Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday unveiled a series of latest financing initiatives to support housing, including a $100 million fund specifically for reasonably priced housing.
The Notice takes place just days before the primary face-off between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, during which inflation is more likely to be a central point of contention.
Recent inflation reports have shown that prices are easing barely, but housing costs remain persistently high. The latest consumer price index report showed that headline inflation was unchanged in May, while housing cost inflation rose 0.4%.
As a part of its recent measures, the Treasury Department will provide $100 million over the subsequent three years to finance reasonably priced housing projects and is looking on several housing finance agencies to extend their support for brand new construction projects.
Yellen will deliver a proper speech on the housing initiatives later Monday in Minneapolis. The speech is a component of a tour of Minnesota, where she’s going to have lunch with CEOs and hold roundtables with the state's housing officials.
As the president prepares for Thursday's debate at Camp David, Yellen is one in every of quite a few Cabinet members traveling across the country to advertise the president's economic agenda.
Acting Housing and Urban Development Secretary Adrianne Todman and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for instance, have traveled across the country to advertise Biden's infrastructure investments.
The economy proved to be a significant sticking point for Biden amongst voters.
Due to pandemic-era supply chain bottlenecks and labor shortages, the record inflation that followed persists, and consumers still feel squeezed by higher prices. Polls show that lots of them blame the president, who has been in office the entire time.
In particular, housing costs, one in every of the biggest items of consumer spending, remained stubbornly high at the same time as economic activity in other sectors cooled.
Biden is attempting to shift the blame for prime housing costs onto industrial landlords by accusing them of “rent gouging”: keeping rents artificially high for consumers although their very own costs have fallen.
“People are tired of being thought of as fools,” Biden said in March. “And I'm tired of being thought of as fools.”
The National Housing Associationa significant landlord lobby, issued an announcement in early June rejecting Biden's aggressive campaign rhetoric against landlords.
“Politics has no place in housing and it is high time that politicians took action on housing,” the group wrote within the statement. “In the coming months, the NAA will continue to campaign for housing providers.”
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