Single-Family Rental Restrictions
LIMIT Housing Options Working Americans Depend On.
Learn More Below.
The housing market should work for everyone – both homeowners and renters. Today, renters include first responders, small business owners, active-duty service members, and medical professionals who keep our communities safe, healthy, and thriving. Policies that restrict single-family rental homes don’t help these families–they hurt them. By limiting access to rental options that work for so many, such policies restrict investment into our communities, reduce housing supply, and ultimately make life less affordable.
Perhaps more importantly, these policies could lock these families out of opportunities.
Placing limits on single-family rental homes is anti‑renter and anti‑working‑class. This policy shuts the door on opportunity, locks families out of quality homes in safe neighborhoods, and limits the choices they depend on.
Call your lawmakers using the button below, and tell them:
Restrictions on single-family rentals undermine the path to homeownership. Renting gives families the flexibility to build financial stability, save for the future, and put down roots in safe neighborhoods with strong schools and reasonable commutes. Single‑family rentals allow families to enjoy many of the benefits of homeownership at a more affordable price, so that they can one day buy a home of their own should they choose to.
At a time when affordability is already out of reach for too many Americans, addressing the housing shortage must be a top priority for policymakers. The solution is clear: we should be making it easier to build and provide homes of all kinds, not harder. Policies that restrict rental housing won’t create a single new home – pushing us further in the wrong direction.
Know the Facts:
Single‑family rentals expand opportunity for working Americans: They open the door to neighborhoods that many families otherwise couldn’t afford – close to good schools, safe streets, and more jobs.
More housing supply lowers costs – restrictions do the opposite: Building more homes reduces rents and home prices, while limiting supply only deepens the affordability crisis.
- Renting can cost up to 40% less than owning, according to a Bankrate study, giving families breathing room to save, invest, and plan for the future.
- Research shows that increasing the supply of single‑family rentals helps economically disadvantaged children gain access to – and enroll in – high‑performing schools.
- As the American Enterprise Institute notes, when policymakers punish professional housing providers for building and owning single‑family homes, they force families into smaller apartments, worse neighborhoods, and fewer choices.
- Targeting the less than 1% of homes owned by institutional investors puts at risk the 8% of new homes they deliver through build‑to‑rent alone – with more homes being delivered through the rehabilitation of dilapidated supply.
- In Austin, Texas, rents fell by 22% after the city made it easier to build more housing, while supply increased by 14%.
- Research from the Brookings Institution and the University of California, Berkeley, finds that single-family rental housing helps lower rents and contributes to more diverse neighborhoods.