What is the biggest fix the U.S. needs when it comes to housing policy?

Our country needs to increase the supply of available housing for Americans of all income levels.

Yet, too often, our communities build paper walls of regulation that prevent the construction of new homes. These burdensome local zoning and land use policies drive up the cost of housing and stifle the mobility of families and workers.

Local municipalities ultimately have the right to set housing policy, but taxpayers deserve more information on how these policies affect them.

I’ve introduced the Identifying Regulatory Barriers to Housing Supply Act to encourage local communities to cut burdensome regulations, promote more housing options and bring a new level of transparency to the community development process.

The legislation would require recipients of federal Community Development Block Grant dollars to report on whether they have already adopted less burdensome land use policies or submit a plan for implementing these policies. It conditions federal funds on transparency regarding the rationale for choosing whether to remove or reform harmful land use regulations.

By encouraging more transparency from cities, towns and rural areas — without encroaching on the rights of states and localities — this bill will better ensure communities do their part to increase housing supply and make housing more affordable.

Republican Sen. Todd Young represents Indiana in the U.S. Senate.

Bold, sustained federal investment in housing is overdue. For too long, we’ve relied on the private market to solve a crisis it helped create but can’t fix on its own. It’s time for a new approach, especially as our nation’s affordable housing and homelessness crisis worsens under President Donald Trump and Republican leadership.

It’s time for federal investments in affordable housing to finally meet the growing needs of the country. That’s why I’ve crafted a bold legislative package that meets this moment.

My groundbreaking housing package includes: the Housing Crisis Response Act, the Ending Homelessness Act and the Downpayment Toward Equity Act. Together, these bills represent the single largest and most comprehensive investment in affordable housing in U.S. history and would end homelessness, boost the affordable housing supply and restore the American Dream of homeownership.

But to make this work, we must also undo the damage of the past nine months. President Trump has gutted fair housing rights and raided critical housing funds. We need to reverse that destruction and fully replenish these critical housing programs.

With real leadership and the political will to act, we can ensure every American has access to safe, fair and affordable housing.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, who represents California’s 43rd Congressional District, is the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.

One of the boldest ideas to address the affordability crisis is also one of the simplest and oldest, dating back to economist Henry George in 1879. The idea is to tax the value of land but not the buildings that sit on that land. Much of the rise in housing prices is rooted in land prices. By taxing land (but not buildings), governments could capture the windfalls that property owners receive from what happens around them, while owners would keep the gains they earn by building or improving structures. As a result, a land tax would discourage speculators from hoarding undeveloped land and encourage them to develop their parcels to the fullest extent possible.

Advances in data and valuation models now make it far easier to assess land values separately from buildings, addressing a long-standing barrier to implementation. The biggest remaining hurdle to adopting land taxes is political, given that some owners will lose from the transition. But some 700 cities across the world have managed a partial adoption of the idea through a split-rate tax system in which the tax rate levied on the value of land is higher than that on the value of buildings. A split-rate tax would involve a less dramatic shift and yet would offer many of the same advantages as a land-only tax.

Ingrid Gould Ellen is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at NYU Wagner and director of the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

To make housing more affordable in more places, we need to build more types of housing in more places. To do that, we need to eliminate the stranglehold that local governments have on producing more homes. In several states with acute housing affordability problems, including New York and California, state governments are trying (with success, at times) to take power away from local governments by mandating that all jurisdictions strip away some of their most onerous barriers to housing. Uniform standards are necessary at the state level because local governments are not typically motivated to allow more homes to be built in their backyards. Perverse incentives create bad policies, like ubiquitous single-family zoning, that result in poor housing production numbers throughout the country. From sea to shining sea — San Francisco to Huntington Beach to Long Island to Westchester County — cities set up intractable barriers to making housing possible and affordable. State governments are a step or two removed from the local development fights that fill the days of mayors and council members, and are thus more insulated from the political backlash that can accompany decisions to build more homes.

Once we reduce the barriers to building more homes, we can also better help those in need who cannot afford housing at any price. Those barriers stand in the way of housing for people experiencing homelessness and make housing more expensive to subsidize.

Michael Lens is a professor of urban planning and public policy, chair of the Luskin Undergraduate Program, and associate faculty director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA.

While there is no magic bullet to end America’s housing affordability crisis, government efforts to lower 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yields — the starting point for mortgage rates — could meaningfully help.

Lower mortgage rates would put more homes within financial reach of more Americans. As of last year, nearly three out of four home purchases required a mortgage. At the same time, many homeowners today who bought years ago at lower rates are reluctant to sell and realize the difference in rates as part of what they can afford to buy next. That limits housing supply, which in turn keeps prices elevated.

Policymakers have unintentionally exacerbated housing risks this year. The “Big, Beautiful Bill” increases needed bond supply to fund growing deficits. Without a commensurate increase in demand, yields will rise and lift mortgage rates. At the same time, tariff-driven inflation may result in monetary policy staying tighter than it would otherwise. Higher short-term policy interest rates support longer-term yields as well.

Policymakers who view housing as a fundamental concern for constituents should analyze risks to Treasury bond yields as part of their deliberations. Actions that reduce bond supply or slow inflation pressures — likely to help lower mortgage rates — should be prioritized.

Rebecca Patterson is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, focusing on how policy, economies and financial markets interact.

In my 10-plus years of advocating for housing at local and state governments, the most effective incentive I have seen for localities to build housing is money.

