns since 2015 and is a founding member of the Strong Towns movement. He is the co-author of Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis, with Charles Marohn. Daniel now works as the Policy Director at the Parking Reform Network, an organization which seeks to accelerate the reform of harmful parking policies by educating the public about these policies and serving as a connecting hub for advocates and policy makers. Daniel’s work reflects a lifelong fascination with cities and how they work. When he’s not perusing maps (for work or pleasure), he can be found exploring out-of-the-way neighborhoods on foot or bicycle. Daniel has lived in Northern California and Southwest Florida, and he now resides back in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, along with his wife and two children. Daniel has a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota.

Greenfield Recorder, Thursday morning, Jan. 08, 2026
By JIM GEISMAN

We need more housing, whether it is affordable housing, rental units, ADUs or just plain standalone houses. This national problem is happening here.

We have around 9,000 seniors over 65 and 2,200 who own homes, many of whom have lived in them for 30 years or more. Some seniors are being priced out of their homes as real estate taxes rise every year and take a bigger bite of their fixed incomes.

Every community has people facing financial hardship. Even the wealthiest communities have people who can no longer afford to live there. Every ladder has a bottom rung.

Financial hardship occurs when income barely covers expenses. People sometimes tap into their home equity by borrowing against it. Reverse mortgages are possible but seniors are often victimized instead of helped.

Financial hardships often start a vicious cycle. A senior is just scraping by. They fall further behind in their real estate taxes. Interest charges accumulate. If this cycle continues, foreclosure is the likely end point.

Regardless of foreclosure or a sale, whatever equity someone may have in their home will be reduced by the taxes and fees they owe. Whatever remains may make it hard to find housing they can afford. Finding affordable housing is nearly impossible in Greenfield and many surrounding towns because it doesn’t exist.

However, some relief is available. The Massachusetts Legislature provides exemptions to veterans, seniors, blind, and the disabled. These exemptions can ease the tax burden a little for those who qualify. (Visit the City of Greenfield Assessor website for more information and applications.).

There are qualifications for these exemptions that many people may not meet. For those who do qualify, their real estate taxes may be reduced by anywhere from $400 to $1,000. The City Council has voted to increase these amounts by a cost of living adjustment set by the state.

In addition to exemptions set by law, there is also an Elderly and Disabled Tax Fund (EDTF). Think of it as a mutual aid fund — neighbors helping neighbors.

Recorder columnist Al Norman referenced the fund in his Dec. 17 Pushback column. Although the fund won’t start until January 2027, the EDTF is accepting donations now. Checks should be made out to “Elderly and Disabled Tax Fund” and mailed to the Treasurer at City Hall.

The EDTF Committee reviews and approves applications. People who are approved will get an award. The amount will depend on how much money is raised and the number of qualified applicants but is capped at $2,000.

The greatest tax relief comes from tax deferrals based on financial hardship. Seniors are eligible under Clause 41A. Clause 18A is available to anyone else facing financial hardship. In both cases, the Board of Assessors determines the deferral amount.

Deferring taxes means putting a lien on the property. The lien is released when taxes, interest and fees are paid. This usually happens when the property is sold.

Seniors under Clause 41A can defer real estate taxes up to 50% of the value of the property. There are no asset restrictions but income is restricted to $20,000.

Clause 18A is a temporary deferral which can only be used for three years. Repayment must be made within five years after the most recent deferral.

The Assessors Office is urging people to apply for the statutory or hardship exemptions for which they qualify. Tax deferrals may help only a few who may qualify for them. Exemptions and small grants can help people facing temporary financial hardships. Overall, the financial help is limited but sometimes a band-aid is better than nothing.

Jim Geisman is chairperson of the Greenfield Board of Assessors and a member of the Elderly & Disabled Tax Fund.

