Billionaire Blowback on Housing breaks down the ways billionaire investors are disrupting U.S. housing markets – and proposes social housing and strong tenant protections as the true solutions to our housing emergency.

A major driver of the U.S. housing crisis are billionaire investors disrupting local housing markets by acquiring huge swaths of housing, expanding short-term rentals, holding properties vacant, driving up the cost of land and housing, and engaging in predatory practices. The focus on expanding housing supply through for-profit development misses this key driver of the affordability crisis: as wealth concentrates in the hands of billionaire investors, their predatory investments and luxury development schemes have dire consequences for housing affordability.

Because the billionaires treat real estate as a commodity and asset, we have an excess of housing that is not actually being used to provide people with homes.

We need to move housing from the control of billionaire investors and corporate landlords, to the people. All levels of government should direct public resources towards social housing: quality public housing and non-profit housing under democratic community control that is permanently and deeply affordable, and that can never be resold for profit.

We need housing for people, not profit.