PRIORITIES • Lower Cost of Living • Policy to
Make Rent Tax-Deductible
Why I believe this — and how I’ll fight for it.
I’m fighting to make buying a home cheaper and easier, because owning is still how most families build wealth — and everyone who wants that shot deserves it. But we have to be honest about where things are headed: more and more people rent, and that number is only going to keep rising. A tax code that rewards owning and gives renters nothing is unfair, and badly out of step with how people actually live.
If you own, the government helps you pay for it, deducting your mortgage interest every year. If you rent, you get nothing. Same roof, same monthly check — but the code subsidizes the landlord and leaves the family paying the rent to fend for themselves. I want to change that, and pay for it by ending the tax breaks we hand the Wall Street landlords buying up our neighborhoods. Give the break to the family paying the rent, not the hedge fund collecting it.
Here’s what I’ll do — and why
Make rent tax-deductible — the same break homeowners already get. Rent is the biggest line in most family budgets, and right now not a dollar of it is deductible, while every dollar of a homeowner’s mortgage interest is. I’ll fight to let renters deduct their rent the way owners deduct their mortgage interest. And it’s built so it actually reaches you: a credit you can claim whether or not you itemize, not another break that only works if you have an accountant. For a family paying $2,000 a month, that’s real money back every year — to cover the essentials, build savings, and start working toward a home of their own. And paired with getting the big speculators out and building more homes, that money lands in your pocket — not swallowed up by higher rent.
Cap it, and build it fraud-proof from day one. A renter’s deduction exists to help working families, not to subsidize a luxury high-rise — so I’d write it with a firm limit on the size of the deduction, aimed squarely at the people who need it and phased out at the top. And it has to be tight from the start: real anti-fraud provisions, verification against what landlords already report, and serious penalties for anyone caught gaming it. Every dollar belongs to the family actually paying the rent. I would rather build those guardrails in on day one than watch a good policy get discredited by the handful of people who’d try to abuse it.
Get Wall Street and foreign money out of our neighborhoods — and make the tax cheats pay for it. Part of why homes and rents keep climbing is that private equity firms and foreign investment funds have been buying up American houses by the thousands — turning homes families should own into rentals they’ll pay on forever, and outbidding your kids with all-cash offers. Get those big investors out of the bidding, and more homes go to families instead of funds.
Congress acted on this in July, and Wall Street helped write it. The limit only kicks in at 350 houses, firms keep every home they already own, and new construction is left wide open. The establishment called it a win. The buying goes on.
I’ll fight for the real one — and I’ll pay for the renter’s deduction by making the real-estate tax cheats finally pay what they owe. These are massive, deliberate loopholes the industry bought from our own politicians: the “like-kind exchange” that lets big investors swap properties again and again and never pay the capital-gains tax you would, and the paper “depreciation” losses that erase their tax bills while their buildings only climb in value. Close those, put a hard cap on private-equity and large-scale foreign ownership with no easy outs, and we do two things at once — raise real money to fund the renter’s deduction, and take the biggest speculators out of the market so more homes go to the families who live here.
What this means for Our District
More than 4 in 10 families in our district rent — young people, working families, seniors on fixed incomes — and they’ve been paying into a system that gives them nothing back while it rewards everyone above them. A renter’s deduction reaches them directly. And we won’t win it from representatives funded by the corporate real-estate and investor interests profiting from the squeeze. I take none of their money — no corporate PAC money, no special interest money, and no foreign money — so I can say it plainly: the family paying the rent deserves the break, not the Wall Street firm cashing it.
The bottom line
Owning a home shouldn’t be the only way the tax code treats you like you matter. Renters work just as hard, and in this market they’re stretched even thinner. They deserve the same fair shot. Let’s make rent deductible, get the speculators out of our neighborhoods, and put that money back where it belongs. We can build a district where working hard and paying your rent is enough to get ahead.
SOURCES
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (H.R. 6644, 119th Congress) became law July 11, 2026 — its institutional-investor restrictions apply only at the 350-home threshold, grandfather existing holdings, and reach existing homes only: Congress.gov — H.R. 6644, 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act
The “like-kind exchange” rules (IRC §1031) that let real-estate investors defer capital-gains tax when they swap one property for another: IRS — Like-Kind Exchanges Under IRC Section 1031, Fact Sheet FS-2008-18