The New York Times - 19.09.2019

A18 N THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALTHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

Bernie Sanders has gone much
further than any of the other 2020
Democratic presidential candi-
dates in proposing not just more
money for affordable housing, or
more enforcement of fair-housing
laws, but also fundamental
changes in how the housing mar-
ket functions.
His most startling ideas — a na-
tional rent control standard, and
new taxes on land speculation and
house “flipping” — would bring
America closer to the idea that
housing should be treated as shel-
ter and not a commodity.
But in the housing plan his cam-
paign released Wednesday, Mr.
Sanders doesn’t go all the way
there. He allows for profit, but not
certain kinds of profit, or profit by
certain kinds of actors. In that
middle ground, somewhere be-
tween the private market and so-
cial housing for all, things get
complicated.
The national rent control stand-
ard Mr. Sanders has proposed
would cap the amount that land-
lords can raise rents, to shield ten-
ants from escalating housing
costs and, in a deeper sense, the
excesses of capitalism in the hous-
ing market. Landlords could raise
the rent by no more than 3 percent
per year, or one and a half times
the rate of inflation, whichever is
higher.
His housing plan says nothing
about the profits of people buying
and selling homes in the normal
course of homeownership. In fact,
Mr. Sanders would invest an addi-

tional $8 billion into federal pro-

grams to help first-time home

buyers, precisely because home-

ownership in America is often a

means of building wealth.

Between the two proposals lies

a fraught balance: One would

curb profits in the housing market

while the other acknowledges that

many Americans depend on those

profits. Mr. Sanders’s campaign

seeks to reconcile the two by argu-

ing that rich investors or land-

lords shouldn’t get to make so

much, while ordinary American

families should have a chance to

make something.

“We want to return to the notion

that homeownership can be an as-

set builder for working people and

average American families, and it

is not just a vehicle to commodify

to make the rich richer,” said Josh

Orton, a senior adviser to the

Sanders campaign and its na-

tional policy director.

In practice, however, it’s not al-

ways obvious how to distinguish

the working families from the rich

investors, or how to devise poli-

cies that crack down on the one

but not the other. Some middle-

class families, for example, build

wealth by owning rental proper-

ties. And landlord groups are

skeptical that 3 percent rent in-

creases would build them much

wealth, especially when property

taxes, insurance rates and utilities

aren’t also capped.

Mr. Sanders’s proposal would

also put a hefty tax on house flip-

ping, hitting owners who sell a

property for more than the origi-

nal price within five years of pur-

chase (for a place they don’t occu-

py). But that definition would

cover people we don’t think of as

flippers: a small-scale general

contractor who remodels two

homes a year; a family that buys a

home for an aging parent who lat-

er dies; a landlord who herself

faces financial distress and must

get out of the business.

Mr. Sanders has similarly pro-

posed a tax on empty homes,

aimed at speculators who sit on

vacant properties until they be-

come more lucrative to redevelop,

or simply profitable to resell. That

is a real problem in some commu-

nities, leaving neighbors to live

with blight for years. But owning

an empty home doesn’t necessar-

ily make you a speculator. Some-

one who has put a property on the

market and struggled to sell it for

months might end up facing this

tax.

The full proposal, emphasizing

the feel-good parts of the market

but not the others, is trying to

have it both ways, said Jenny

Schuetz, a housing economist at

the Brookings Institution who has

been following housing proposals

from the 2020 candidates.

“In some ideal universe, people

would buy homes (or rental prop-

erties) that appreciated slightly

faster than inflation, allowing

them to build wealth, but without

housing costs rising too fast to

pressure renters, deter new

homeowners, or create excess

capital gains,” Ms. Schuetz wrote

in an email. “In that context, both

rent control and flipping taxes

make sense. The problem is, with

any semblance of a private real es-

tate market, land and housing val-

ues don’t behave that way.”

She is skeptical that it is even

possible to design or regulate a

market that gives modest returns

to individual homeowners, but

never gives big returns to land-

lords; that penalizes greedy flip-

pers, but never harms small-time

contractors; that taxes vacant

homes but doesn’t punish working

families.

Mr. Sanders’s ideas invite a host

of questions about how they

would technically work (how do

we police a million landlords?)

and where their legal authority

would come from (would the

courts uphold a national rent con-

trol law?). But these deeper ques-

tions about the kind of housing

market voters might want seem

worth hashing out, regardless of

those other details.

Mr. Orton, the Sanders adviser,

pushed back against the logic of

economists that, for one, rent con-

trol discourages developers from

building and landlords from rent-

ing housing that Americans badly

need.

“I would say to those econo-

mists, how is that working out?”

he said of the current deference to

the market. “That’s what we’ve

been doing. When we’ve left this

to private developers, everything

from the crash of the housing mar-

ket to how we’ve seen gentrifica-

tion just explode in some of the

most vulnerable communities, to

how we’ve seen people priced out

of what would normally be afford-

able housing — this current crisis

is the result of that.”

