Opinion: Housing costs are the result of inflation and insufficient supply, not an algorithm

It’s common knowledge that the housing market is tough right now, an issue touched upon (albeit lightly) in the presidential debate. A recent Pew study reported that the U.S. is facing a housing shortage of 4 million to 7 million homes, creating a rental market in which half of all tenants pay more than 30% of their income on rent and one-quarter pay more than 50%.
Americans know this, as they feel rising costs all around them due to record levels of inflation, a problem exacerbated by Utah’s own housing affordability crisis. The Biden-Harris administration should stop wasting time on scapegoating technology and take actions that might actually give renters some relief.
But President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris don’t see it that way, at least not in election season, and they blame anything other than their own policies for affordability challenges. The Biden-Harris Justice Department recently announced a lawsuit targeting the use of rental-pricing software, inexplicably contending that doing so is somehow going to improve consumer outcomes.
This is not a surprise. The Biden administration has consistently blamed corporate America for the record-breaking inflation we’ve experienced instead of looking inwards at its own poor policy decisions. That includes the tie-breaking votes cast by Harris to pass both the American Rescue Plan in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, two laws that increased federal spending by more than $3 trillion and accounted for much of the inflation inflicted on U.S. consumers between 2020 and 2024.
This of course has produced detrimental impacts on American housing. Rental costs are up 26% during the Biden-Harris administration. In Salt Lake City, the median home cost increased by a staggering 65% between January 2020 and July 2024 as interest rates soared, driving more would-be homebuyers to rent. But instead of addressing the root causes of rent increases, Democrats are scapegoating information-gathering technologies that help property managers price their rental properties appropriately to avoid vacancy.
Software algorithms have been developed that allow property managers to more accurately set rent amounts based on real supply and demand of the market. They analyze data such as housing inventories and consumer demand to give owners useful guidance, and that’s basically consistent with how property owners have historically priced their properties. The new software programs just make it faster and easier for them to set their own price that benefits both them and the renters alike and manages seasonal fluctuations. If one prices a property too high, that unit is likely to sit empty, a loss to both manager and renter.
Whether it’s groceries or rental housing, the causes of inflation are typically the same: insufficient supply exacerbated by wrong-minded government policies, which in the case of housing, can include eviction moratoriums, restrictive zoning and affordable housing requirements.
All of these actual drivers of housing costs are on full display in San Francisco, California, where city commissioners passed the nation’s first ordinance banning the use of the algorithmic software, ignoring that such housing software products can actually help tenants by supporting increased occupancy rates, encouraging negotiations between renters and property managers and producing other mutually beneficial results.
Algorithms are not the reason so many renters cannot afford a decent place to live. Alleviating that unsustainable drain on family budgets depends on building enough homes to meet consumer demand; banning algorithmic housing software won’t accomplish anything.
Jared Whitley has worked in the U.S. Senate and White House. He has an MBA from Hult Business School in Dubai. In April, the Top of the Rockies competition named him the best columnist in the Intermountain West.