We REFUSE to be a Generation of Renters

We REFUSE to be a generation of renters. We refuse to accept a future where billionaire private equity firms like Blackstone come into our communities, buy up entire neighborhoods, take homes off the market, and put them back up for rent. That is not the American dream.

It’s not the American dream to let companies, backed with overseas capital from China and using tax cheats, buy homes out from under us and turn America into a nation of renters. The American dream is impossible unless you own the dirt under your feet—unless you own a piece of the community you help build. Yet when Blackstone comes in, they won’t sell to you; they’ll only rent to you.

When my parents bought their first home in 1996, there were two other families bidding. They bought that home for $104,000. They weren’t bidding against private equity firms with balance sheets in the hundreds of billions that can outbid every single one of us.

It’s already hard enough to get a mortgage with today’s interest rates (cc: Jerome Powell) And when you finally do—after saving, working, and doing everything right—a private equity firm swoops in and prices you out of the home you earned. That is unacceptable.

Thanks to the Tenth Amendment and our federalist system, the power to fix this lies with our state governments. Here in Florida and across the country, governors must act—must make it illegal for giant private equity firms like Blackstone to buy up our neighborhoods and turn us into a generation of renters.

We refuse to accept that fate. We refuse to become serfs in our own country. We will fight back.