Proposal Puts Limits on Rent Increases

Bernie Sanders outlined a proposal for national rent control and for reining in land speculators.

MAX WHITTAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By EMILY BADGER

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Clutch-
ing a cup of tea to soothe his hoars-
ening voice, Senator Bernie Sand-
ers took the stage at the College of
Charleston this week with a famil-
iar message for anyone who had
been following him since 2015, in-
veighing against the economic
system (“grossly unfair”), politi-
cal system (“corrupt”) and health
care system (“insanity”).
But Mr. Sanders said something
needed to be different in 2020 if his
promised revolution was going to
come to fruition.
“I’m here to ask for your help, to
help me win the Democratic pri-
mary here in South Carolina,” he
said. “With your help, we can do
that. We do that, we’re going to
win the nomination.”
Many Democrats in the presi-
dential race are banking on strong
showings in Iowa and New Hamp-
shire, the first nominating con-
tests, to slingshot them into South
Carolina with political momentum
and then on to Super Tuesday. But
Mr. Sanders knows that will not be
enough — or at least it was not
enough for him in 2016.
That year, he stunned the politi-
cal world by almost beating Hilla-
ry Clinton in the Iowa caucuses.
He trounced her in New Hamp-
shire.
Then, in more diverse South
Carolina, where black voters
make up an estimated 60 percent
of the Democratic primary elec-
torate, he got annihilated anyway.
He lost every county in the state,
with Mrs. Clinton carrying more
than half of them with more than
80 percent of the vote. Only in one
did Mr. Sanders even top 40 per-
cent.
South Carolina was the signal
defeat in his upstart challenge to
Mrs. Clinton, the state where his
inability to win support from Afri-
can-Americans, a crucial Demo-
cratic constituency, was laid bare.
Mrs. Clinton marched across the
South with similarly huge mar-
gins, building an unmatchable
delegate advantage to clinch the
nomination.
“The reason why he got beat
here so badly last time is the Afri-
can-American community didn’t
support him, didn’t know who he
was, so they went with who they
knew,” said Kwadjo Campbell, Mr.
Sanders’s South Carolina state di-
rector.
As in his race against Mrs. Clin-
ton, Mr. Sanders faces in former
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
a familiar face with a reservoir of
good will among many black vot-
ers — a man who served two
terms as the No. 2 to the first black
president, and who begins far
ahead in the South Carolina polls.
Only now the race also includes
two major black candidates, Sena-
tors Kamala Harris of California
and Cory Booker of New Jersey,
as well as another senator, Eliza-
beth Warren of Massachusetts,
who is peeling off support on the
ideological left.
Faiz Shakir, Mr. Sanders’s cam-
paign manager, called the South
Carolina challenge “significant
but not insurmountable,” espe-
cially if Mr. Sanders performs well
in the three preceding states, in-
cluding Nevada.
“There is a really great possibil-
ity for South Carolina — I won’t
say win — but I do think cutting

margins significantly,” Mr. Shakir

said, “particularly in the African-

American community, which I

think he will do much better with.

That’s the path.”

After mostly minimizing South

Carolina four years ago, if not

seeming to downright disregard it

at times, Mr. Sanders has re-

turned with a previously unseen

vigor. Once he had declared his

candidacy in 2015, Mr. Sanders

went more than three months be-

fore his first visit to South Car-

olina (one trip was postponed af-

ter the Charleston church shoot-

ing). This year, he has already vis-

ited seven times as a candidate;

by this weekend, when Mr. Sand-

ers visits on a college tour, he will

have notched as many visits to the

state as he made in the 2016 cycle.

“We’re going to give the vice

president a run for his money,”

said Nina Turner, a national co-

chair of the Sanders campaign,

who is black and who has been in-

strumental in the South Carolina

strategy, visiting the state herself

at least twice a month.

Mr. Sanders has unveiled two of

his major policy proposals in

South Carolina — his criminal jus-

tice plan and his “Thurgood Mar-

shall Plan” for public education —

as part of an effort to show his

commitment to black voters in the

state, advisers said. He has six of-

fices here and 52 paid staff mem-

bers (nearly three-quarters are

people of color, according to the

campaign).

A Sanders spokesman in South

Carolina, Michael Wukela, said

the Vermont senator now counts

24 endorsements in the state — 20

of them from black supporters —

compared with a total of only five

at the end of the 2016 race. Mem-

bers of the clergy are being

wooed, as well.

“I know he’s been working

hard,” the Rev. Joseph Darby, an

influential pastor in Charleston

who is close to Mr. Biden, said of

Mr. Sanders. “I give him an E for

effort.”

An early snapshot of the state

suggests that Mr. Sanders still

faces an uphill climb. In a selfie

line after a shrimp-and-grits

breakfast event in Georgetown,

S.C., last month, nearly all of the

people waiting for photographs

with the senator were white. And

in conversations with black lead-

ers and voters, including some at

Mr. Sanders’s own events, there

was still uncertainty about Mr.

