LISC’s Dr. Ruth Jones Nichols, EVP for National and Local Programs, is quoted in Wall Street Journal about the growth of build-to-rent housing and its implications for renters and the state of the housing market.
A recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted the growing momentum of build-to-rent (B2R) housing developments, an emerging trend reshaping the rental landscape across the United States in which major real estate firms are building single-family developments specifically as rental properties, often with luxury features.
The properties are rarely meant to help bridge affordability gaps for low-to-moderate-income renters, but they do share some of the same risks as traditional multi-family rental housing—where an owner’s objectives can be critical to residents’ quality of life.
“When institutional investors or larger landlords own the rental units, we see an increase in the number of evictions for tenants,” Dr. Ruth Jones Nichols, LISC’s executive vice president for national and local programs, told the Wall Street Journal. “That’s something we really want to keep an eye on."
The point is grounded in research from LISC and its partners, including a study to be published in early 2025 that found larger landlords file evictions at nearly three times the rate of smaller owners and have double the rate of maintenance violations. These findings reflect the challenges faced by tenants in corporate-owned properties—whether B2R, traditional market-rate multi-family properties or affordable housing developments—where profit motives can often overshadow the well-being of residents and communities.
The growth in the B2R market is a result of the increasing barriers to entering the homeownership market, where a limited housing supply coupled with high home development costs and rising interest rates have made homes unaffordable to moderate and middle-income, first-time homebuyers.
In truth, many urban and rural communities have a significant number of vacant single-family homes that could be repaired and brought to market—but the costs to do so are higher than the value of the homes, so they remain unoccupied, often contributing to blight and attracting speculators that can upend the local housing conditions for decades to come.
That is why LISC supports the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, federal legislation that would create a tax credit to spur development of single-family homes for homeownership in struggling communities. This legislation would support the production and rehabilitation of 500,000 homes over the next decade, helping to repopulate and revitalize communities while also creating jobs in the construction industry and providing homeownership opportunities for first-time homebuyers.
Read the full Wall Street Journal article here, and explore how LISC’s research and policy advocacy are shaping a more equitable housing future at lisc.org.
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