Vice President Kamala Harris made her case for the presidency last week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where she zeroed in on a problem plaguing many Americans: affordable housing.

In a new commercial from her campaign, Harris vows to end the national housing shortage, lower the cost of rent and make homeownership more attainable to the average person by building 3 million new homes and reducing inflation.

The plan goes further by proposing $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers with a reliable rent history, and greater assistance to first-generation homebuyers. The plan outlines a $40 billion innovation fund for the construction of starter homes, housing supply solutions and the expansion of tax credits for affordable rental units.

The proposal, however, has sparked some debate on whether its tactics can effectively solve the deep-seated, complex issues of the national housing crisis — particularly in Chicago where the cost of living has increasingly become a cause of concern as inflation rises and housing availability dwindles.

Ted Dabrowski, president of Wirepoints, questioned whether the same people who created the housing problem — meaning the federal government — should be the ones attempting to solve it.

“When we closed the economy during COVID, we got massive supply chain issues that pushed up the pricing of houses; we lowered interest rates to zero, which made the demand increase for housing and that pushed up prices,” Dabrowski said. “… The government has created a lot of the affordability issues.”

Chicago has a historic shortage of homes on the market, with fewer than 5,000 homes for sale in July of this year, which is an 8% decrease from the same time last year, according to Illinois Realtors.

Don Washington, executive director of the Chicago Housing Initiative, said the Harris-Walz plan may not go far enough to address the magnitude of the issue, including the unhoused population.

“We are 150,000 units of affordable housing short under the present paradigm,” Washington said.

There’s also the question of whether the arrival of asylum seekers sent from Florida and Texas has exacerbated a pre-existing issue and taken precedence over the needs of longtime residents, like Black Chicagoans.

“I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the Black unemployment rate in Chicago — it’s the highest in the country,” Dabrowski said. “Their poverty rate is second highest in the country. You can’t say you want to solve a problem like housing when at the same time you have open borders.”

Washington disagrees.

“These are two different crises,” Washington said. “Before the first asylum seeker ever showed up, we didn’t have affordable housing in the city of Chicago. We have the resources to house everyone.”

Stories about Chicago homeownership are supported by funding from The Chicago Community Trust.