The United States is short 4 million housing units, with a particular dearth of starter homes, moderately priced apartments in low-rises, and family-friendly dwellings. Interest rates are high, which has stifled construction and pushed up the cost of mortgages. As a result, more Americans are renting, and roughly half of those households are spending more than a third of their income on shelter. This crisis has many causes: restrictive zoning codes, arcane permitting processes, excessive community input, declining construction productivity, expensive labor, and expensive lumber. And, some say, the aggressive entry of private equity into the housing market. Institutional investors have bought up hundreds of thousands of American homes since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, outbidding families and pushing up rents'a trend lamented by everyone from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to J. D. Vance. Casting private equity as a central villain in the country's real-estate tragedy makes...
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