To My Fellow Americans,
There’s something happening across our entire country that doesn’t take a pollster, an economist, or a politician to explain. All we have to do is talk to a young couple trying to buy their first home, or ask parents if they think their kids will ever be able to afford one.
Or talk to someone who bought a house ten years ago. They look at what it’s supposedly worth today and wonder who on earth could afford to buy it from them.
Housing has drifted completely out of reach for ordinary families – and we have to start figuring out why.
A recent report by OpenTheBooks (OTB) gives us a good place to start. Looking at the decade from 2015 to 2024, researchers tracked state-level household income growth against home price increases using Census Bureau and Federal Housing Finance Agency data.
Their finding was evident: Home prices grew faster than median household incomes in all 50 states. And in 48 of those states, that gap was in the double digits.
That headline alone should wake everyone up. But what makes the data even more eye-opening is where some of the biggest gaps occurred: Idaho, Florida, Utah, Tennessee, and Arizona.
These aren’t the states people would usually point to when talking about heavy regulation or skyrocketing costs. Many of them built their reputations on low taxes, growth, and business-friendly policies. That right there destroys the easy “red state vs. blue state” talking point.
Migration Is Part of the Story – Not the Whole Story
Now, a lot of people will see those numbers and say: “Well, of course houses got expensive in Florida, Idaho, and Tennessee. Half of California and New York packed up and moved there.”
And there’s truth to that. Interstate moving spiked during the pandemic. U.S. Census data shows nearly 7.9 million Americans moved state to state in 2021, up from 7.4 million in 2019. By 2022, that number hit 8.2 million, with huge shifts out of high-cost states and into the South and Mountain West.
When 10,000 new families move into a town that doesn’t have enough roofs to cover them, prices shoot up. That’s not partisan politics; that’s basic supply and demand.
But migration doesn’t close the case on housing policy. It brings us to the bigger, more important question: Why couldn’t the supply of houses keep up when demand soared?
When everyone suddenly wants a new car, a TV, or a refrigerator, factories ramp up production to make more. Housing doesn’t work that way – it’s way more complicated.
Before a builder can put up a single house, townhome, or apartment building, they have to navigate a maze:
Zoning and rezoning hurdles
Permits and infrastructure connections
Environmental reviews and density limits
Minimum lot sizes and parking mandates
Impact fees and local board approvals
Some will argue these rules exist for good reasons – and maybe so. But every single requirement adds time, paperwork, and money. Stack up enough delays and fees, and builders simply can’t make the math work to build starter homes.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has pointed this out in its own research for years: strict zoning and slow permitting drive limited supply and high costs.
So, while migration drove up demand, in many communities, land-use rules, permitting delays, and other constraints made it slower and more expensive for supply to respond.
The $460 Billion Question
This is where the OTB report gets really interesting.
Their researchers tracked $460 billion in federal spending and credit programs across 18 major HUD affordability and low-income housing programs between 2015 and 2024. Then they compared those programs against state-level housing affordability gaps.
The statistical connection between the two was practically zero, which means the math showed that states receiving massive amounts of HUD money didn’t see better housing affordability than states receiving far less.
To be fair, we have to be careful about what that proves. It doesn’t mean Washington burned $460 billion for nothing. Much of HUD’s budget goes toward rental vouchers, homelessness prevention, and supportive housing for low-income families – not necessarily lowering the price of a suburban starter home. Those programs should be judged on whether they help the vulnerable people they were built to serve. Nor does it mean HUD spending caused the price hikes.
But it does raise a fair question that every taxpayer deserves an answer to: After spending hundreds of billions of dollars, what measurable results did the American public actually get?
Nobody Owns the Outcome
Housing is a prime example of how fragmented our government has gotten. Everyone has enough power to mess with the system, but nobody takes responsibility for the final result.
Look at how the deck is stacked:
The Federal Government hands out subsidies, backs mortgages, and influences credit markets. (The Congressional Budget Office projects around $1.6 trillion in federal housing loans and mortgage guarantees in 2026, mostly through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.)
Federal Reserve policy strongly influences borrowing conditions, while mortgage rates are set in financial markets tied to yields and mortgage-backed securities.
State Governments set the legal rules for how land can and can’t be used.
Cities and Counties control the local zoning maps, permit approvals, and building rules.
