Two indicators for lowering the rent

Summary

Planet Money – "Two Indicators for Lowering the Rent"

Date: June 10, 2026
Hosts: Darian Woods, Waylon Wong
Main Guests: Stephen Billings (University of Colorado Boulder), Lori Goodman (Urban Institute), Adrienne Todman (National Rental Home Council), Rebecca Baird-Remba (Housing Reporter), Paul Freitag (Westside Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing), Vera Hill (SRO Resident)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores why rent is so high in America, challenging common answers such as blaming corporate landlords. Using two central "indicators," the episode investigates the impact of institutional investors on housing affordability and revisits the concept of single room occupancy (SRO) buildings—an ultra-affordable housing option that has nearly disappeared. Along the way, the show weaves together personal stories, data, economic analysis, and history to show what does (and doesn't) lower the rent.

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1. Are Corporate Landlords the Villains of the Housing Market?

(03:57 – 09:59)

The Search for Housing and Initial Concerns

• Amanda Cantrell, a renter in Murfreesboro, TN, shares her experience of searching for a rental and noticing large corporations own most homes in her area.

  "It seems that those companies own all of those houses in that suburb. But I didn't see one private landlord when I was looking." — Amanda Cantrell (00:43)

• She worries about the effect on future homebuyers like herself.

  "The fact that corporate investors can take all of them, it feels unfair." — Amanda Cantrell (00:54)

The Political Response

• Bipartisan efforts have produced new legislation—The 21st Century Road to Housing Act—aiming to limit institutional investor ownership of single-family homes.

  "It's a bill aimed at improving housing affordability...restricts large institutional investors from owning too many single family houses." — Waylon Wong (01:01)

Unpacking the Data and Effects

• Institutional investors own less than 1% of single-family homes nationwide (01:18), much less influential than believed.
• Stephen Billings, real estate professor, says these investors do slightly raise home prices but are not major drivers (05:06):

  "The large presence of institutional investors will drive up housing prices a little bit, but just a grain of truth because these companies make up such a small share..." — Stephen Billings (05:06)

• Key factors behind high prices: low new construction and low interest rates (05:11).

Corporate Landlords and Affordability

• Stephen Billings and Lori Goodman (Urban Institute) explain that big investors often buy run-down homes, renovate them in bulk (economies of scale), and add rental stock (05:51-06:18).

  "They can buy the paint, they can buy the air conditioning systems...in bulk." — Lori Goodman (06:04)

• These companies are more able to finance renovations than individual homeowners, who face high denial rates for improvement loans (06:10-06:18).

Unintended Consequences of New Legislation

• Laws targeting institutional ownership risk curbing the "build-to-rent" sector, which adds new rental housing (06:41–07:20).
• Adrienne Todman (National Rental Home Council) warns these laws could "have a chilling effect" on building new rental units (07:29).

  "It has a real unintended consequence of really chilling, have a chilling effect to build these units from the get go." — Adrienne Todman (07:29)

Complex Effects in the Community

• Benefits: Allowing families to rent in better neighborhoods, offering access to better schools and opportunity (07:59–08:31).
• Downsides: Billings finds a link between more corporate landlords and slight increases in neighborhood crime rates (2% property, 4% violent, 7% drug) (08:12–08:31).
• Net result: Most data suggest cracking down on institutional landlords won't lower rent—could even make affordable housing scarcer.

Notable Tenant Perspective

• Amanda Cantrell has renewed with her corporate landlord for four years and her rent has even gone down (09:38).

  "It's a solid four out of five. We renewed for three years and then actually we just renewed for the fourth year and our rent went down slightly." — Amanda Cantrell (09:38)

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2. From Boarding Houses to SROs: The Forgotten Solution to Homelessness

(11:33 – 20:39)

Introduction to SROs

• The hosts visit Euclid Hall, a seven-story SRO in Manhattan, and talk with resident Vera Hill (15 years there) (12:11).
• SROs: Like dorms or boarding houses—private rooms, shared bathrooms (12:56).

