Deny tax deductions to large corporations owning 50 or more single-family homes
Housing
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
The tax change itself is Congress's to make. The underlying outcome, large corporations owning fewer single-family homes, is the direct conduct of identifiable companies, including publicly traded landlords whose owners can vote on strategy. The industry's trade group, the National Rental Home Council, has retained multiple lobbying firms on single-family rental legislation. Its chief executive publicly warned against the Senate-passed requirement that institutional investors resell newly built homes within seven years. Ownership influence also reaches the lobbying that resists the public remedy. Majorities of both parties would strip these tax breaks, Congress plainly holds the power to set deduction rules, and the measure needs no conduct from anyone beyond the landlords themselves. No other obstacle is documented; what the record shows is the industry's resistance. In our judgment that lobbying is the linchpin holding back progress, which makes this position pivotal: owners who change what these companies lobby for can release the block.
How this was scoredPivotal
Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
No shareholder advocacy found yet
We looked and found nothing that met our standard, which is a source we opened and confirmed. No Rule 14a-8 proposal, investor coalition engagement, vote-no campaign or voting policy aimed at publicly traded single-family rental landlords was located. The material that surfaced is congressional letters, GAO and CRS analysis, academic work and tenant organizing, none of which is shareholder advocacy. The National Rental Home Council lobbying record described in the rationale is documented, but no investor action responding to it was found.
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.