Could housing be the sleeper issue of 2024?
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 June 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
Housing has become increasingly expensive around the country. And while it’s traditionally seen as a local issue, housing could be a major factor in the 2024 presidential election.
Read more:
In polls, voters often say the economy is one of the top issues they’ll consider when voting in the 2024 presidential election.
But what exactly does that mean? For a lot of people, the cost of housing — rent or a mortgage payment — is the main way they feel fluctuations in the economy. That cost can also be the most stressful.
Today, host Elahe Izadi speaks with politics reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell about why housing has gotten so expensive in Nevada and other swing states— and how that could sway the presidential election.
Today’s show was produced by Emma Talkoff. It was edited by Ariel Plotnick and mixed by Sam Bair.
Two projects from the Post Reports team were just honored with Peabody awards. You can listen to “The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop” here; and Part One of “Surviving to Graduation” here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Tell me a little bit about yourself. How long have you lived here? How old are you? Your full name? |
| 0:08.0 | My full name is Catherine and the name was Chavez and I've been aired since 1980. |
| 0:15.0 | Okay, but I got a divorce after 29 years. |
| 0:18.0 | Oh wow. |
| 0:20.0 | He came home one day and said we need to go our separate ways. I am 73 years old. Okay. I'm not a spring |
| 0:27.3 | chicken if I know me. That is Kathy Ayers. I met her in Las Vegas. I was actually attending a meeting of a group that |
| 0:39.6 | helps people with housing problems. |
| 0:44.0 | Leanne Caldwell covers politics for the post. |
| 0:47.1 | She has been looking into why rent is so high for so many people like Kathy Ayres. Kathy has actually struggled with housing for a long time. |
| 0:56.6 | She told Leanne that after her divorce 20 years ago, she was in a really tough spot financially. |
| 1:02.6 | She lost her job that same year. |
| 1:04.8 | Since then, there have been times where she didn't have a great place to live. |
| 1:09.6 | So where are you living now? |
| 1:11.6 | Right now, I'm in a studio that belongs to a girl that I met at a shelter. I have lived in shelters. I've lived out in the streets and at 73 years old I don't need to be doing this. |
| 1:27.0 | She lives in a studio apartment with two other people. |
| 1:31.0 | She's lived there for the past nearly four years and she and another person share a twin bed and the third person sleeps on a cot. |
| 1:45.5 | What led Leanne to Kathy was something that she kept hearing in the halls of the Capitol. |
| 1:51.4 | Lawmakers kept telling her that their constituents were having a really hard time with |
| 1:55.8 | rising housing costs and Leanne was intrigued. |
| 2:00.7 | And so finally, because it's a presidential election year, I was looking at places in battleground states that were having housing issues. |
| 2:11.0 | Most of them are, but Las Vegas is one of the worst. |
| 2:16.0 | Leanne grew up in Vegas, so she knows it pretty well. |
... |
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