SROs’ Place in Urban History

• Rebecca Baird-Remba explains SROs' prominence—over 200,000 units in NYC in the 1950s (over 10% of rental stock) (14:21).

  "In the 1950s, the city had more than 200,000 SRO units, accounting for more than 10% of the city's rental housing stock." — Rebecca Baird-Remba (14:21)

• Cost: As low as $100/month in today’s dollars for the cheapest, but conditions were rough (15:27).

  "At the low end, maybe 100 bucks a month." — Rebecca Baird-Remba (15:27)

The Decline of SROs

• SROs became scapegoats for crime and poor health. Cities pushed landlords to convert or demolish them through regulation, incentives, and urban renewal (16:10).
• Classism, racism, and “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) attitudes played a role (16:10–16:32).
• Large-scale destruction: 1 million SRO rooms lost in the 1970s alone. Example: 1977 International Hotel eviction in San Francisco (16:42–17:05).

Consequences: Rising Homelessness

• Congressional report after the International Hotel eviction linked SRO loss to homelessness (17:05).

  “Policymakers started to think, well, what did we do wrong?... had encouraged the destruction of this extremely cheap form of housing that people had previously been able to live in and live independently and safely..." — Rebecca Baird-Remba (17:56)

• By 1980s, half of men entering NYC homeless shelters formerly lived in SROs.

Attempts to Revive SROs

• Modern efforts to bring back SROs have lagged—only Oregon and Washington have loosened rules significantly (18:19).
• Rebecca Baird-Remba: If SRO numbers had merely grown with other housing, the US would have 2.5 million more super-affordable rooms, dwarfing the current homeless population (18:44).

SROs Today

• Euclid Hall run by a nonprofit, offering support services. Most new SROs are nonprofit-run, focused on seniors or vulnerable groups.
• Paul Freitag (Westside Federation): Supports more SRO construction for young and middle-aged adults—a stepping stone while getting established (19:11).

  "For a lot of them, they would look to live in an SRO for a shorter period of time... as they're getting established." — Paul Freitag (19:11)

• Caveats: Not ideal for aging in place due to medical needs, infection risks, and lack of privacy (19:24).
• Despite shortcomings, SROs provide dignity, independence, and community for many, including Vera Hill (20:02).

  "I'm a helper. I go downstairs sometime and I go to the offices and ask if they need my help. They always tell me, Vera, go sit down." — Vera Hill (20:23)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On misconceptions about corporate landlords:
  "The much bigger drivers of housing prices are low construction and low interest rates." — Waylon Wong (05:11)
• On unintended consequences:
  "You’re actually cutting off the activity that is designed to do exactly that [increase supply], which doesn’t make sense." — Lori Goodman (07:04)
• On SROs’ demise:
  “Policymakers started to think, well, what did we do wrong?...had encouraged the destruction of this extremely cheap form of housing...” — Rebecca Baird-Remba (17:56)
• On SRO residents’ experience:
  "It was amazing because there was a lot of people that was really friendly and the staff here is amazing." — Vera Hill (13:41)
• Euclid Hall as a modern, supportive SRO:
  "Help is always available to Vera, even if she wants to return the favor a lot." — Darian Woods (20:05)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:01 — The 21st Century Road to Housing Act explained
• 05:06 — Economic impact of institutional landlords
• 07:04–07:29 — Build-to-rent explained and policy implications
• 09:38 — Real renter rating for corporate landlord
• 12:11–12:56 — Life inside an SRO / Euclid Hall intro
• 14:21 — History and scale of SRO use in 1950s America
• 16:10–16:32 — Urban renewal and SRO bans
• 17:56 — Policymaker regret over SRO destruction
• 18:44 — Potential if SROs had kept pace
• 19:24 — Modern SROs’ drawbacks for older adults
• 20:02 — Positive impact of supportive SRO living

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Conclusion

The episode dispels myths around institutional landlords as the primary drivers of high rent, elucidates how restricting these players could backfire, and argues that ignoring or banning ultra-affordable housing like SROs has contributed to modern homelessness. By revisiting past solutions and current evidence, Planet Money illustrates the complexity of housing affordability and the need for nuanced, supply-focused policy to truly lower the rent.

