Voters on both sides of the aisle want Congress to act on housing now. A nationally representative survey conducted April 28-30 finds that 89 percent of voters say the U.S. House and Senate need to work together and pass legislation to make housing more affordable. The survey was prepared for the Bipartisan Policy Center by Advocus Partners, powered by the bipartisan team at The Tarrance Group and Avenue Solutions.
This signal from the public comes at a critical moment: after both chambers passed their own housing packages, they must now reach an agreement on a final bill.
Key takeaways from this new survey include:
- The cost of housing is important to voters across party lines: 79 percent identify the cost of housing as an extremely or very important issue.
- Strong bipartisan majorities of voters back the core goals shared by the House and Senate housing packages: Solid majorities support each of the primary goals the House and Senate have sought to advance, ranging from 65 percent support for incentivizing state and local zoning changes to 84 percent support for expanding access to affordable home financing.
- The stakes are electoral: Sixty-three percent of voters say they would be more likely to vote for their representative or senator if they helped pass legislation to help build more affordable homes and lower housing costs.
- Support for restricting institutional investors is real but complicated: Seventy percent support a federal ban on large corporations and investors who own 350 or more single-family homes from buying more. Among those supporters, nearly a third (31 percent) say they would be less supportive if the prohibition were to reduce the supply of homes available for rent, but over a third (37 percent) would be more supportive.
This poll was conducted online between April 28-30 among a sample of 1,000 registered voters. The data were weighted to approximate a demographically representative sample.
For more stories on housing affordability, visit our Housing Inventory & Attainability Watch library.