REDMOND, OR -- U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley held a Town Hall in Redmond Saturday at Ridgeview High School. Among the audience questions on student debt, river restoration, and Veterans’ services, he also touched on affordable housing. “The cost of buying homes, the cost of renting homes, homelessness…And so we have an $8 billion increase in the overall funding for housing, but it's not enough.”

The senator told KBND News he will be reintroducing a bill this summer, the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act. “It basically brings a new element to this conversation, which is a significant factor driving up the price of housing has been hedge funds deciding this is a great place for them to invest.” Merkley said, explaining this goes back to 2009 when large home-lots were being foreclosed and hedge funds and private equity investors scooped up those homes, “I can tell you from my town halls, whether it's a red county or blue county or anything in between people go ‘yeah get the hedge funds out of housing’”.

The Democrat acknowledged the powerful hedge fund lobby would make it difficult to get the bill passed.