At least here in Floeida rents are sirectly affected by property taxes if you live in your home you can qualify for homestead exemption which ties your tax rate to the level that was taxed during the year you first apply and over the years of ownership becomes a very valuable exemptiion to tax increases. If you rent out the house you don't qualify for it and thus renters end up paying much higher tax rates through rent than do homeowners. If the Legislature wanted to help renters they would grant something like homestead exemption to rental requirement that landlords would have to document what the rent was granted and that that any rent increases could not be blamed on tax increases. There is no good reason that renters living next door to homeowners are effectively paying taxes thousands of dollars higher through their rent just because of the homestead exemption granted to people living in their own property. I don't know how it wotks in other states but renters are getting screwed by the state of Florida and it's just not fair. If other states have similarly unfair systems tax breaks could be granted to rental property owners with the requirement that they can demonstrate savings to renters equivalent to any tax break the owner of the property gets.

"But, I'm not certain that's within their reach.
Seems like the antithesis of free market capitalism, which both parties support."

People often want to move to places with less population where they could buy homes and leave the rental market and as they do that it reduces demand for rentals in the over-populated area where they are living with ever increasing rents. In earlier times when western parts of this counyty had vast amounts of unpopulated land we offer homestead with the requiremeny that the homesteader build a house and live there for a number of years. So we had great migratiobs of people leaving overcroeded cities and starting homesteadsin other parts pf the country. Right now Biden is talking aboit down payment assidtance to first time home buyers. Iy's a great idea but it should be only ailable for purchases in parts of the country that have been largely depopulated like Detroit or other places that have suffered population loss due to changes in manufacturr]ing. This could revita;ize areas that have lost population and caused dramatic decrease in [toprty values and alleviate dramatic population growth anf femabd for rentals in areas where rent increases have been so rapid that it is becoming difficult for families to keep a roof over their heads but just as homesteading only worked with a requirement that people who were granted homesteads had to live on the ptoperties fo a numbrt of years down payment assistance should have similar ewquirenents and no be available for anyone to buy proprerty to rrent out or for investments,