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The Biden administration on Wednesday launched a series of initiatives to make sure apartment renters were able to see all so-called “junk fees” charged by landlords.

The announcement, alongside ones for new corporate merger guidelines and a crackdown on price-gouging in the food industry, were discussed as part of President Joe Biden’s meeting with the White House Competition Council, a group of officials established under a 2021 executive order.

The council has focused on creating more transparency for consumers and finding approaches to limit the concentration of industries in ways that the Biden administration says lead to higher prices and hurt the ability of start-ups and small businesses to grow. Republican lawmakers and some business group critics counter that the Democratic president’s effort will lead to greater regulatory costs that leave the economy worse off.

“Bidenomics is about increasing competition, not stifling competition,” the president said before the meeting. “When companies have to compete, it means lower prices, fair wages and more innovation.”

Separately, the government is working with the companies Zillow, Apartments.com and AffordableHousing.com to create a new website that reveals to renters all of the fees they could be charged when signing a lease.

The effort comes from concerns that many renters find themselves surprised by what the administration calls hidden junk fees for background credit checks, paying their rent online or trash collection. The administration’s goal is for renters to know how much they’re being charged so that they can make better choices.

Bob Pinnegar, CEO of the National Apartment Association, said in response that rental housing is a “narrow-margin industry.” While transparency is a positive, he said, policymakers “must recognize operational realities and the role that fees play” in providing housing services.

And Jay Parsons, a prominent rental market economist and head economist at multifamily proptech firm RealPage criticized the White House’s approach as largely ineffective. In a series of posts on Twitter, Parsons

“Fee transparency is important and renters deserve that. (That’s the core of the White House plan — fee disclosure, not elimination.) But the reality is most property mgrs already disclose fees on their own websites AND in the lease application process. It’s totally fair to be upset if you sign a lease only to find out later you’re getting charged $200/mo for some “admin fee” that you derive no value from. And it’s fair to crack down on the small number of bad actors who do such things,” he said. “Most fees are for reasonable things, BUT there’s some pushback that renters shouldn’t pay separate fees for parking, WiFi, smart home tech, valet trash, etc. That’s fair, but they’re still real costs. If you took away those fees, those costs just get rolled into the base rent. So that means that in most properties (bad actors aside), you’re unlikely to derive meaningful savings for renters.”