A Worsening Housing Outlook and What Washington Must Do

People across the country are sending a clear message to policymakers: the nation’s housing cost crisis is making life increasingly unaffordable in every state.

The question is whether our nation’s political leadership is listening.

A new national survey commissioned by the Housing Partnership Network (HPN) and developed by the University of Florida’s Center for Public Interest Communications finds that nearly three in four Americans say housing affordability has worsened in their communities, and nearly half are moderately or extremely concerned about their own ability to pay for housing. What’s notable is how universal this concern is: this anxiety cuts across party lines, regions, and income levels, signaling a rare point of national consensus that demands federal leadership. There are strong indications that voters in this year’s elections were strongly motivated by housing affordability and that these anxieties will continue to be a driver in the 2026 midterm elections.

When the price tag to build and operate housing far outpaces what tens of millions of people can pay, whole swaths of our country are left behind—hardworking Americans from all kinds of communities. The National Association of Home Builders has found that more than 100 million American households are unable to afford a median-priced home – a staggering number. The private market cannot address this difficult reality on its own. It is simply unreasonable to expect private investors to finance housing for people who cannot afford the real cost to buy or rent those homes. We need public policy that facilitates the flow of private capital to meet the housing needs of families and seniors with low and moderate incomes.

Some in Congress have recognized the strain. Members from both sides of the aisle have advocated to improve and protect critical programs that seed housing development activity, incentivize private investment, and make it possible for families and seniors to find homes near the jobs and services they need. There are also important efforts to reduce the cost of federal regulations that limit the potential of federal programs aimed at improving housing affordability. Unfortunately, in 2025, Congressional leadership was unable to come to an agreement on a wide range of proposals aimed at addressing housing affordability. Congress has shown the ability to propose real solutions but has not yet demonstrated the political will to enact them.

In the meantime, the Administration has yet to get serious about addressing housing costs. The Administration proposed a 50-year mortgage, an idea that would raise rather than lower the cost to buy a home, and has made cuts to programs and federal staffing that serve to increase costs and limit housing opportunities.

It is time for the Administration to support bipartisan strategies that draw on the deep experience of local housing leaders and will deliver benefits long into the future, including the following.

• Strengthening the infrastructure for Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) projects. Congress wisely included a historic expansion of the LIHTC program in the tax bill passed last summer, which has the potential to expand existing development activity by more than 1.2 million affordable housing units over the next 10 years. This was an important step toward addressing the housing cost crisis; however, the Administration’s proposals would undercut the LIHTC.
  
  
• Enacting common sense improvements to outdated housing policies. Many federal housing policies have proven their worth over the years, both in terms of financial performance and impact. Some of these policies also need improvement to ramp up their efficiency and effectiveness. For instance, Reps. Flood (R-NE) and Cleaver (D-MO) modeled serious, bipartisan collaboration in developing the HOME Reform Act, a bill that would improve the largest federal block grant exclusively focused on the production of affordable housing and reduce regulatory burden. Critically, affordable housing developers with direct experience using HOME had the opportunity to provide input that is reflected in the final bill. This proposal would cut red tape and increase flexibility for states/localities, which would thereby help boost housing development and supply.
  
  
• Reining in good intentions gone awry. There are many regulatory requirements layered onto federal affordable programs that, while they have laudable goals, dramatically increase the cost of housing and slow the pace of development. Rules aimed at ensuring environmental protection, living wages and buying American-made products, in reality, produce limited gains for the environment, workers, and U.S. manufacturers, but are nevertheless fiercely protected by constituencies that view any changes as an assault on their specific priorities. We need a public conversation about the balance between delivering affordability and achieving these other important public benefits.
  
  
• Providing certainty about federal housing resources. The current Administration has slowed or frozen funding for affordable housing that has already been made available by Congress while proposing dramatic cuts to future authorizations. At the same time, the Administration has fired, or threatened to fire, federal personnel at agencies critical to housing, including the Treasury Department, HUD, and USDA Rural Development. This all creates uncertainty for housing investors and developers, and the result is a slowdown in affordable housing investment and production. Much like the threat of tariffs, which drove up construction costs even before implementation, the lack of certainty about public resources for housing makes it more difficult to address the housing cost crisis.
  
  

In all of this, presidential leadership matters. Affordable housing supports economic growth in all types of communities--rural, urban, and suburban. Failure to address housing affordability will cost local economies billions of dollars in tax receipts and jobs, as it leaves our friends and neighbors struggling to build a good quality of life.

It is the teacher who cannot afford to live in the same county as his students, even though he is still paying half of his income for housing. It is the nurse who turns down a job in a community that desperately needs health care workers because she can’t afford to live nearby. It is the retail service worker who cannot afford to rent a decent home, leaving her to crowd her children into a substandard apartment. And it is the aging veteran battling PTSD and facing homelessness, without the capacity to find the housing or health care he needs.

Heading into 2026, the path forward is within reach. HPN, our members, and partners across the sector are ready to work alongside Congress and the Administration to advance pragmatic legislation and regulatory reforms that will lower housing costs for millions of Americans. By aligning federal policy with practitioner expertise, we can scale production, preserve existing homes, and strengthen the housing system that families rely on.