Transcript

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[Darian Woods]

This is Planet Money from npr. A few years ago, Amanda Cantrell was looking for a new house to live with her boyfriend and a friend. She wanted to rent a home with a large garage that would pets.

[Amanda Cantrell]

I have a rescue dog. His name is Digby.

[Waylon Wong]

Amanda was searching in one suburb in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and she noticed a lot of the houses were owned or managed by big corporations.

[Amanda Cantrell]

It seems that those companies own all of those houses in that suburb. But I didn't see one private landlord when I was looking.

[Darian Woods]

This made Amanda a little concerned for when she becomes a buyer.

[Amanda Cantrell]

We would like to buy a home in the future. And the fact that corporate investors can take all of them, it feels unfair.

[Waylon Wong]

This feeling of unfairness crosses the political spectrum. The 21st century road to Housing act is a bill aimed at improving housing affordability. It was passed in a bipartisan sweep and this bill restricts large institutional investors from owning too many single family houses.

[Darian Woods]

There are pockets in the country where institutional investors account for a higher share of homeowners, but across the country, it's tiny, less than 1%. So we wanted to know, could banning institutional home investors improve housing affordability? Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods.

[Waylon Wong]

And I'm Waylon Wong.

[Darian Woods]

Today on the show, two indicators about lowering the rent. We take a look at the power players and regulations that help and hurt housing affordability. We look at the absolute cheapest of accommodation and we ask how a particular type of ultra affordable housing went from widespread in American cities to nearly vanished. But first we ask, are corporate landlords really the villains of the housing market?

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[Waylon Wong]

Stephen Billings is a professor of real estate at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Steven starts the story during the 2008 Great Recession, when homes all around the country were going into foreclosure, we saw

[Stephen Billings]

a lot of investors see an opportunity to buy things really cheap.

[Darian Woods]

These investors soon realized that having these regular rent payments coming in was actually more lucrative than selling the homes, flipping them.

[Waylon Wong]

Finance people would take a whole lot of properties with these regular cash flows and sell it as an investment product. Some of these are called real estate investment trusts, or REITs. For investors in REITs, it's a way to get skin in the real estate game without needing to do the messy work of actually being a landlord.

[Stephen Billings]

This became a real boon for this whole industry because it led to tons of money.

[Darian Woods]

It also led to a backlash from people like Amanda Cantrell, the renter in Tennessee. When house prices in general started to a lot in the early 2000 and twenties, politicians from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren to Republican Vice President J.D. vance would blame institutional investors.

[Waylon Wong]

Stevens says there's a grain of truth here.

[Stephen Billings]

In general, the large presence of institutional investors will drive up housing prices a

[Waylon Wong]

little bit, but just a grain of truth because these companies make up such a small share of home purchases nationally, less than 1%. The much bigger drivers of housing prices are low construction and low interest rates.

[Darian Woods]

Also, Stephen says corporate landlords actually tend to reduce rental prices by bringing more rental homes into the market. That matters because about a third of American families rent.

[Waylon Wong]

Lori Goodman runs the Housing Finance Policy center at the Urban Institute, a think tank. She's also involved in the housing industry as a consultant. Lori points out that institutional investors tend to buy houses that are in worse condition than average and then fix them up.

[Lori Goodman]

They know exactly what needs to be repaired. They've got a crew that comes in and takes a look at it. They can buy the paint, they can buy the air conditioning systems, they can buy the heating systems, they can buy the carpeting in bulk.

[Darian Woods]

The large home investors can also finance for renovations in a way that's hard even for homeowners.

[Lori Goodman]

The denial rate on home improvement loans for homeowners is just huge. It's over 40% now.

