Speaking in Raleigh, Kamala Harris unveils new plans to lower housing, food, and childcare costs

In the vice president’s eighth visit of the year to North Carolina this year, VP Kamala Harris proposed plans to build three million new homes, help first-time homebuyers and renters, stop price gouging, and provide economic support for families.

During a visit to Raleigh on Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris introduced a series of economic plans to provide North Carolina families more economic support and lower the cost of living by tackling the rising prices of housing, food, and childcare. 

Speaking at Wake Tech’s North Raleigh campus, Harris directly addressed the public’s concerns about rising costs.

“Costs are still too high, and on a deeper level, for too many people, no matter how much they work, it feels so hard just to be able to get ahead,” Harris said. 

Harris touched on a number of economic issues concerning voters, including grocery prices, the cost of healthcare and childcare, as well as the increasing feeling for many that homeownership is something that is no longer attainable.

Tackling high grocery prices

In recent years, grocery prices have increased by a wide margin. A grocery list that would have cost $100 in November 2020 set you back $125.80 in May of this year. 

These price increases have coincided with skyrocketing profits of some food companies. Kraft-Heinz, for example, raised prices by 21% while their gross profit margin simultaneously hit 34%.

“We all know that prices went up during the pandemic when the supply chains shut down or failed. But our supply chains are now improved. And prices are still too high,” Harris said.

In May, some grocery stores, including Wal-Mart and Aldi, announced they would be lowering prices on some items.

“Many of the big food companies are seeing their highest profits in two decades. And while many grocery chains pass along these savings, others still aren’t,” Harris said.

Harris made clear tackling lingering high grocery and food prices would be one of her top  priorities and vowed  to crack down on those companies that are unfairly passing on costs to the consumers.

“As attorney general in California, I went after companies that illegally increased prices…so believe me, as President, I will go after the bad actors,” Harris said. 

Under Harris’ plan, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general would have the ability to investigate and impose penalties on those who unfairly price gouge consumers. Additionally, Harris also plans to direct her administration to “crack down” on “unfair mergers and acquisitions” that give giant food corporations the power to jack up food and grocery prices. Harris further pledged to support smaller grocers and farmers to help ensure competition.

“I believe that competition is the lifeblood of our economy,” she said.

Increasing access to housing and building more homes

Increasing opportunities to buy a home and boosting the housing supply are also key components of Harris’ economic agenda. 

In 2020, homeownership reached its lowest point in 50 years. Harris wants to change that.

“I know what home ownership means. It’s more than a financial transaction. It’s so much more than that,” she explained.

For Harris, the issue of home ownership is personal, as she explained on Friday. Her mother spent years saving money for a down payment so she could buy a home she and her children could call theirs.

“I was a teenager when that day finally came, and I can remember so well how excited she was,” Harris recalled.

Zillow estimated in July that the nation faces a housing shortage of 4.8 million units. Harris is calling for 3 million homes to be built over the next four years to help reduce this deficit, increase the nation’s housing supply, and make rents and mortgages cheaper.

“By the end of my first term, we will end America’s housing shortage by building three million new homes,” she said. 

Harris’ plan also includes expanding an existing tax incentive for businesses that build affordable housing, as well as rolling out new tax credits for contractors who build starter homes that are sold to first-time homebuyers, which would incentivize builders to take on more projects that would “otherwise be too costly or difficult to develop or rehabilitate,” according to a document published Friday by her campaign.

Harris would also call on Congress to provide $40 billion in funding to help local governments fund their own local solutions to build more housing. 

“This fund will support the expansion of innovative local efforts, like those in Wake County, North Carolina where they are using American Rescue Plan funds to build or preserve 2,400 affordable housing units including a 100-unit development coming online at Kings Ridge and a 176-unit affordable housing development at Tyron Station,” her campaign’s plan reads. 

While addressing the housing shortage is crucial to Harris’ plan, she also proposed a way to help first-time homebuyers afford homes. 

“While we work on the housing shortage, my administration will provide first time homebuyers with $25,000,” Harris said.

More than 1 million first-time homeowners would benefit from this plan—with even “more generous” support for first-generation homeowners.

According to the plan, the federal assistance would be available to all first-time home buyers, with caveats—including a requirement that recipients have “paid their rent on time for two years.” It also aims to “expand the reach” of existing down-payment assistance programs, lowering homeownership costs for more than 4 million families over a four-year period. 

Lowering the cost of rent

In addition to supporting home ownership, Harris also wants to provide relief to renters.

Between 2019 and 2024, rent prices in North Carolina increased by 69%, pushing more and more tenants into economically precarious positions.  

Simultaneously, corporate landlords are also becoming a common fixture in the rental market. In Charlotte, corporate landlords own 25% of properties for rent. 

“Some corporate landlords, some of them buy dozens, if not hundreds of houses and apartments. Then they turn them around and rent them at extremely high prices,” Harris said. “It can make it impossible then, for regular people to be able to buy or even rent a home.”

She emphasized that this makes home ownership more difficult to attain, and rent too expensive to afford. Harris’ plan aims to crack down on predatory corporate landlords.

“I will fight for a law that cracks down on these practices,” Harris told the crowd.

Harris supports the passage of the Stop Predatory Investing Act, which will, in part, take away tax incentives from companies that buy up large quantities of single-family homes.

Harris is also calling on Congress to pass the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act, which would penalize companies who facilitate the use of algorithms to set rental prices and increase those costs by double digits. Currently, between 30% to 60% of rental apartments see costs set by RealPage, an AI software used by landlords to set rents.

Economic relief for families

To support working families, Harris is proposing expanding economic relief to millions of families, and parents with new children by expanding the Child Tax Credit.

“Under my plan, more than 100 million Americans will get a tax cut,” she said.

The Child Tax Credit first expanded by the Biden administration on a temporary basis, and expired when Congress didn’t renew it. While the more generous credit was in effect, 

Child poverty declined to a low of 5.2%, before more than doubling to 12.4% the year after it lapsed.

“Millions of Americans with children got to keep their hard earned income,” Harris explained.

Under Harris’ proposal, the renewed tax credit would provide even more relief for families.

“We will provide $6,000 in tax relief to families during the first year of a child’s life,” she said to applause from the crowd.

After the first year of their child’s life, families would get $3,600 annually until their child reaches age 6, at which point they would get $3,000 per year until their child turned 18. 

Lowering prescription drug costs

Under the Biden-Harris administration, the cost of insulin was lowered for seniors on Medicare to $35 per month. 

“We capped the price of insulin at $35 per month, and the total cost of prescription drugs at $2,000 per year for seniors,” Harris said. 

The vice president wants to build on this, and proposed capping the cost of insulin at $35 per month for all Americans, as well as limiting their annual out-of-pocket drug costs to $2,000 per year. 

Harris’ agenda also includes plans to accelerate the speed at which Medicare negotiates with pharmaceutical companies to help lower the cost of prescription drugs—with the aim of cutting the cost of some of the most expensive and common drugs by up to 80% starting in 2026.

Harris’ agenda also includes plans to work with individual states to “cancel medical debt for millions of Americans and to help them avoid accumulating such debt in the future.”