The bipartisan plan to ease the nation's housing crisis

0:00Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBUR Podcasts. Boston. One example of something they're trying to tweak is streamlining the federal level environmental reviews that certain housing projects have to go through. You might say there's an abundance of policies in Congress right now meant to spur the development of more housing.

0:49It's Thursday, May 28th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

0:59Today on the show, the Department of Justice is investigating the woman who won a sexual assault case against President Trump. Also, the Trump family is making billions off cryptocurrency and prediction markets. The Trump administration is cutting regulations on those industries, and the president has vowed to protect them. The chairman's office intervened to help make sure that the companies got what they wanted. And two senior officials who questioned what was going on were then effectively ousted. More on that in about 10 minutes. But first, you may have noticed housing is expensive and hard to find.

1:43Those two facts are related, of course. And there's a major new bill in Congress that aims to address the problem. It's a bipartisan bill, with policies coming from Republican and Democratic lawmakers. If enacted, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act would be the most sweeping housing legislation in decades. It would prohibit private equity firms from buying up more single-family homes, and reward local governments that streamline the process they use to approve new housing, among other things. Rebecca Picciotto has been digging into the legislation. She covers the residential rental market and housing policy for The Wall Street Journal.

2:26Here's her conversation with Robin Young. We know lawmakers in both the House and Senate have their own versions, and they've agreed to put these restrictions on big investors scooping up large numbers of homes. Now, we understand this started happening in 2008 after there was a housing collapse. Mortgage lenders had given mortgages to people who really couldn't pay them and houses foreclosed. Investors swept in. It was considered a good thing at the time that somebody was at least buying the stock. Why are there concerns now by lawmakers and restrictions being put in by this bill? Yeah, it's a good question.

3:03I mean, it should be said that the investor ban was not in the original conception of this big congressional housing package. This was added earlier this year, basically at the request of President Trump, who issued this executive order demanding that Congress codify his proposal to ban these big Wall Street investors. Today, they really own an estimated like 5 percent of the single family housing stock. That said, when you look at this on a more local level, you know, some cities feel investors presence much more than others. Phoenix, Atlanta, some other Sunbelt markets, for instance, you know, investors might own up to 20 or 30 percent of single family homes.

3:40And that absolutely sort of, you know, feels like an interference with this American dream of home ownership that, you know, Trump has tried to make a plank of his housing agenda. But a lot of these builders rely on investors to offload their excess inventory, you know, in a down home buying market. And right now, a lot of individual buyers are on the sidelines because mortgage rates have been stubbornly high. Also, there's all this economic uncertainty. People are just kind of staying put in their homes right now. So these investors still do play a good role by taking up the stock if people are sitting on the sidelines.

4:16But lawmakers still, the compromise seems to be they're going to cap how many homes they can have. Yes. After a bit of back and forth, they settled on a cap of no institutional owner can own more than 350 homes, which these investors will tell you that they provide rental options for people who can't necessarily afford to live in some of the nicest neighborhoods in the country where maybe there's a nicer school district, but they can't afford to own there. Well, you're right about how house lawmakers, at least, threw a lifeline to the whole building industry by addressing another industry. This is the build to rent.

4:55These are developers who build homes and then rent them to get back their investment money. And there is a new requirement that developers sell these newly constructed rental homes within seven years. Talk a little bit about this part of the bills. Yeah. So the build to rent sector is kind of this newer model of rental housing, which is essentially one developer will build an entire community of rental homes. You can think of it as like a horizontal apartment building. And so it's this new model for rental housing that a lot of developers have found financially makes sense. However, investors don't want to invest in their projects if they can only own them for a couple of years before having to sell them off.

5:44So the house stripped out that piece of it on the idea that you would essentially stifle or eliminate a growing new model for rental housing. But so does that mean that these developers who, again, they build to rent might never have to sell those homes to get people to home ownership? Oftentimes, these developers build these rental communities with the interest of running them long term. We're going to return again and again, actually, to housing because there's so many different elements of it. But for now, what are just some of the tweaks that these bills might do for when it comes to permitting or expanding loans to people?

6:29Yeah. One example of something they're trying to tweak is streamlining the federal level environmental reviews that certain housing projects have to go through. One other big victory is the ability to make it faster to build manufactured housing and factory-built homes. Sounds a little bit small, a little bit like a small tweak, but this proposed elimination of this permanent chassis requirement for factory-built homes. That means they don't have to have wheels on them. Exactly. Getting rid of this chassis would make it much easier, much cheaper to build these manufactured homes. Just real quick, do you think there's a political will and the pressure from voters to pass this?