Present: Susan Worgaftik, Peg Hall, Wisty Rorabacher, Nancy Hazard, Carol Letson, Dorothy McIver,  Amy Cahillane, Edie Heinemann, Brace Rennels,  Louise Amyot,  Judy Draper, Mary McClintock, Nikki Garrett, Jessa McCormack, Max Webbe, Monica Pulci, Deb McLaughlin, Michael Penn-Strah, Lexi Turner, Garth Shaneyfelt, Gina Govoni, Jen Hale, John Garrett, Mieke Bomann, Jack Redman, Judy Atkins, Pete Brown, Charity Day, Kementari Witcher, Mike Lentz, Sara Brown

Gear and Goods Drive—Deb McLaughlin
     This is the 4th year that this drive to provide equipment for people who are unhoused has been done. There are a wide variety of things needed to assist folks in weathering the winter. You can find out more at https://www.canva.com/design/DAG4UB42-f4/Ro-odxGwz5-9g1XrLDoA6g/view?utm_content=DAG4UB42 f4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h0659745f34

Also, the Interfaith Council is collecting funds to buy tents and other things and also provide motel rooms for very cold nights, especially for families. Checks can be sent to the Interfaith Council of Franklin County, PO Box 1171, Greenfield, MA.  01302, with “Housing” in the memo line.

Greenfield Housing Associates, Inc.—Jack Redman

GHAI requested a letter of support for their Community Preservation Committee application to construct 2 studio apartments in an apartment building that GHAI owns on Deerfield Street. The apartments will be rented at 100% Area Median Income; while not subsidized, they would be affordable.  The group voted to support this project. Susan will write a letter of support on behalf of Housing Greenfield to the Greenfield Community Preservation Committee. (The vote was positive with CPC members, Garth Shaneyfelt, Wisty Rorabacher, Jack Redman and Susan Worgaftik abstaining.)

Also, the GHA is waiting for the geotechnical study on the Conway Street property where they are proposing 5 apartments be built. The study should be available soon.

170-188 Main Street—Gina Govoni and Jen Hale
Rural Development Inc. was not awarded funding for this project by the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities in the first round this year. But they have resubmitted the proposal for the mini-round and are waiting to hear about that. 188 Main Street, which is presently a boarded-up space will be part of the project and will provide a pollinator friendly garden as part of the total project. There will be 10 unit at ground level and no commercial space in this project.

Rental Housing Inspection Ordinance—John Garrett
John and Susan Worgaftik have been working on the development of a rental housing ordinance that will include three major components:

• A rental registry—where all rental apartments in the city will register with the city
• Regular, coordinated housing inspections for housing on a rotating 5 year basis—among the exemptions are owner-occupied houses with 4 or fewer apartments, including the owner’s apartment. –This takes the onus of inspections away from tenants calling in a complaint and makes it a regular part of doing business
• Anti-tenant harassment protections—to ensure that tenants who are concerned about the health and safety of the apartment are not evicted or otherwise harassed for voicing their concerns to the city

Susan and John have met with Greenfield Health Director, Michael Theroux, to review these policies. The present version meets the Health Department’s needs and concerns.

It is John’s intention to submit this draft to the City Council and start the process of moving it through the ordinance process. The ordinance will be self-funded by fees required for registration and for inspections.

It was suggested that we might want to discuss this with some landlords who would be allies. This is a great idea and we will follow-up on it.

Susan will put together a brief description of the ordinance for the December 8th Housing Greenfield meeting.

Rent Control/Rent Stabilization Petitions—Max Webbe
The petitions for this referendum have been collected and are being verified by the municipal clerks throughout the state. More than 100,000 signatures were collected statewide, with about 20,000 in the Connecticut River Valley.

The people working on this campaign are now strategizing messaging for the 2026 ballot. If you would like to get involved, check out https://shelterforce.org/2018/03/28/rent-control-works/ or Homes for All Mass at https://www.homesforallmass.org

It is also possible that the referendum could be avoided if the legislature votes to support https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/S1447.