[Waylon Wong]

Stephen Billings research has painted a more nuanced picture here. He finds that for similar houses, apples to apples, institutional landlords actually apply for fewer renovation permits than other owners. But the point remains that institutional investors do tend to buy up homes in need of a spruce up and they do spend tens of thousands of dollars on quickly tidying them up.

[Darian Woods]

They also build a fair share of new home construction. About 1 in every 12 new houses were built specifically to rent them out in 20 build to rent. So Laurie worries the law restricting corporate ownership could backfire and make housing more costly, especially if large institutional investors would have to sell these newly built homes.

[Lori Goodman]

Build to rent activity would stop. These are homes that probably would not otherwise be built. I mean this is a bill designed to increase supply and you're actually cutting off the activity that is designed to do exactly that which doesn't make sense.

[Waylon Wong]

Adrienne Todman agrees. She's the CEO of the National Rental Home Council. That's an industry body that represents a lot of institutional homeowners.

[Adrienne Todman]

It has a real unintended consequence of really chilling, have a chilling effect to build these units from the get go. I've been doing this business for a long time. That is never anything anyone has said to anyone who builds apartment style units. But unfortunately that's the concept that's being introduced now for build to rent communities.

[Darian Woods]

Adrian says that rental homes may allow families to live in neighborhoods they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford.

[Adrienne Todman]

These are homes that a average first time homeowner would. Perhaps they could afford the mortgage, but might find it difficult to also finance the upfront capital needs that the single family home has.

[Waylon Wong]

Stephen recognizes this advantage, but in his research he has also seen some negative effects when corporate landlords buy more houses in a neighborhood compared to homeowners. He saw a 2% increase in property crime, a 4% increase in violent crime, and a 7% increase in drug crime.

[Darian Woods]

That said, if renting allows low income families who move to neighbourhoods of better schools and more social support, that can pay off hugely for the children. Research from Harvard economist Raj Chetty and others shows enormous benefits for children from low income families who mix of families from different backgrounds, with no detrimental effects for the children from the higher income families. In fact, the CEO of the parent company of a major rental firm, Progress Residential, has a similar story. He grew up renting in a neighborhood his parents otherwise wouldn't be able to afford, allowing him to go to a better school, and he says that's part of what drives him to make more rentals available. Balancing all of this Stephen generally supports build to rent housing.

[Stephen Billings]

I mean, it's shocking. I will say this, I think I agree with some of the conservatives on this view of let's, you know, let's allow more building of housing.

[Darian Woods]

Plus, many tenants have good experiences with big landlords and management companies. Amanda Cantrell ended up going with one. We asked her to rate her experience out of five stars.

[Amanda Cantrell]

It's a solid four out of five. We renewed for three years and then actually we just renewed for the fourth year and our rent went down slightly.

[Waylon Wong]

Overall, the evidence doesn't show that institutional investors are a major driver of housing costs, but cracking down on companies building new homes has a good chance making housing affordability worse.

[Darian Woods]

Another place people are looking for solutions? The past. That's after the break.

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[Darian Woods]

This is Eric Glass on this American Life.

[Stephen Billings]

One that we like is a good

[Darian Woods]

mystery sometimes about really big things. But most times the little mysteries are the best. Our lost and found is currently filled with pants. I don't know what I. I've never seen this happen. This is true. This is true. Mysteries of every size. Each week, this American Life. Wherever you get your podcasts on the Upper west side of Manhattan, there's a big brick building that offers clues about how to bring down homelessness. This building is seven stories tall and really wide. It takes up the whole block length. Hello.

[Vera Hill]

Hi, Kanye.

[Darian Woods]

My name's Darian. On one of the floors lives a resident of 15 years.

[Vera Hill]

My name is Vera Hill.

[Darian Woods]

I'm not going to ask you how old you are.

[Vera Hill]

I don't mind telling how old I am. I'm 77.

[Waylon Wong]

In Vera's room, there's a sofa, a recliner, a widescreen tv and lots of photos on the walls.

[Vera Hill]

My brother, my sisters. That's my mom over the clock.

[Darian Woods]

There's also an artwork that says in all capital letters, fierce.

