President Joe Biden will visit the battleground state of Nevada on Tuesday to take aim at corporate landlords, who the White House claims are keeping rents artificially high even as overall inflation has eased.
Biden's attack on what he calls "rent gouging" is part of his broader election-year effort to shift the blame for stubbornly high costs of living away from the president and his economic policies, and onto corporations with outsize pricing powers.
As public sentiment about the economy turns more upbeat, housing remains a major pain point. The most recent consumer price index, a key measure of inflation, found that energy and shelter costs were the primary drivers of February's 0.4% climb in consumer prices.
The cost of housing was the second-most important economic issue for respondents in a recent Financial Times/Michigan Ross survey of 1,010 registered voters, behind only inflation at large.
As a result, housing is emerging as a primary front in Biden's war against corporate pricing power, one in which he has also gone after high drug and food prices.
Speaking in Nevada, Biden will double down on the housing provisions in his 2025 budget proposal, take aim at "rent gouging by corporate landlords" and call on Congress to pass legislation to lower housing costs, according to a White House fact sheet.
Biden won Nevada in 2020, but recent polls show him trailing presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump in the Silver State.