7:12My expectation is that they will get something done. That said, you never want to make a prediction. Right. Right. Rebecca Pichotto, who covers the residential rental market and housing policy for The Wall Street Journal. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

7:33we're going to do a lot more stories on housing in due time as robin just mentioned so click that follow button in whatever podcast app you're listening to here and now anytime on right now so you don't miss that we promise to get beyond the headlines and give you something you didn't know about housing so follow here and now anytime for all of that coming up next on today's show E. Jean Carroll, who accused President Trump of sexual assault and defamation and won two lawsuits against him, is under a criminal investigation by Trump's Department of Justice, according to multiple news outlets. Indira Lakshmanan has that story in just a minute.

8:29This message comes from Babbel. Babbel's conversation-based language technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash NPR. spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash NPR. Rules and restrictions may apply. This message comes from Prolon. Want to look and feel your best this spring? Prolon's five-day fasting mimicking diet is a clinically developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass.

9:16Developed at USC's Longevity Institute, it aims to assist the body in entering a fasting-like state that helps reset metabolism, target visceral fat, and support healthy metabolic markers. Get 15 % off plus a bonus gift when you subscribe at prolonlife.com slash NPR. The Justice Department is investigating E. Jean Carroll, the magazine columnist who sued President Trump for sexual assault and for defaming her by calling her a liar when she wrote about it in her memoir. In two lawsuits, juries awarded Carroll a total of$88 million in damages in 2023 and 2024. judgments that Trump has refused to pay out as he appeals those decisions.

10:01Now, President Trump's Justice Department has launched a criminal probe into whether Carroll committed perjury in testimony she gave during those lawsuits. For more, we're joined now by Hannah Rabinowitz, one of the reporters who broke this story for CNN. Hannah, welcome. Thank you very much. So E. Jean Carroll was a longtime advice columnist who wrote in her memoir that Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store dressing room in 1990. She became a voice for other women who were angry about misogyny or who alleged that Trump had assaulted them too. So I think the first question is some listeners will wonder, is this retribution against an 82-year-old woman who persuaded two juries that Donald Trump wronged her and was lying in an effort to shield him from paying her$88 million in damages?

10:47Or explain to us the legal argument behind this probe. So prosecutors theory hinges on a statement that Carol made in a 2022 deposition that she had received no outside funding for her lawsuit. Her attorneys, however, revealed on the eve of trial that she had received some assistance with her legal fees and expenses from billionaire Reid Hoffman. So what what prosecutors think they might be able to prove here is that Carol perjured herself in that defamation trial. Trump's attorneys framed it as conspiring to go against the president because Hoffman has donated to some Democratic causes in the past.

11:32And while I was initially surprised that they were investigating a woman in her 80s for perjury, if you look at the case in the larger context of how this Justice Department is operating, it's certainly no surprise. Well, I'm wondering if there is, you know, definitive proof of when Carol became aware that some of her expenses were perhaps being paid by Reid Hoffman. Is there any evidence that we know that yet or is that part of the probe happening now at DOJ? That's what prosecutors will have to determine. What we do know about the timeline is that Carol's attorneys secured funding from Hoffman's nonprofit around September of 2022.

12:12That's from court documents. October 22, October 2022, so about two years later, is when Carol made her statements in that videotaped deposition with Trump's attorneys. And in April 2023, just about two weeks before the trial began, Carol's attorneys told Trump's attorneys that Carol had remembered about the funding from 2020. So that's what we know of the timeline as of right now. OK, well, President Trump has appealed the rulings in the E. Jean Carroll cases that ordered him to pay her five million dollars in a sexual abuse judgment. That one has gone all the way to the Supreme Court. He's also vowing to do the same with the eighty three million dollar defamation case.

12:56Todd Blanche was one of Trump's personal defense attorneys who worked on those appeals. Now he's the acting U.S. attorney general. So what is his role in this case? What our sources tell us is that Blanche is recused from this case because of his representation of Trump in the appeals courts. So Blanche hasn't attended any of the meetings or been involved in discussions about the investigations, and it's being overseen by other officials in the deputy attorney general's office. OK. Have Carol or her lawyers responded yet to this alleged probe or this probe that you've reported on? Her attorneys declined to comment on our reporting for our story.

13:34OK. This is just the latest in a series of DOJ investigations against President Trump's rivals and perceived enemies. Listeners will recall he directed the DOJ to target New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey, his former national security advisor John Bolton. The president has an ax to grind with all of them. So far, the DOJ has not made much headway with these seeming these, you know, cases that seem like retribution. Will this one be different? That remains to be seen, as it does in the cases that you just mentioned. Most of them are the cases that are brought.

