Amanda Cantrell

She's the CEO of the National Rental Home Council.

That's an industry body that represents a lot of institutional homeowners.

Stephen recognizes this advantage, but in his research, he has also seen some negative effects.

When corporate landlords buy more houses in a neighborhood compared to homeowners, he saw a 2% increase in property crime, a 4% increase in violent crime, and a 7% increase in drug crime.

Overall, the evidence doesn't show that institutional investors are a major driver of housing costs.

But cracking down on companies building new homes has a good chance of making housing affordability worse.

In Vera's room, there's a sofa, a recliner, a widescreen TV, and lots of photos on the walls.

These boarding houses used to be really common, but in many places they were effectively banned.

Eventually, the shelter found her a room at this building, Euclid Hall.

Rebecca Baird-Rembaugh reported on New York housing for more than a decade and has written about single-room occupancy housing, or SROs.

SROs covered the spectrum from long-term stays in high-end hotels to basically a bed in a cubicle with chicken wire on top to stop neighbors from stealing your belongings.

And these bare-bones boarding rooms were incredibly cheap.

There was a sense among some that the buildings themselves were causing outcomes like disease, theft and violence.

And so under the guise of urban renewal, lawmakers acted.

Whatever the cause, this contributed to a wave of boarding house destruction.

A lot of landlords decided it was more profitable to convert their buildings into something different.

In 1977, at 3 o'clock in the morning, the sheriff and hundreds of riot police approached the International Hotel to evict over 100 tenants and supporters.

It housed mostly elderly Filipino and Chinese people.

More than 2,000 protesters tried to stop the evictions.

About half of men entering homeless shelters in New York City in the 1980s said they had previously lived in SROs.