Sanders and his policies. Several

people mentioned his “Medicare

for All” proposal for a govern-

ment-run health insurance sys-

tem.

Mae McKnight, 74, who at-

tended the Georgetown event,

said she was still deciding which

candidate would win her vote. She

was leaning toward Mr. Biden to

“get the country back to some

kind of calm normalcy,” she said.

Though she liked Mr. Sanders, she

said, “I would not want him to take

my insurance plan.”

“I don’t care who gets it as long

as I can keep mine,” Ms. McKnight

added, noting she was on her

teachers’ union’s health plan.

Pamela Venson, a retiree who

lives in Florence, showed up at the

recent Galivants Ferry candidate

stump, which Mr. Sanders ended

up missing to rest his voice. Ms.

Venson, a Biden supporter, called

the former vice president “sea-

soned,” but saw Mr. Sanders and

Ms. Warren as “too risky” and

“too left.”

“You’ve got to have the money

first,” Ms. Venson said of their am-

bitious policy plans.

Marvin R. Pendarvis, a state

representative supporting former

Representative Beto O’Rourke of

Texas, said that many black vot-

ers viewed Mr. Sanders’s expan-

sive agenda warily.

“They like the idea of all that

stuff. And it would be great in a

perfect world. But we don’t live in

a perfect world,” Mr. Pendarvis

said. “Many black Americans are

just reluctant to take the kind of

risks like that. We want something

a little more concrete.”

National polls show that Afri-

can-American voters remain Mr.

Biden’s most reliable voting bloc,

and an area of relative weakness

for Mr. Sanders. An NBC News/

Wall Street Journal poll released

this week found Mr. Biden with

the support of 49 percent of black

Democratic primary voters na-

tionwide, while Mr. Sanders had

only 5 percent support. (Among

all Democratic primary voters

surveyed, Mr. Biden led with 31

percent, Ms. Warren had 25 per-

cent and Mr. Sanders had 14 per-

cent.)

The centerpiece of Mr. Sand-

ers’s campaign pitch remains eco-

nomic and class matters: Medi-

care for All, a $15 minimum wage,

eliminating student debt. Refer-

ences to racial justice remain the

rhetorical flourishes of his stump

speech.

Advisers to Mr. Sanders have

pressed him to speak more about

his own civil rights activism as a

student in the 1960s, as he did in

an early campaign speech in Chi-

cago. Mr. Sanders has mostly ig-

nored them.

“Can I get him to talk about any-

thing in his life? It’s very hard,”

Mr. Shakir said.

Alicia Garza, a founder of Black

Lives Matter who was in South

Carolina this week on a bus tour

promoting a new women’s group,

Supermajority, noted that Mr.

Sanders had been criticized for

not sufficiently connecting racial

and economic justice.

“Black women like myself,

we’ve never gone for the okey-

doke” that fixing economic issues

would solve other problems, she

said. Of Mr. Sanders, she added,

“I’m also willing to give the grace

of, ‘You’ve got until February to

convince me you finally get it.’ ”

Mr. Campbell, the Sanders state

director, said the senator had

“grown in that regard.”

“If you listen to him talk about

African-American communities,

he doesn’t shy away from the

whole idea of racial discrimina-

tion,” Mr. Campbell said.

The campaign is certainly try-

ing to organize black voters.

Mariah Moore-McClure, an 18-

year-old who moved from Chicago

to attend Benedict College, a his-

torically black college in Colum-

bia, was part of a group the Sand-

ers campaign had bused to the

Galivants Ferry event about two

hours away. “On my campus, he’s

doing great,” she said.

Within the Sanders campaign,

tensions between the new guard

and the originalists have been

present throughout this run, in-

cluding in a recent shake-up of his

New Hampshire operation. In an

interview, Mr. Campbell took an

oblique swipe at those who ran

South Carolina for Mr. Sanders

four years ago.

“We’ve got a solid state team

from the state that knows the

state,” he said. “So that’s different

from last time.”

Mr. Sanders’s 2016 base —

which generally skews younger,

whiter and more progressive —

remains the core of his 2020 coali-

tion. At Galivants Ferry, the three

volunteers at his booth in the

early evening were supporters

dating to 2016.

“If we have anything to do with

it,” said Goffinet McLaren, who is

white and a retiree who lives in

Pawleys Island, “we would en-

courage black voters to vote for

him this time.”

‘E for Effort’ as Sanders Looks to Pass the South Carolina Test in 2020

JOY BONALA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

LOGAN CYRUS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Clockwise from top: Senator Bernie Sanders at a rally in Florence, S.C., a state he has visited seven times this year. Mr. Sanders and

Senator Cory Booker at Zion Baptist Church in Columbia. A Sanders rally at Clinton College, a historically black college in Rock Hill.

TRAVIS DOVE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By SYDNEY EMBER

and SHANE GOLDMACHER

A crucial race that

may be even tougher

four years later.

Shane Goldmacher reported from
Charleston, and Sydney Ember
from Georgetown, S.C.