President Joe Biden is signaling he will focus on concerns that apartment rents are too high and that affordable housing is in short supply in his re-election campaign this year.

The administration, in addition to proposals aimed at calming the mortgage market and reducing the cost of homeownership, is looking to increase the housing supply with measures aimed at lowering multifamily rents. It’s also targeting what it calls unfair fees that further burden apartment tenants.

“I know the cost of housing is important to you,” Biden said in his annual State of the Union address Thursday night to a joint session of Congress. “Now pass my plan to build and renovate 2 million affordable homes and bring those rents down!”

While national rents grew just 1% in 2023, the latest price hike follows yearly increases that reached double digits across several quarters in 2021 and 2022, according to CoStar data. The bump in yearly prices drove up rents by nearly 16% over those two years, adding an average of $228 to monthly bills.

“More housing units are under construction right now than at any time in the last 50 years, rents have fallen over the last year in many places,” the administration said in a summary of the proposals. “But rent is still too high and Americans who want to buy a home still have difficulty finding one they can afford.”

According to the White House, Biden has a plan to build more than 2 million houses, a move expected to in turn lower rents and make housing more affordable across the United States. Many of the measures are included in the proposed federal budget that requires congressional approval to take effect.

There are challenges in taking on those issues. Biden will have to balance addressing affordability with concerns of the construction industry and multifamily landlords that have had to deal with relatively high interest rates and inflation in recent years.

Included in Biden’s plan is an expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit that provides close to $9 billion in federal funds to state and local agencies for issuing tax credits to purchase, renovate, or build rental housing for low-income households that meet certain income restrictions.

The administration said the tax credit expansion would build or preserve 1.2 million additional affordable rental units, helping renters save hundreds of dollars each month compared to those with comparable incomes leasing apartments at market rates.

In addition, the administration has called for $20 billion in competitive grants to establish the Innovation Fund for Housing Expansion.

The money would support building affordable multifamily rental units, create incentives for local authorities to remove barriers to housing development and pilot new models for increasing the production of affordable and workforce rental housing.

The president likewise called on Federal Home Loan Banks, 11 entities that provide financing for a variety of affordable housing projects, to double their yearly contribution to the Affordable Housing Program from 10% of prior-year net income to 20%.

The administration estimates the increase will raise $3.79 billion for affordable housing over the next 10 years, affecting nearly 380,000 households.

Separately, as part of the newly formed Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing, the administration plans “to root out and stop illegal corporate behavior that hikes prices on American families through anti-competitive, unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent business practices,” according to a proposal summary, including illegal information sharing, price fixing and inflating rents.

The White House has also reiterated its dissatisfaction with “convenience fees” to pay rent, and charges for mail sorting and trash collection. It's calling for more transparency from rental housing companies in providing charges to tenants upfront.

The administration has previously targeted bulk billing that applies to services such as internet and cable TV subscriptions. Some landlords charge all tenants within a building for these services regardless of whether the tenant wants the service.

On the demand side, the president is asking Congress to expand access to housing choice vouchers with the goal of delivering rental assistance to more than a half-million households, including by providing a voucher guarantee to low-income veterans and youth aging out of foster care.

While the administration and industry groups agree the path to more affordable housing should be supply-driven, they differ on some methods to get there and took issue with the proposals’ added regulations, limits on fees, and accusations of price gouging.

While industry groups welcomed the efforts to help build more housing, they also said they wanted some aspects of the proposals to be tempered.

In response to the president’s speech, the National Multifamily Housing Council said it applauds the administration’s efforts to increase supply, including the expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax credit and other supply-side investments. But the industry trade group complained about the White House’s focus on proposals to limit fees “a heightened regulatory regime that will reduce consumer choice by limiting fee service arrangements.”

“The election year rhetoric in the president’s speech implying that the nation’s housing providers are at fault for our housing affordability crisis is unfounded,” the NMHC said in a statement.

It added that “our current situation has been years in the making and the result of decades of failed government policy,” citing its own research concluding all levels of government account for more than 40% of multifamily development costs on average.

Likewise, the National Association of Home Builders and a coalition of nine other real estate associations called the White House’s housing plan “a series of counterproductive regulations that would hurt consumers and ultimately exacerbate the shortage of affordable housing.”

The group said in a letter to the president that “housing providers, developers, and lenders share the administration’s goals of providing more affordable housing and transparency to all Americans. However, we are concerned that some of the proposals outlined in these fact sheets create barriers to our shared goals of increasing housing supply, lowering the cost of housing, and ensuring household stability.”

Further complicating regulations affecting housing providers will cause them to leave the market and create disincentives for investors, the coalition said.

Countering the administration’s plans, the group also defended rental housing fees, portraying the one-size-fits-all approach advocated by the White House as overly broad and claimed additional charges provide utility within the industry to renters and landlords.

The group called limits on bulk fees "misguided," as bundled services are often cheaper and faster than what tenants could get on the open market.

“The sufficient supply of quality housing is necessary in ensuring the continued economic prosperity and household stability for Americans nationwide,” the group said. "Inherent in ensuring stability for our nation’s renters, is maintaining the viability of the rental housing industry.”