Federal Supportive Housing Situation—Susan Worgaftik
The Continuum of Care organizations throughout the country have received notice from HUD on reapplication. Information on our Three County CoC can be found at https://www.communityaction.us/threecountycoc. The CoC’s in Massachusetts have been key funders of rent and other services for supportive housing in the state. The new plans from HUD move away from a housing first model (services for folks once they are housed) to a treatment first model (mental health and substance abuse treatment first, then housing). We know that the housing first model works so this is a setback. There are a large number of detrimental aspects to these changes. The changes can be found at https://simpler.grants.gov/opportunity/8d49559a-360a-42cc-a954-a58de07cbf85 and here is an analysis of what it means for Massachusetts https://simpler.grants.gov/opportunity/8d49559a-360a-42cc-a954-a58de07cbf85.

Overall, the federal approach is more restrictive, more punitive, and will likely mean more single adults without homes.

Susan checked with Keleigh BenEzra from CSO about the Wells Street supportive housing project. Luckily, this project does not have any CoC funding, but there are Section 8 vouchers involved in it and we do not yet know what HUD restrictions are going to be coming around Section 8.

Hope Street—Amy Cahillane
By the end of the year, a complete plan for public engagement for the Hope Street lot will be available. It will involve both a community-wide meeting and a neighborhood meeting to discuss options for the site. Residents will also have the opportunity to make their thoughts known digitally and Amy will have some “office hours” for discussion as well.

The community engagement process will start in January with the development of the Request For Proposals in February or March; a public review of the draft RFP and the issuance of the RFP to potential builders in March. All these dates are subject to change. But the overall approach is to issue the RFP in the spring.

Winter Warming Center—Amy Cahillane
The Warming Center will once again be at the Salvation Army. It will be open from 7pm to 7 am as last year on very cold nights that will be designated by the city. It will be staffed by one public safety officer and one community member. Sarah Ahern will be coordinating the warming center. Deb McLaughlin said that there is also a list being created for daytime warming centers and it will be made available to folks using the center at the Salvation Army. More information will be forthcoming.

Stone Farm Lane—Sara Brown
The Stone Farm Condominiums application was withdrawn without prejudice. This means that there will be a new version of the project introduced at a later date. There were several technical issues around frontage and the title of the land that have to be clarified. The neighbors have also hired a lawyer. The development design may be described as a subdivision in the future and will likely include both the cooperative housing and the condominiums using Open Space Cluster Zoning as the basis for the project. Once the new design is developed, it is likely that they will have to go through the entire city review process once again, but that is not clear.

City Council Unhoused Task Force—Sara Brown
The Task Force is working on several areas:

1. Improving access to resources through infrastructures, downtown and campsites such as sustained trash pickup, year-round port-a potty and water access, 24/7 access fridge and drinking water as well as other basic needs and providing a map or other visual directions those resources.
2. Location of sites for safe and accessible camping or a village model with small permanent and transitional structures and to amend zoning ordinance to allow such areas to be established.
3.  Change curfew and trespassing restrictions to allow individuals who reside in their vehicles or camp to stay overnight, if possible.
4. Amend zoning ordinance to strike the ban on mobile homes (now known as manufactured homes) and mounted tiny houses.
5. Other issues such as an affordable housing trust, rental registry, short term rental ordinance and rent control.

More information to come.

Next meeting: December 8th, 6:30 pm on zoom

Here is the link to the Attorney General’s guide regarding rental housing designed for both tenants and landlords.

Sara Brown also asked that everyone know about these events:

• Human Rights Award ceremony honoring Larry Thomas Monday December 8th at the Greenfield Public Library community room 5:30-7pm. Food will be served (not a full dinner). Larry is a Wildflower Alliance Outreach Advocate and member of the Greenfield Unhoused Community Committee.
• This Wednesday November 19th 11am-5pm is the hearing for the Joint Committee on Housing: Landlord, Tenant & Home Rule Petitions, and you can support rent control, Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), and other exciting bills. To give written testimony, write a brief letter to the Joint Committee on Housing, address it to Senate Chair Julian Cyr and House Chair Richard Haggerty, and email it to Chairs’ staff at meg.ribera@masenate.gov and luke.oroark@mahouse.gov. Sign up to testify during the hearing has ended but additional comments may be allowed depending on time.