Housing Policy Is the 2026 Election Issue Nobody Can Avoid || Leigh Brown

Is housing policy going to be the top campaign issue in 2026? I have to ask because when I'm hearing about candidates filing, whether they're Republican or Democrat or in the middle on any level, local, state, national, they're all talking about housing. Housing is a hot button topic and frankly, it's just never been that sexy. But now it's affecting everybody. The two angles that are usually addressed when it comes to housing are affordability and availability. Affordability. Well, we hear about that from every talking head ever that says young people can't afford to buy, it's a generation of renters, the American dream is dead, the average age of a first-time home buyer is now 40, there's no hope, it's terrible. Okay, well, to understand affordability, we first have to understand that inflation is a huge factor in this, and I mean huge. As long as the Fed continues to do QE, which is quantitative easing, AKA printing money, AKA causing inflation. As long as they keep pouring more money into the economy, prices are going to go up. Y'all know that, right? That's got to be addressed. So audit the Fed. But in addition to the affordability situation, we talk about availability, and realtors have been talking about this for years now. There's been a shortage of housing. You can trace it back to the Great Recession when so many builders went out of business, they went bankrupt. The Funding dried up. There was no lending capital. There were foreclosures. It was a mess. And we are playing catch-up nonstop. But if you're going to talk about availability, you've also got to address the fact that the supply and demand equation is off right now because we have let somewhere around 20 to 22 million illegals into the country. And no matter where you are on that stance of immigration, you have to be honest about the fact that when you bring that many humans into a space, it changes the supply and demand equation. And that's without factoring in the, the births that are happening in our illegal community. So you have numbers that continue to increase while building is down. So there's just not enough housing. Well, I'm considering these issues and noticing that very few of the conversations are honest when it comes to candidates and politics. And I know that shouldn't surprise me at all, but I look at things in North Carolina quite often through the lens of Western North Carolina and what happened after Hurricane Helene. Now, Hurricane Helene, if y'all were paying attention to the news, devastated Western North Carolina in September of 2024. We are still trying to figure out how to help the people who were impacted by that storm. The media moved on about 2 days after the storm. They didn't care because a lot of the folks that were impacted were not super wealthy. They might live in a trailer house and it might be owned. They could have inherited it from a grandparent or paid for it themselves, or they could be tenants. And it got me to thinking about this because I just cut another podcast episode with my friend Rob Hahn, and we were talking about landlord issues and tenant issues. And I got to thinking about Western North Carolina, and I want y'all to understand something. The failures after a natural disaster do not lie exclusively with one party or the other. They don't lie exclusively with locals or the state or with the feds. The blame can be shared amongst all of them. And when you start realizing who gets impacted, think about this for just a minute. Western North Carolina lost thousands of homes, whether it was washed away, landslide-affected, or just so damaged they couldn't be rehabbed. Mold sets in, trees through roofs, all manner of things. When we had the help finally come in, really late, but the help finally came in, homeowners could apply for help for repair or replacement. Homeowners. So a single-family homeowner can apply for help. Now, The money's been very slow getting distributed. They haven't said yes very evenly, and it's a long, slow process. But there is a long, slow process. There is some money for that. There's not, to my knowledge, been an answer for the tenants. And tenants are a part of the housing ecosystem because no matter what a socialist will tell you who says housing is for all and housing is a human right, it's not. Housing is a privilege. And in that privilege, you have to realize some people like being tenants. That's their happy place. They may not be financially disciplined or equipped to be an owner, so they're going to be tenants. That doesn't make them any less deserving of answers and opportunity so that they can let their life look like what they're willing to work for. Usually, though, we just talk about ownership. And I'm a capitalist, I'm a conservative, and I'm a realtor. I do believe in property ownership, but I'm also a realist, and I understand that that's not for everybody. Well, just because it's not for everybody doesn't make the other person less than. So when I look at Western North Carolina, when we had all these houses get damaged, now that you are thinking about the fact that owners have a long, slow process and can get help, You realize there's nothing for tenants. They didn't have a program to apply to beyond the emergency assistance available at the beginning. And for some of them, they don't have anywhere to rent now because there's also no help for landlords. The programs that have come out have been exclusively for property owners, and that's for owner occupants. You got to pay really close attention to the language, but I'm concerned about landlords, and here's why. I met with a couple and they were renting a single-wide trailer for $300 a month. That was an older trailer. It was providing very affordable housing. Next to them was another single-wide where their son lived, also renting for $300 a month. So in addition to having affordable housing, they were able to be in proximity to each other. Now, these properties were washed away by Hurricane Helene. And when my executive director for Patriot Relief and I met with this couple, They were grateful that there had been no loss of life. We are always grateful when life is preserved. But for them, the question is, where can they go? They can't find anything for $300 a month now because there's now increased demand for rental housing. And you have a landlord who's not replacing those single wives. First of all, he's been told he can't by all the different agencies. And second of all, the cost of replacement is so high that the rent would no longer be $300 a month. So even if the landlord replaced them, he's going to have to jack the rents up to match the cost of the property, which means a whole layer of affordable housing is gone. And we don't have an answer for that. In fact, one of the questions I've asked over and over in working with the FEMA agencies and with the HUD agencies and with the state and with the feds is, When are we going to have a program for investors? Because the public has made the word investor into a dirty word. But y'all, not everybody is BlackRock. Some of your investors are Mamaw, who lives in Salisbury, and she's got this trailer in the mountains that she used to go visit to go see the leaves. And now she can't travel anymore, but she kept it and she rented it out to a single lady. And that was something that she could provide to a person in the community, she could have a revenue stream and everybody won. But when that house got hit by a tree and the mold came in, well, she can't afford to fix it and there's no help for her. That tenant is now living in an RV because that's the only affordable option she could find. So what I would suggest is that when we have housing support programs after a natural disaster, that it be available to the ones who provide the housing, whether they're owner occupants or investors. Now, you could totally make a rule that hedge funds aren't qualified and big operations aren't qualified. I'm cool with that because it's the mom-and-pop investors who are the ones who traditionally provide the inexpensive housing anyway. We have to figure this out because without affordable rentals, you don't have a place for somebody to spend less so they can save up if they're chasing that American dream of property ownership. And if they're not chasing that dream and maybe they're just a low-income worker and they are satisfied with their lot in life, that they still have somewhere they can live. Think about it. The lessons from Western North Carolina weren't just one day, one storm. It's something we should all be talking about because tomorrow it can be your community.