Polling suggests affordable housing shortage could be potent political issue in NC in 2024

A recent poll suggests the crisis-level shortage of affordable housing could have a major impact on the outcome of fall’s election in swing states like North Carolina.

The Swing State Housing Poll was conducted by HIT Strategies — a company founded by Democratic pollster Terrence Woodberry — and funded by the progressive groups Center for Popular Democracy and Right to the City Action . However, the senior pollster on this project, Joshua Doss , self-identifies as nonpartisan.

The poll focused on younger renters, which HIT Strategies contends is a largely unexamined but powerful, racially diverse, and largely progressive political demographic.

The poll also indicates that they are much less enthusiastic about voting in the upcoming election than homeowners. This ambivalence from renters may have a direct impact on what kind of housing policy elected officials support.

“The result has been that policymakers tend to focus on the needs of homeowners and not renters,” Sara Saadian , senior vice president of Public Policy and Field Organizing at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told Carolina Public Press .

“The way that policymakers pay attention is if you’re a constituent of theirs, and if they need your vote to get elected.”

Out of the list of 12 issues HIT Strategies gave to its subjects across five swing states  — North Carolina, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania — respondents said the issue they heard least about from politicians was the cost of rent and housing.

When provided with the same list, and asked how much it would improve their personal situation if politicians prioritized the issue, respondents ranked that item third, after inflation and health care.

“I think (politicians) understand gas and groceries as ways to get at economic issues, I just don’t think they know how high up rent is in people’s minds,” Doss told CPP.

“When it comes to messaging, (the cost of rent and housing) is a goldmine that is literally there for whichever party wants to take it.”

Gwen Frisbie-Fulton of Down Home North Carolina, a left-leaning nonprofit advocacy organization for poor and working class residents of small towns and rural communities throughout the state, said she noticed an increased concern about housing issues in the past year.

“We ask people what keeps them up at night,” Frisbie-Fulton said. “Public education and health care always topped the list. That went on for five or six years, until last year.”

“In all nine counties where we did deep listening, housing was the No. 1 issue,” Frisbie-Fulton said. “It had never even been on the list before.

“We would like to see candidates be responsive to that and start bringing some real serious policy to address this for folks across North Carolina.”

The HIT Strategies poll registered voters’ interest in candidates on both the presidential and gubernatorial level. Forty-one percent of renters are in favor of Joe Biden , compared to 37% for Donald Trump . For homeowners, the split was reversed: 45% went for Trump and 38% for Biden.

North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson was viewed favorably by 32% of homeowners and 17% of renters, and unfavorably by 36% of homeowners and 29% of renters. Democratic nominee Josh Stein was viewed favorably by 24% of homeowners and 21% of renters, and unfavorably by 26% of homeowners and 17% of renters.

“Our housing costs are just ridiculous, and so it should be a top election issue,” Brooke Medina , vice president of communications at the John Locke Foundation , a North Carolina conservative think tank, told CPP.

But Medina called into question the relevance of the poll results. “The question becomes which politicians are even capable of effecting change in this respect,” Medina said.

“Quite frankly, presidents and governors are not the ones that are going to be able to do anything about this. In North Carolina, the state legislature is the one that is equipped with zoning powers.”

Nonetheless, both gubernatorial candidates have given their opinion on the affordable housing crisis in the state. Robinson says the rising cost of houses is due to overburdensome regulation and the solution is to ease restrictions. Stein says the housing crisis is a supply problem and the government should step in to facilitate more construction.

Though the candidates’ approaches to the issue divide along partisan lines, the poll showed that concerns over housing affordability transcend political affiliation.

Among North Carolina renters, 81% said they would either be much more likely or somewhat more likely to vote for a candidate who supports rent stabilization , a strategy that involves hefty government intervention in the market.

At the same time, 58% of all respondents — i.e. both renters and homeowners — indicated they generally prefer less government intervention in their lives.

This contradiction indicates the power of the housing issue to shake up people’s usual political thinking.

“Even among some of those core tenets of conservative ideology,” Doss said, “housing is having a different effect on people’s perspective of what should be done and who they would support to do that work.”

In the opinion of Frisbie-Fulton, concern around skyrocketing rents and property prices transcends not just political party, but class divisions as well.

“Poor and working class people are definitely feeling it,” Frisbie-Fulton said, “but so is the middle class.”