[Vera Hill]

Oh, that was given to me by one of the kids. I'm fierce.

[Waylon Wong]

Her space doesn't have it all though.

[Vera Hill]

I would love to have an apartment with a kitchen.

[Darian Woods]

You have to share a bathroom.

[Vera Hill]

Yes. Oh, that's yes.

[Darian Woods]

Vera Hill lives in what's called a single room occupancy building or an sro. It's like a dorm or a long term hotel room or a boarding house. And today we're going to use those terms interchangeably.

[Waylon Wong]

These boarding houses used to be really common, but in many places they were effectively banned.

[Darian Woods]

Vera started her career at the Mount Sinai Health System in the admitting office before she was promoted to supervisor and then manager before becoming a nurse aide. But in her 60s, she struggled to pay New York rent.

[Vera Hill]

Things got a little, you know, expensive. So I had to come out and go into the shelter. It was really sad.

[Waylon Wong]

Eventually the shelter found her a room at this building, Euclid Hall.

[Vera Hill]

It was amazing because there was a lot of people that was really friendly and the staff here is amazing.

[Darian Woods]

Euclid hall is run by a non profit called the Westside Federation for Senior and Supportive housing. It operates 22 properties across New York and provides social support. Not all the buildings are dorm style. Most have studios, you know, self contained units of kitchens and bathrooms. But Euclid hall is divided up into single rooms because New York still has these remnants from what used to be a common form of housing.

[Waylon Wong]

Rebecca Baird Remba reported on New York housing for more than a decade and has written about single room occupancy housing, or SROs.

[Rebecca Baird Remba]

In the 1950s, the city had more than 200,000 SRO units, accounting for more than 10% of the city's rental housing stock.

[Darian Woods]

Yeah, one in 10 people were staying in one. And they were common in cities like Chicago and San Francisco too. Rebecca traces their boom to the end of the civil war in the late 19th century. As more rural Americans flocked to cities and immigration rose, landlords started to think,

[Rebecca Baird Remba]

well, why don't I convert my warehouse, my commercial building, even an apartment building with larger apartments, into what were then called boarding houses.

[Waylon Wong]

SROs covered the spectrum from long term stays in high end hotels to basically a bed in a cubicle with chicken wire on top to stop neighbors from stealing your belongings. And these bare bones boarding rooms were incredibly cheap.

[Rebecca Baird Remba]

Everything from 5 to 10 cents a night to, you know, maybe at the high end, $50 a night.

[Darian Woods]

Okay. And obviously we've had inflation since then, so roughly how much? Even once you account for inflation, you know, what are we talking, you know,

[Rebecca Baird Remba]

at the low end, maybe 100 bucks a month.

[Darian Woods]

100 bucks a month? Even accounting for inflation.

[Rebecca Baird Remba]

Yeah.

[Darian Woods]

Now, to be clear, paying $100 a month in today's dollars did not get you a cozy, clean Euclid Hall. This is more a chicken wire cubicle situation.

[Rebecca Baird Remba]

By the 50s, many of these SRO units, SRO buildings were getting pretty run down. They were not well maintained, which was one reason cities really started to think that these were not acceptable forms of housing for people.

[Waylon Wong]

There was a sense among some that the buildings themselves were causing outcomes like disease, theft and violence. And so, under the guise of urban renewal, lawmakers acted.

[Darian Woods]

Cities gave incentives to landlords to convert their buildings. They wrote increasingly stringent housing regulations for sunlight, heating, fire safety and minimum unit sizes. Some of this was motivated by charitable intentions, some was not. In my backyard pressure. Some, as critics of urban renewal have emphasized, was classism and racism.

[Waylon Wong]

Whatever the cause, this contributed to a wave of boarding house destruction. A lot of landlords decided it was more profitable to convert their buildings into something different.

[Rebecca Baird Remba]

San Francisco had one hotel in particular, the International Hotel, where there was a bit of a standoff.

