Trump-Biden Debate: What the Presidential Candidates Had To Say—and Didn’t Say—on the State of U.S. Housing

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump faced off Thursday night in Atlanta in their first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle.

Millions of people tuned in to watch Trump and Biden’s in-person showdown on live TV, and despite the muted mics to prevent a chaos of crosstalk, both candidates managed to dish out plenty of insults and attacks on each other’s personal lives, golf games, and performance on the job leading the country.

While both candidates devoted time to hot-button topics from immigration to abortion to climate change, the topic of housing came up just two times in the debate. (We were counting.) Trump didn’t address it at all.

The lack of substantial discussion about housing is certainly not a surprise to Realtor.com® economist Ralph McLaughlin.

“Past debates between Biden and Trump showed that housing would not likely be a focal point,” he points out. “In the two 2020 presidential debates, housing discussion was limited to Biden’s plan to green and weatherize the U.S. stock. There was zero discussion of home prices, affordability, or rents in the context of housing in those two debates.”

Although housing wasn’t much of a focal point for this latest debate either, McLaughlin thinks this is a disservice to the country given the state of real estate today.

“There are still far too many households experiencing housing insecurity and distress in this country and far too little national discussion about it,” says McLaughlin, who was hoping for “more discussion about your house, and less about the White House.”

President Biden on housing

While housing did not garner much attention from the presidential candidates, it did seem to be a pressing topic for the moderators.

Right out of the gate, moderator Jake Tapper asked Biden, “Since you took office … typical home prices have jumped more than 30%. What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off under your presidency than they were under President Trump?”

Biden replied: “You’ve got to take a look at what I was left when I became president—what Mr. Trump left me. We had an economy that was in free fall. … The economy collapsed. There were no jobs. The unemployment rate rose to 15%. It was terrible.”

Biden then pointed out that, over the past four years, he has made strides to revive the economy and tamp down inflation, and that this will help curb the price of homes.

“We’re going to make sure we have reduced the price of housing,” Biden said, adding that adding more housing stock is the key. “We’re going to make sure we build 2 million new units. We’re going to make sure we cap rents so corporate greed can’t take over. The combination of what I was left with and corporate greed are the reason why we’re in this problem right now.”

Biden also referred to his past home life as a reason why the cost of living is such a personally important issue for him.

“I come from Scranton, PA,” Biden said. “I come from a household where at a kitchen table if things weren’t able to be met during the month, it was a problem: the price of gas, the price of eggs, the price of housing, the price of a whole range of things, it was a problem. That’s why I’m working so hard to deal with those problems.”

While Trump’s rebuttal did not mention housing specifically, he did say, “Inflation is killing our country, it is actually killing us.”

Biden’s programs for affordable housing

When Biden mentioned building “2 million new units,” he was referring to the Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing program.

Earlier this week, the Biden-Harris administration awarded $85 million in grant funding to the PRO Housing program, which will help build millions of units of affordable housing in communities across the nation—ideally bringing down the cost of housing for renters and helping more Americans buy a home.

And on Monday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced another new program that will provide an additional $100 million over the next three years to support the financing of thousands of additional affordable housing units.

According to McLaughlin, these programs are welcome news to long-term observers of the U.S. housing market.

“With the announcement of these two new housing programs rolled out by the Biden-Harris administration in the past few days, we welcomed discourse in the presidential debate on existing and future policies that could help normalize housing affordability and production across the country,” McLaughlin says. These programs “simultaneously target local barriers to new construction and promote federal funding for it.”

And while this topic didn’t take center stage in the debate, McLaughlin added, “We look forward to observing their efficacy in increasing new housing production in the areas where the country needs it most.”

Biden on housing for Black Americans

Housing was mentioned for the second time in the debate when moderator Dana Bash asked Biden what he says to Black voters who are struggling to buy a home. The gap between Black and white homeowners is worse today than it was in 1968, when the Fair Housing Act was passed.

“I don’t blame them for being disappointed,” Biden responded. “Inflation is still hurting them badly.” But he pointed out he’s made efforts and that the progress is slowly paying off.

“For example, I provided for the idea that any Black family first-time homebuyer should get a $10,000 tax credit to be able to buy their first home, so they can get started,” he said. “We’re trying to provide housing for Black Americans, and dealing with the segregation that exists among these corporate operations that collude to keep people out of their houses.”

Trump’s response, yet again, did not mention housing, but focused solely on inflation, arguing that Biden is to blame for runaway prices.

“He caused the inflation,” Trump said. “And it’s killing Black families and Hispanic families and just about everybody. You look at the cost of food where it’s doubled and tripled and quadrupled. They can’t live. They’re not living anymore.”

Trump also argued, “I gave him a country with no, essentially no inflation. It was perfect. It was so good. All he had to do is leave it alone.”