Kamala’s $25k Home Down Payment Plan is DEI in Disguise

The racist scheme will force taxpayers to subsidize non-white homebuyers and migrants while raising housing prices across the board

If you thought Kamala Harris was going to help you get into that starter house, think again—unless you’re an illegal alien, that is.

The Harris-Walz campaign pledged in August to give $25,000 in “downpayment assistance” for 4 million would-be buyers. But not just any buyers; “first-generation home buyers,” which the campaign describes as “homebuyers whose parents don’t own a home.”

Read the fine print carefully, because chances are you aren’t the recipient she has in mind.

Affirmative Action for Homeowners

“There’s no question that saving up enough to afford a down payment is often the most significant barrier for first-time homeowners,” according to the campaign’s economic plan. “Some first-time homebuyers can rely on family help for their down-payment: between 20 percent and 30 percent of first-time homebuyers today use a gift or loan from their family or friends.

“But for millions of Americans, working hard year after year and making their rent payments on time, homeownership feels far out of reach because they cannot accumulate the tens of thousands of dollars in down-payment savings needed for a home purchase,” it adds.

The Harris campaign brags that this will “close the affordable housing gap [for] 2.75 million first-time Black and Latino homeowners” by promising “more generous support for those whose parents did not own a home.”

This idea wasn’t born in a vacuum or even created by Kamala Harris; in reality, it’s part of the Left’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agenda to use racist Affirmative Action policies to “right” social “wrongs.”

The campaign, for instance, also vows to “reduce barriers to homeownership based on medical debt and limited credit history.” As evidence, it draws upon the “progressive” Urban Institute, which blames “decades of discriminatory policies that have intentionally and systematically denied communities of color equal access to affordable financial services and wealth-building opportunities.”

Source: Harris campaign economic plan(RELATED: The Dockworker Strike May Be Over, But the Effects Threaten to Stall New Home Construction)

$100 Billion for DEI

Nor is this the first time this sort of race-based subsidy has been tried.

Last March, Detroit launched an identical $25,000 downpayment assistance program “design[ed]” by the Ownership Initiative, a self-described “black-owned impact advisory firm” focused on “opportunities for underserved populations and economically challenged communities” (euphemisms for minority groups). The company has financial ties to the Ford and Kresge Foundations, both major left-wing mega-funders that support racist DEI programs.

Riverside County, California, launched a similar program last year. In both cases, funding came from the Harris-Biden administration’s 2021 American Rescue Plan—passed with a tie-breaking vote from Harris herself—which allocated nearly $10 billion for housing assistance and “prioritize[d] . . . socially disadvantaged individuals.”

The Harris-Biden administration touted in 2022 that “Black Americans were the largest group that received this help, representing more than 41% of aid recipients.” Other supporters brag that the program’s goal is “making homeownership more accessible and inclusive, particularly for historically underrepresented communities” who’ve suffered from the country’s “deep-seated economic inequalities and the lasting impact of discriminatory practices.”

For a window into this policy’s future, look to the congressional Democrats who’ve gone even further. In March, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D–GA) and Rep. Maxine Water (D–CA) proposed the Downpayment Toward Equity Act to “provide downpayment assistance to first-generation homebuyers to address multigenerational inequities in access to homeownership and to narrow and ultimately close the racial homeownership gap in the United States.”

Or, to put it more simply, to “affirmatively further fair housing.”

Warnock’s proposal actually does exclude many whites by strictly allocating $100 billion to groups that “target[] services to minority and low-income populations” which have “historically been subjected to racial or ethnic discrimination within the United States”—specifically anyone “identifying as Black, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian American.”

Would It Even Work?

While Harris’ plan is light on details, similar proposals offer tax credits rather than grants. But assuming it’s a grant, like the very similar Warnock-Waters plan, it won’t address the real problem with the nation’s housing: Supply.

“If the government provides $25,000 for a down payment, the cost of the home will go up by $25,000 to capture the subsidy, plus the actual value,” radio host Erick Erickson pointed out in August. Nor is that free, since it strips taxpayers to effectively subsidize home-sellers.

Recent analysis by the American Enterprise Institute found that over 4 years Harris’ down payment assistance program would raise tract home prices by a nationwide average of 4.1 percent, or $177 billion, for a $100 billion subsidy. In some places, like Lexington, Kentucky, it’s as high as 9 percent.

The effect on inflation is even worse at an additional $1 trillion across the entire stock of affected homes.

Worse, it sets the nation on another “easy credit” course toward a 2008-style market crash by encouraging low-income individuals to make a down payment they can’t afford on a house who can’t afford.

“This is yet another example of seemingly well-intended policies resulting in massive unintended consequences,” the study’s authors concluded.

Credit: American Enterprise Institute(READ MORE: Harrisnomics Has Brought Corporate Bankruptcies to Near-2008 Levels, Devastating Small Businesses)