Kamala Harris has supported affordable housing in the past.

As California Attorney General, Harris authored and helped pass the California Homeowners’ Rights Act, a set of laws designed to protect homeowners from unfair practices. The California Homeowners’ Rights Act became law on January 1, 2013.

Harris secured an $18 billion agreement as part of a national multistate settlement to benefit thousands of homeowners who lost their homes to wrongful foreclosures and fraud in 2012.

Senator Harris introduced the Rent Relief Act in 2018, a bill that would provide tax credits to renters who make less than $100,000 a year and spend more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities.

Harris reintroduced a second version of the bill in 2019, which included a mechanism for the Treasury Department to pay tax credits to eligible households monthly. The latter version also capped the credit at 100% of fair market rent in small areas instead of 150%.

Last month, Harris announced the recipients of $85 million in grants under Remove Barriers to Housing (PRO Housing), a first-of-its-kind initiative from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development aimed at increasing homebuilding activity and lowering housing and rental costs for American families.

The news comes on the heels of Governor Harris’ announcement in May that she would provide a $5.5 billion budget through the Department of Housing and Urban Development to increase affordable housing, invest in economic growth, build wealth and address homelessness in communities across the country.

These policies come at a time when the country faces rising rates of homelessness and the growing burden of buying and renting a home: A record 653,100 people will experience homelessness in 2023, up from 256,600 the year before, according to a report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

The Biden administration’s latest housing policies are generally aimed at increasing the supply of affordable housing and lowering costs for buyers and renters.

Harris has been involved in crafting Biden’s housing policy, and experts say a similar housing blueprint is likely to emerge from his campaign.

“Generally speaking, housing affordability and zoning seem to have been her talking points for a while now,” said Jacob Channell, senior economist at LendingTree. “If she stays on course with the Biden administration, I think there’s a lot of good things that could happen.”

As Harris’ candidacy becomes more likely, a policy she originally proposed during the 2020 presidential campaign, the Support the Middle Class Act, has become a hot topic.

The bill would give qualifying middle- and working-class Americans a refundable tax credit of up to $3,000 per person, or $6,000 per married couple filing jointly.

Some experts say the LIFT Act may be better for renters than the 5% rent cap increase that Biden proposed in mid-July.

The proposal calls on Congress to limit rent increases to 5% for landlords with 50 or more existing units or risk losing their federal tax breaks.

“The concern with rent caps is that they change the supply of housing,” said Francesco D’Acunto, an associate professor at Georgetown University.

While rent caps may lead consumers to believe prices won’t rise above a certain amount, they can also have negative effects, such as causing landlords to pull properties off the rental market, said Carl Widerquist, an economist and philosophy professor at Georgetown University.

Channell said landlords who no longer have tax abatements can still raise rents, but the plan does not apply to new builds or buildings undergoing major renovations.

Dacunto said the tax credit would not create the same distortions as rent capping schemes and would also target the adverse effects of rent inflation.

Harris’ “LIFT Middle Class Act” has faced backlash in the past. “The LIFT Act is not a perfect policy, but it is essentially an expansion in the right direction,” Widerquist said.