Joe Lombardo built his first campaign on fixing Nevada’s economy. He leaves office after losing reelection with housing costs higher, eviction rates among the nation’s worst, and three consecutive vetoes of the bills meant to address both.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford defeated Gov. Joe Lombardo in the Nov. 3 general election, ending Lombardo’s bid for a second term. In his first remarks after the win, Ford said he intends to declare the state’s affordability crisis a state emergency and pursue policy fixes without raising taxes.
Lombardo vetoed Senate Bill 335 and Assembly Bill 486, both aimed at strengthening eviction protections for Nevada tenants, as well as Assembly Bill 44, which would have banned algorithmic rent-pricing tools used by some corporate landlords to coordinate rent increases across properties. In his veto messages, Lombardo said the bills placed what he described as onerous burdens on the state’s rental markets and created additional hurdles for landlords.
Nevada currently has among the highest eviction rates in the country. More than 30,000 evictions were granted in Nevada following Lombardo’s veto of the state’s eviction diversion legislation, according to figures cited by Assembly Democratic leadership at a 2024 news conference.
Lombardo’s administration pointed to other actions as evidence of progress on housing, including the Nevada Housing Access and Attainability Act, which his office said approved more than $64 million in funding to support 358 for-sale homes and 1,208 multifamily rental units statewide, according to a press release from the governor’s office.
The median home price in Southern Nevada stood at $445,000 during Lombardo’s tenure, with Northern Nevada homes averaging $550,000, according to figures cited during his administration. Nevada was separately short an estimated 80,000 low-income housing units statewide.
Lombardo maintained throughout his term that the state’s affordability problems were largely outside his control, telling reporters in August that he could not control broader inflation and economic trends affecting Nevada families.
Lombardo is leaving office with the same housing shortage, eviction crisis and cost-of-living complaints he inherited four years ago — and three vetoed bills that specifically targeted those problems sitting in the Legislature’s own record. Whether Ford’s promised emergency declaration changes any of that starts the day he’s sworn in, not the day he made the promise.
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