14:11They're playing out before judges. Attorneys, including those against James Comey and those representing the Southern Poverty Law Center, who the Justice Department is also indicted, have said in court that they plan to challenge their prosecutions as political. Other cases haven't reached that point yet, either because the arguments haven't been made in court or because the cases themselves haven't been brought. All right. What's next? What are you watching for in the half minute that we have left? Well, I think the next thing to look for is what are the actual moves that the Justice Department is making in this case?

14:47How are they running the investigation? And interestingly, it's being run out of Chicago. So what does the Justice Department think the nexus is to bring this case in Chicago when the alleged perjury happened in New York City? All of these questions remain to be seen. Hannah Rabinowitz reports on the Justice Department for CNN. Hannah, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me.

15:14Well, if Trump is targeting personal foes of his and his allies, his government is also making it easier for his family to make tons of money with their personal business ventures. In just a minute, we'll hear how the administration's approach to regulating cryptocurrency. and prediction markets just happen to align with policies that financially benefit Trump's family. Don't go anywhere.

15:51This message comes from Schwab. At Schwab, you can get everything from self-directed investing to full-service wealth management, all in one place. No matter your investing goal, life stage, amount to invest, or know-how, you can invest your way with Schwab. America is the crypto capital of the world, according to President Trump. In a social media post last night, Trump called critics of the crypto industry scum and vowed he will, quote, never let crypto down. Trump has also had nice things to say about prediction markets, like Polymarket and Kalshi, that let users gamble on everything from sports to elections without being regulated like a casino or a traditional sportsbook.

16:37The thing is, the president and his family have a growing portfolio of business interests in crypto and prediction markets. Donald Trump Jr. joined Kalshi as a strategic advisor right around the time that his dad returned to office. Since then, the Trump family has made billions of dollars selling their own cryptocurrency and making deals with prediction market firms. At the same time, the Trump administration has rolled back oversight of these industries and purged officials at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency that regulates them. That's according to Sharon Lafreniere, who investigated the issue for The New York Times.

17:13She spoke to Indira. The agency took a string of punitive actions against the career officials who were trying to enforce the laws involving crypto or who questioned the licenses or permissions or practices of prediction market companies, companies that are financially tied to the Trumps. And a number of senior career officials were put on administrative leave, barred from the office, and placed under investigation without being told why they were being investigated. or what they had supposedly done wrong. And the net effect of this was to basically send a message to the rest of the workforce not to cause trouble for these two business sectors.

18:02At least that's what our reporting with, our interviews with more than two dozen former and current agency officials showed. All right. Well, you write about the current chair of the CFTC, a man named Michael Selig. He's the only commissioner left because the president has left the other seats on the board vacant. Previously, Selig represented crypto firms as a lawyer. Now he's policing those industries. Is that unusual? I'm not sure that's so unusual, but what is unusual is that he is the sole commissioner on what's supposed to be a bipartisan five-member board, and that gives him unilateral authority to file lawsuits or issue new rules while he's policing two industries that are at the center of the president's business empire.

18:52Well, you report on something that happened last fall when three companies with ties to the Trump family needed something from the CFTC regulators. What happened? Well, what happened was that in each case, the chairman's office intervened to help make sure that the companies got what they wanted. And two senior officials who questioned what was going on were then effectively ousted. Have the companies that you reported on or the Trump administration responded to your investigation? The president did post on Truth Social that he fully supports Michael Selig, the new chair of the agency who he appointed, and that he wants to also support the prediction market and crypto industries.

19:45So Sharon, last question. Why does all of this matter? Why should our listeners care, especially if they themselves are not playing prediction markets or invested in cryptocurrency? Well, I mean, someone I think once called the CFTC the most important regulatory agency you've never heard of. and millions of Americans buy crypto or bet on prediction markets. But those business sectors are also increasingly intertwined with the broader financial markets. And the CFTC got beefed up after the 2008 financial crisis. Now it's been stripped down to its level right after that crisis, which cost taxpayers very heavily.

20:29It's got huge new mushrooming responsibilities, prediction markets especially are white hot. I mean, there are billions of dollars in trades a month. And the administration and the crypto industry want the agency to also be the lead regulator on crypto. So at the same time, its staffing level is at the lowest that it's been since the immediate aftermath of the 2008 crisis. That's Sharon Lafreniere. She's a New York Times investigative reporter covering the Trump administration. Sharon, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

21:11That's it for the show today. Here and Now, Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Lynn Managon, Wilder Fleming, and Jill Ryan. Our editors were Todd Munt, Michael Scotto, and Kat Welch. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin. Check out hereandnow.org for a lot more on everything you heard today and many more stories. Here and Now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. If you are in Boston, we'll be at the WBUR Festival happening Friday and Saturday, and we hope to see you there.

21:48Here and Now anytime. We'll be back with you tomorrow.

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