Two ideas that could encourage housing construction

By Ezra Klein / The New York Times

The housing market keeps getting worse. Home prices have risen more than 50 percent since the pandemic. About a third of Americans households now spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. In 2014, the median age of a first-time homebuyer was 31. In 2025, it was 40 — the highest on record.

The core of the problem is simple: Too much money chasing too few homes. How many more homes does America need? I’ve seen estimates ranging from 2 million to 5 million. It’s a shortage decades in the making — and one we’re nowhere near on track to solving. In 2025, America built fewer homes per 100,000 people than it did in 2005, 1995, 1985 or 1975.

Every White House since President Barack Obama’s administration has recognized the need to build more homes but the results, under both Democrats and Republicans, have been anemic. Housing is a hard problem to solve from the Oval Office. Zoning and building rules are set at the state and local levels. Interest rates are set by the Federal Reserve. In 2024, Kamala Harris promised to build 3 million new homes and released a plan that no housing expert I spoke to thought could come anywhere near achieving that goal.

“The thing that I think we learned is that federal housing policy is stuck in a really weak equilibrium,” said Jared Bernstein, who led President Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. “There is just far too little asked of cities and states. They won’t do much to push back on the barriers that are blocking affordable housing.”

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-two-ideas-that-could-encourage-housing-construction/