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A severe housing shortage has led to a serious housing crisis across the country.
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Record numbers of Americans are spending more on their mortgage or rent than they can afford.
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Biden and Trump offer differing approaches to federal housing policy.
The United States is facing a housing crisis. A severe housing shortage, high interest rates, and high construction costs are causing record numbers of Americans to spend more than they can afford on housing and become homeless.
The economy will likely be the focus of this week’s first presidential debate. Former President Donald Trump has vowed to specifically attack President Joe Biden on inflation. And Trump has repeatedly accused his successor of not doing enough to control housing costs.
Since taking office, Biden has pursued a raft of policies to encourage the construction and preservation of affordable housing, loosen regulations restricting housing construction and subsidize homeownership and rental costs. As president, Trump has proposed massive cuts to federal housing aid for the neediest households and rolled back some fair housing policies, while pushing states and cities to enact a number of zoning reforms — a goal that progressives also tend to supports.
There have been some efforts at the federal level to address the housing crisis. In general, Republicans are content with states and local governments controlling housing policy, while Democrats have traditionally been more supportive of federal subsidies and interventions.
But lawmakers across the ideological spectrum are quick to admit that the country is facing a crisis. Home prices have risen 47% since the pandemic, mortgage rates are hovering around 7% and more than half of renters are spending more than 30% of their income on housing, putting pressure on them, according to a new Harvard study. state report. of American homes. Even as the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates, demand and prices have remained high, keeping housing inflation stubbornly high.
Americans are increasingly concerned about it. American adults named housing costs as their second most pressing financial issue in a recent Gallup poll. The concern is bipartisan, although more pronounced among Democrats. Three in four American adults – 83% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans – say the lack of affordable housing is a “significant” problem.
Where Biden stands
As president, Biden has pursued a series of pro-housing policies and has generally spoken out in favor of greater federal participation in housing policy.
One such policy initiative was the Housing Supply Action plan, which uses federal grants and loans to incentivize states and cities to relax land use regulations and facilitate new construction. The administration has also launched a slew of initiatives to increase the supply of affordable housing, including encouraging the conversion of office buildings into housing with billions of dollars in federal grants and loans, and boosting support for manufactured housing.
Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal, which represents something of a wish list of administration priorities but requires action from an often gridlocked Congress to become law, includes $258 billion for housing initiatives, including tax breaks for first-time homebuyers, homeowners selling their starter homes , and those who build or renovate starter homes, and an expansion of the Housing Tax Credit for low incomes and housing choice vouchers for tenants.
Biden has spoken about housing at the State of the Union and on the campaign trail, including in Nevada, which is facing an especially serious affordability crisis. “If inflation continues to fall – and that is expected to happen – mortgage rates will also fall, but I am not going to wait,” he said during a speech in Las Vegas in March.
In another indication that the White House is focusing on housing policy as the election approaches, Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this week announced $85 million in funding for 21 cities to support affordable housing development and construction. of supporting infrastructure, including electricity lines. and water pipe.
Some of Biden’s most far-reaching policies have been removed from the Inflation Reduction Act, and still others are unlikely to make it through Congress, where Republicans have opposed the vast majority of Democrats’ housing proposals.
While some housing policy experts have praised the Biden administration’s policies, many of the same experts say its actions do not go far enough to address the crisis.
Where Trump stands
As president, Trump did not implement many policies directly aimed at making housing more affordable. During his time in office, Trump’s proposed budgets included significant cuts to agencies that provide federal housing subsidies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development. His proposed 2021 budget would have cut housing and community development assistance — including shrinking the housing voucher program and cutting public housing funds — by about 15%, without taking inflation into account, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Trump has rolled back some fair housing protections, including setting a higher bar for proving housing discrimination and eliminating an Obama-era rule intended to reduce racial segregation. Trump claimed that Biden wanted to “abolish” the suburbs and assured suburban residents that they would “no longer be inconvenienced or financially harmed by letting low-income housing be built in your neighborhood” after he dismantled the Obama rule, which Biden later reinstated. The Trump administration also created “Opportunity Zones,” intended to encourage companies to invest in low-income neighborhoods. But the program has done little to boost affordable housing.
Trump has not talked much about housing policy during his campaign, despite arguing that Biden has not done enough to control housing costs. Last year, in a video on Truth Social, he unveiled a vague proposal to build 10 new U.S. cities on federal land as a way to give American families “a new chance at homeownership.”
In another video, titled “Ending the Nightmare of the Homeless, Drug Addicts, and Dangerably Deranged,” Trump said he would “ban urban camping” in an effort to criminalize unsheltered homelessness. Trump has also promised to crack down on immigration, which his campaign says will ease pressure on the housing market. Campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to NPR that Trump would “stop the unsustainable invasion of illegal aliens that is driving up housing costs, cut taxes for American families, [and] eliminate expensive regulations.”
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