COMMENTARY: Kamala Harris’ housing plan is bad for South Carolina as state AG Alan Wilson has shown
This op-ed by President Wendy Damron was originally published in The State.
The old saying goes, “I’d rather have a workhorse than a showhorse.” South Carolina is fortunate to have a workhorse in Attorney General Alan Wilson. Since taking office in 2011, he has worked tirelessly to rein in the federal government’s overreach and reinvigorate the rights that South Carolina is supposed to enjoy in the U.S. Constitution. The Palmetto State is a better place thanks to his efforts.
At the Palmetto Promise Institute, we have been fervently advocating for a return to federalism for years. In 2013, we contributed to a report on “competitive federalism” that starkly illustrated that the system bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers is rapidly eroding and that urgent actions are necessary to restore the ship of state to its rightful course.
Attorney General Wilson is doing just that. He continues working tirelessly to reclaim the power and authority the federal government has taken away from our great state.
Take, for example, his late August action against Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to federalize South Carolina’s housing industry policies. Despite enormous pressure, Attorney General Wilson refused to join an antitrust lawsuit that the Department of Justice brought against the pricing software landlords use to help determine the prices of their rentals. This suit is just a sneaky attempt to enact nationwide rent control, a policy that Vice President Harris is heavily pushing on the campaign trail to buy votes with less than two months before the presidential election.
South Carolina doesn’t have statewide rent control because it knows such a policy would fuel a housing shortage by discouraging building and investing in the industry. That would lead to higher prices, not lower ones.
Vice President Harris doesn’t seem to care what South Carolina thinks about the matter, though. She believes federal rent control is necessary because landlords are becoming too greedy.
Under our Palmetto Promise Institute philosophy of “competitive federalism,” the folks in Washington would keep their noses out of local housing issues and allow the states to develop and implement their own policies. States that encourage development would have cheap, plentiful housing. Those with restrictive development policies and high taxes would have to deal with housing shortages and high rents.
South Carolina would fall in the “encouraging development” camp. When South Carolina experienced a spike in rents post-pandemic, our leaders didn’t implement rent control or search for other villains to blame — we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. Our free-market efforts yielded predictably effective results. Rental prices have decreased in South Carolina since 2023 due to a construction boom to meet the housing shortage. Our state government’s major role in this solution was to get out of the way and let the free-market system work — and work it did.
Supporters of Vice President Harris’ federal rent control ambitions would argue, “Sure, South Carolina, you’ve lowered rent a bit, but if Attorney General Wilson would let Vice President Harris take charge, the rent would be even lower!”
This reasoning is wrongheaded and dangerous. Leaders like Attorney General Wilson don’t just embrace federalism because it’s enshrined in our Constitution. They do it because it’s common sense.
After all, rent control might look good on paper, but it doesn’t have a good track record. Just ask the people of San Francisco who tried it out and watched their supply of available rentals decline by 15%, likely increasing rent costs. Are South Carolina’s local leaders wrong for not wanting the federal government to impose bad debunked economic ideas of the past upon us?
The lesson here is that the government should give as much power and authority to the individual states as possible — they know what’s in their interests better than any Washington politician ever will.
The blueprint to ensuring this balance of power between the states and Washington already exists. It’s called the U.S. Constitution. It’s called federalism. South Carolina Attorney General Wilson is following that blueprint and defending it at every turn. It’s high time for the rest of our nation’s elected leaders to do the same.
