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Hello, apartment industry advocates!
Congress remains in recess as Senators and Representatives campaign to hold their jobs (or get new ones as the case may be) and the political wheel continues to turn, this time in favor of Republicans.
What was once a Democrat advantage in the summer is turning back to Republicans. According to the Cook Political Report, the predicted majority gains for Republicans is now 12 – 25 seats in the House widened and the race to control the Senate is a true tossup.
Back in August, the price of gas had come down, inflation seemed to have peaked and there was a wave of enthusiasm building amongst pro-choice Americans of both parties to vote in November solely based on the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned federal protection for abortion. Democrats had the momentum and Republicans were on their heels madly trying to recalibrate their messaging on abortion and finding other issues to press with voters. Two things have happened since – the economy reminded voters about the importance of pocketbook issues and Republicans found a new narrative.
Recent polling by CBS and YouGov asked likely voters to rank issues that are “very important” in determining their votes. The top three issues were the economy, inflation and crime. Republicans did not have to do anything on the first two, the economy turned downward on its own and inflation, despite the aggressive moves of the Federal Reserve Bank, persists. On the issue of crime, Republican strategists pressed their clients to hammer on this issue and it has paid dividends (see the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Senate races). Abortion was number 7 in this poll, behind immigration, gun policy and voting/election issues.
Slicing the data from the CBS/YouGov poll by political party is also revealing. The top three issues for Democrats were abortion, gun policy and the events of January 6 and the resulting investigation. For Republicans, the top three issues were the economy, inflation and crime. Finally, for Independents, the economy, inflation and crime were also the top three issues.
We know that there are several big issues motivating voters to turnout and, in fact, experts believe this could one of the highest turnout elections in history. So, which issues are increasing that motivation? Pew Research found that both the issue of crime and the issue of abortion rose in importance from March to August by 4 and 13 points, respectively. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 50% of voters overall and 49% of Independent voters alone are more motivated to vote in the midterms because of the Dobbs decision. Does that motivation extend to the choice of candidate? The CBS/YouGov poll found that for 71% of likely voters, a candidate’s position on the economy had to agree with their own in order to get their vote. For the abortion issue, that number was 64%. The bottom line: one issue may not be the sole determinant of voter choice; single-issue messaging will not be an effective strategy.
Let’s turn back to legislation, especially one of the most important issues facing the industry – the CARES Act 30-day notice-to-vacate requirement. If you have not heard the good news, after months of work in coalition with our partners at the National Association of Residential Property Managers, we now have a bill now to address this issue. Sponsored by Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11), H.R. 9062 eliminates the notice language altogether from federal law which would have the effect of ending the requirement when the bill is signed by the President.
The National Apartment Association (NAA) also joined with a broad coalition of groups this month to express our support and suggest improvements to the Revitalizing Downtowns Act This legislation was introduced by Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) in the Senate (S. 2511) and Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-CA-34) in the House (H.R. 4759). The bill promotes adaptive reuse of existing buildings through a 20 percent tax credit for qualified property conversion expenditures of office buildings into other uses, including affordable housing. This month, a group of 15 associations sent a letter recommending improvements to bill, including an expansion of the types of buildings that can be converted and enabling REITS to participate. These kinds of conversions can be a critical tool in addressing housing affordability challenges in many markets nationwide.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the exciting return of Jodie Applewhite to the NAA Government Affairs team as our third federal legislative director. Jodie left us in 2021 after several years on the public policy team to do some federal advocacy in the sustainability space. She returns to take the helm on a broad portfolio of legislative issues focused on apartment operations.
Thanks for reading. Talk to you next month.
- Greg