[Waylon Wong]

In 1977, at 3 o' clock in the morning, the sheriff and hundreds of riot Police approached the International Hotel to evict over 100 tenants and supporters. It housed mostly elderly Filipino and Chinese people. More than 2,000 protesters tried to stop the evictions.

[Darian Woods]

This period was the height of boarding house destruction. The 1970s saw a million rooms eliminated or converted to other uses. But the evictions at the International Hotel led to a congressional report released months later. The report talked about how SRO closures had contributed to a rise in homelessness. Still, there were other forces brewing around the same time. You had the deinstitutionalisation of psychiatric facilities, the federal government delegating responsibility for mental health care to state and city level. But Rebecca Baird, rember thinks that the loss of SROs was a big driver of America's growing homelessness.

[Waylon Wong]

About half of men entering homeless shelters in New York city in the 1980s said they had previously lived in Sros. Around that time, there was a rethinking about what urban renewal really meant.

[Rebecca Baird Remba]

Policymakers started to think, well, what did we do wrong? And one thing that was very clear is that they had encouraged the destruction of this extremely cheap form of housing that people had previously been able to live in and live independently and safely in a way that they were not able to do in the shelter system.

[Darian Woods]

Rebecca says that recent efforts by local policymakers to bring back single room occupancy accommodation have been fairly piecemeal and ineffective. She points to zoning changes in Washington State and Oregon that have been among the strongest moves to legalise building new SROs. The mayor of New York, Zoran Mandani, just released a housing plan in May that promised to pass legislation to bring back more shared housing.

[Waylon Wong]

Rebecca's research shows that if SRO construction had grown at the same pace as other housing in the US and those million SROs had not been eliminated, there would be 2.5 million more rooms today, far above the homeless population.

[Darian Woods]

Paul Freitag runs the Westside Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing. That's the organization that operates the building that Vera Hill lives in. Paul is supportive of allowing more boarding houses, especially for middle aged and younger people.

[Paul Freitag]

You know, it can be built inexpensively. I think for a lot of them, they would look to live in an SRO for a shorter period of time. It really would be something where they might live for a few years as they're getting established.

[Waylon Wong]

That said, he doesn't want to gloss over their drawbacks.

[Paul Freitag]

It is a challenging environment in which to age, that as you age, you now need different medical equipment, you might need a special bed, you need walkers, you might have a home health care attendant that comes in and helps you. You might be wrestling with incontinence. These are all things that are challenging to do in a dense environment that you have in an sro. Furthermore, our residents are very prone to communicable diseases and we really saw that in Covid, but we see it every year with the flu, and so it's not really necessarily the best setting in which to age in.

[Darian Woods]

Even so, vera Hill, the 77 year old former health worker, is happy in

[Vera Hill]

his I don't have bad things about

[Waylon Wong]

living here because it's more than a boarding house today. SROs still run the gamut from cubicle beds with negligent landlords to luxury hotels. Vera lives in supported living that happens to have single rooms. Help is always available to Vera, even if she wants to return the favor a lot.

[Vera Hill]

I'm a helper. I go downstairs sometime and I go to the offices and ask if they need my help. They always tell me, vera, go sit down.

[Darian Woods]

Now's your time to be helped.

[Vera Hill]

Yes, I am a helper. I like helping people.

[Darian Woods]

These episodes come from Planet Money's short daily podcast, the Indicator. One facet of the economy explained five days a week, always 10 minutes or less. Check us out and subscribe. Or if you'd like to go even deeper, our book Planet Money, a guide to the economic forces that shape your life, has a really good chapter about how to lower rental and so much more. Find it in bookstores everywhere. The original episodes of the Indicator were produced by Julia Ritchie, Cooper Katz McKim and Corey Bridges with engineering by Travis Hagan and Robert Rodriguez. They were fact checked by Vito Emanuel and Sierra Juarez. Cake and Cannon edits the show. This episode of Planet Money was produced by James Sneed with help from Emma Murphy. Alex Goldmark is our Executive Producer. I'm Darian Woods. This is npr. Thank you for listening.

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