Local electeds will deploy all of their leadership tools when (1) they believe that housing is revenue positive for their city and (2) they are in a position where they feel it’s their responsibility to raise money for the city. For example, as city council members become mayors, they suddenly become pro-housing because they become responsible for balancing the city budget.

The biggest fix that federal or state governments could offer to local governments would be to financially reward them for adding population without causing overcrowded living conditions. There’s only one way to increase population while keeping the local crowding metric steady — and that is to build housing. Meanwhile, representatives can advertise that they are bringing resources to their constituent cities.

If we want communities to feel like population growth is good, it has to actually make sense for the communities financially.

Sonja Trauss is executive director of YIMBY Law.

The best indicator that the nation is making progress on housing shortages would be if homelessness were to start declining. And reducing homelessness requires two commitments across all levels of government.

First is to equip communities to monitor and adapt their housing and related programs and policies in real time so they can promote steady reductions in homelessness. Table stakes include having community-wide, person-specific, current information on those entering and exiting homelessness to learn what is contributing to progress — slowing “inflow” into homelessness and accelerating “outflow” to stable housing — and what isn’t. This information also enables the collaboration required among nonprofit, government, faith-based, landlord, employer and health care groups to achieve community-wide outcomes.

Second is building housing that everyone can afford. Homelessness is the most visible and urgent measure of our national housing shortage. Reforms that lead to more homes built — including changes to restrictive zoning, outdated building codes and occupancy regulations, and streamlining permitting — will help communities create housing options at a range of prices. So that no one is left out, financing tools and incentives must enable a broad mix of choices — including single-room occupancy and co-living arrangements that create safe, dignified options for single adults with limited means, our aging population and working families.

A focus on making homelessness rare and brief can drive local housing systems that benefit everyone.

Rosanne Haggerty is president and CEO of Community Solutions.

Rising housing costs are primarily driven by the simple fact that we have more than 2 million fewer homes than we need — because, in many places, it’s too difficult and too expensive to build more housing.

The federal government must treat this as a crisis and launch an all-hands-on-deck initiative to fix it. For the highest-cost cities, we should offer a simple deal: If you build more housing — by removing barriers to new construction and expanding financing — the federal government will provide new resources to further boost supply and deliver short-term rent relief to residents. If you don’t, you lose access to certain federal grants, because taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing cities that refuse to invest in their own growth.

Washington should also scale-up effective programs that efficiently build more units and reduce costs — like the mixed-income public housing program pioneered in Montgomery County, Maryland, and elsewhere — by offering low-cost construction capital in exchange for affordability. And the federal government should ramp-up efforts to expand the production of manufactured starter homes by leveraging our buying power and simplifying building codes.

The American people are tired of excuses, and it’s time for the federal government to step up.

Neera Tanden is the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and the CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

More than 40 million households struggle to find decent-quality homes that fit their budgets. To make housing more affordable, policymakers must make it easier to build homes of all shapes and sizes.

Local governments should reform inflexible, outdated regulations that limit Americans’ choices. For example, more than three-quarters of urban and suburban land is reserved exclusively for single-family detached homes — the most expensive home. Legalizing diverse housing types, such as accessory dwelling units, townhouses and apartment buildings, would unlock housing capacity and improve affordability.

Equally important to changing rules on paper, states and localities should make the building process shorter, simpler and more transparent. Complex processes — such as requiring multiple public hearings or lengthy environmental reviews — make new housing more expensive.

The good news is that state and local governments are adopting new policies to encourage housing production — with strong bipartisan support. In 2025, more than 30 states enacted housing supply bills, including Maine, Montana, Texas and Washington.

The federal government can support states and localities by providing research and technical assistance. By evaluating state and local reforms, the Department of Housing and Urban Development can learn what works and what doesn’t in different housing markets and share evidence-based “best practices.”

Jenny Schuetz leads Arnold Ventures’ efforts to identify and enact policies that can successfully expand housing supply. She has more than 25 years of experience in housing policy as a professor, economist and author. (Disclosure: Arnold Ventures provides financial support for NOTUS’ Washington Bureau Initiative.)

The solution is the kitchen sink, not a silver bullet. We need an all-of-the-above approach to housing policy.

There are many problems with housing markets and policy — and many tools to fix them. In recent years, debates over zoning and land use regulations have dominated the conversation, with advocates proposing to loosen these rules — or even abolish zoning altogether.

Zoning and land use regulations are certainly a problem in some places, but they aren’t always a problem, and they aren’t the only problem. In communities where housing supply and affordability are a concern, inadequate transit systems, insufficient stormwater drainage and other infrastructure limits to growth may play a role. Workforce shortages and material costs can slow building. Price coordination can increase rents. The Federal Reserve’s policy choices shape mortgage rates and people’s willingness to sell or buy. The list goes on.

Policymakers should widen their aperture and look beyond zoning. They could adopt an industrial policy for housing, including supporting modular housing and standardized designs; create new public options for housing; institute tax policies that discourage vacancies and benefit homeowners; regulate price collusion; and even use zoning to enhance density. If policymakers really care about housing, they should take an active, all-of-the-above approach, rather than assume a single fix will solve the problem.

Ganesh Sitaraman is a professor at Vanderbilt Law School and director of the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator. He is the co-author of a paper on post-neoliberal housing policy ideas.