Harlan Crow's Minions Are Keeping Your Rent High

The Revolving Door Project today announced a new blog project tracking the close ties between Harlan Crow – the infamous billionaire benefactor of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – and the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), a landlord lobby group led by Crow Holdings executive Ken Valach. Read the blog here.

NMHC – which represents nearly 2,000 abusive corporate landlords, developers, big banks, and scandal-plagued tech companies like RealPage – has organized the apartment industry’s opposition to federal and state-level tenant protections and rent affordability laws, and was one of the top lobbying spenders against the CDC’s pandemic eviction moratorium. All the while, it has lobbied to secure billions in lucrative corporate tax breaks for wealthy developers and investors.

Crow, heir to one of the biggest real estate fortunes in American history, has personally given tens of thousands of dollars to NMHC’s political operations and has held NMHC PAC fundraisers in his own Dallas mansion.

Revolving Door Project Senior ResearcherVishal Shankar, who co-authored the report, released the following statement:

“Harlan Crow isn’t just corrupting our judiciary – he is actively fuelling the rental housing crisis through his support for one of America’s biggest corporate landlord lobby groups. For too long, the slick landlord propagandists at NMHC have falsely portrayed themselves as the only “experts” who can solve the housing crisis. It’s time the public sees NMHC for what they truly are – a greedy and predatory band of rent-gougers who exist only to make elites like Harlan Crow even richer.”

Revolving Door Project Research Director Andrea Beaty released the following statement:

“Tenant organizers in communities across the country are working together to push for government policies that keep people in their homes on safer, more affordable and more accessible terms. Unfortunately, these grassroots organizers face an uphill battle going up against corporate profiteers whose financial power allows them to influence policy from behind the scenes. Policymakers should listen to the millions of renters who need relief from housing insecurity, rather than cater to the corporate landlords and their lobbyists who put renters into precarious positions in the first place.”