(The Center Square) - Nevada's affordable housing crisis reportedly has put the state more than 70,000 housing units short of demand.
A recent special session bill narrowly fell short of addressing a corporate homeownership issue experts say has exacerbated the decades-long issue.
During November's special legislative session, lawmakers nearly passedSenate Bill 10, which would have begun to address the state's recent growth in corporate home ownership by capping private investment to 1,000 homes per year. Proponents are already planning for the bill's 2027 legislative resurrection.
"We have been one of the fastest growing cities for years," Nevada Housing Coalition Executive Director Maurice Page told The Center Square about Las Vegas. "Because of that, we have just not been able to keep up with the growth [in housing need] and the pace of population growth."
From 2000 to 2024, Nevada's population grew by more than 1.2 million or 62% – almost three times the population growth rate of the U.S. over the same time. At the same time, Nevada's unaffordable housing issue has grown into a crisis. As of 2023, Nevada was short 77,928 affordable rental units, according to theNational Low Income Housing Coalition.
While housing experts like Page agree that booming population growth and a lagging housing construction effort in recent decades are most at blame for the state's unaffordable housing, there's also a number of more complicated issues at hand.
Among those is a high portion of large investor-owned homes in Nevada.
Before the 2008 Great Recession, private investors accounted for around 10% of home purchases in the Las Vegas area, but have jumped to 25% or higher in recent years, as per aUNLV Lied Center for Real Estate report.
Because the investors see the houses as investments and not homes, their primary aim is to make a financial return, Page told The Center Square. "The majority of those prices were doubled when they went back on the market to be resold, or the rental cost of those units were increased heavily."
The average home value in Nevada has increased over 45% from October 2019 ($303,000) to October 2025 ($441,000), although it has largely remained flat since a peak in 2022, according toZillow.
It's an issue that has unequally impacted Nevadans, Page said. He noted corporate home purchases have been overrepresented in Nevada's black and brown communities.
"That's where the homes are coming at a cheaper value," said Page. "A lot of those homes are in black and brown neighborhoods. The income is not going to be very high, so it's easier for an investor to go in … Ultimately what you're doing is just pushing folks out, and they're having to go back to live with family, friends, or they're reverting to the streets."
It's why state Sen. Dina Neal, D-Clark County, introducedSenate Bill 395back in 2023. The legislation would have similarly capped large private investments to 1,000 housing units per year. It passed in both the state Senate and Assembly but was vetoed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo. Democrats hold majorities in both houses but lack enough seats to override vetoes.
Page estimated private investors accounted for 6,000 Nevada home purchases in 2024.
In the next legislative session of 2025, Neal again introduced the corporate housing bill asSB391. But this time, the senator's bill only allowed for 100 private investor home purchases. SB391 passed the Senate but never made it out of the Assembly.
During the special session in November, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Clark County, introducedSB10. It was a first-of-its-kind two-thirds vote, which successfully skipped Lombardo's otherwise needed approval to introduce a special session bill. Still, the bill narrowly did not pass the two-thirds Assembly vote once in session, despite a unanimous Senate vote.
"Affordable housing – there's no one silver bullet method to developing housing stock," said Page. "And this is just one of multiple issues that needs to be addressed when we're talking about housing in the state of Nevada."
Still, Page called private investors in Nevada's housing market a "necessary evil" that brought economic diversity to the state. Nevada's lawmakers have been desperately seeking economic diversification in a state that many say isoverdependenton tourism and entertainment.Recent shocksfrom the COVID-19 pandemic and President Donald Trump's tariffs, travel bans and immigration crackdowns pushed the state to nearly pass amulti-billion dollar tax incentiveto attract the film industry.
But housing advocates, as well as many in the Legislature, say the private housing investments have gone too far and threaten the average Nevadan.
"When you talk about teachers, construction workers, nurses, firemen, first responders, so forth and so on, you're pretty much pricing them out," said Page. "And so they're going to have to move to other places to either get an increase in their wages or to be able to find more adequate housing. When you look at our teachers, we're notoriously one of the lowest paid states for our teachers. If you're a teacher and you're only making $40,000 [annually], but yet you need to be able to make at least $55-58,000 just to afford a one bedroom unit, you're going to be crunched, you're going to be squeezed."
Page said the Nevada Housing Coalition has not given up on the corporate housing bill and plans to advocate for its fourth edition in the next regular Nevada legislative session in 2027.
"I think everybody's goal in life is to become a homeowner and to be able to create generational wealth for their families," Page said. "Sometimes they're the first folks in their family to ever do so, and we want to be able to continue that American dream."