Private Builders and Banks decide what makes financial sense to construct and fund.
When demand surges and prices skyrocket, supply stays stuck.
What’s the official response? Congress creates another subsidy. States pass another tax incentive. Localities add another affordable housing mandate.
And somehow, the house still costs more. Everyone points fingers, but nobody owns the outcome.
Before We Pretend This Is Simple
At this point, a few fair objections are worth dealing with directly.
“Gary, you’re blaming zoning for everything.”
No. Housing prices aren’t caused by just one thing. Land costs matter. Labor and materials matter. Interest rates matter. Insurance and property taxes matter. Population growth and migration matter. Geography matters. On top of all that, millions of homeowners with low-rate mortgages have chosen not to sell, locking up existing housing supply.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates home prices rose an average of 10.2% per year between 2020 and 2023 because surging demand slammed directly into a wall of limited inventory.
So, this isn’t an argument that zoning caused the entire housing crisis single-handedly. It’s an argument that when demand shoots up, government shouldn’t make it needlessly hard for supply to respond. There’s a big difference.
“But Gary, local control matters.”
Absolutely. I don’t want Washington deciding what gets built in my neighborhood, and I doubt you do either.
But local control shouldn’t mean local immunity from real-world consequences. Cities and counties get their powers from state law. When dozens of local boards independently block new construction, those decisions pile up into a statewide crisis involving skyrocketing prices, brutal commutes, labor shortages, and stalled economic growth.
The answer isn’t for the state capital to draw every local neighborhood map either. The answer is for states to establish clear, fair “rules of the road” while giving communities freedom inside those boundaries.
That’s federalism, too. Authority stays close to the people, but the government exercising that power remains accountable for the results.
“Developers aren’t going to build cheap houses out of the goodness of their hearts.”
Correct. Developers aren’t charities. They’re businesses and they build what makes economic sense.
And that’s a real issue. When land is expensive, minimum lot sizes are huge, permits take months or years, parking rules are excessive, and local fees keep piling up, the math forces builders to build a $600,000 house instead of a $275,000 starter home.
Stripping away unnecessary red tape doesn’t guarantee a developer will magically build a $200,000 house overnight. But it does do something far more practical: it gives smaller, less expensive homes a fighting chance to make financial sense. That includes townhouses, duplexes, garage apartments, smaller lots, modular homes, and converted commercial spaces.
We don’t need government dictating what builders can make. We just need government to stop making the most expensive option the only one that works on paper.
“What about Wall Street corporations buying up all the houses?”
That’s a legitimate concern, especially in certain parts of the country. Large investment companies have bought up thousands of single-family homes and converted them into rentals, particularly across the southern states from coast to coast – the Sun Belt.
But we also need perspective. A 2026 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study across six major metro areas found large institutional investors owned between 1% and 3% of all single-family homes in those markets – though their share of the rental market was much higher in specific neighborhoods.
So, while Wall Street buying can make local conditions tougher in certain spots, it doesn’t fully explain a housing affordability crisis hitting all 50 states. Once again: there isn’t just one villain.
“But Gary, what about immigration? Isn’t that driving housing costs too?”
Yes, and any rational person will admit that. Immigration affects housing demand, and pretending otherwise is simply foolish.
This is generally where Americans will pull out their “team” jerseys and talk politics, but the economics aren’t that mysterious: more people = more places needed to live. That applies whether the new resident came from California, Guatemala, New York, Venezuela, Ohio, or anywhere else.
The large immigration surge that began in 2021 did increase housing demand; no question. The CBO concluded that the surge increased the number of households, worsened the housing shortage in the short term, and put additional upward pressure on rents and home prices – especially in communities where zoning, land-use restrictions, or geography prevent housing supply from expanding quickly.
So, anyone saying immigration has nothing to do with housing affordability is ignoring economic facts. But we should also be careful about going too far in the other direction.
You’ll sometimes hear that immigrants are consuming America’s entire supply of affordable housing, often with two or three families packed into a single house. But if three families share one house, they’re occupying one housing unit, not three. Plus, CBO notes that many recent immigrants initially stay with family, friends, or in temporary housing rather than immediately forming separate households. Housing pressure grows over time as those individuals establish themselves and move into apartments or homes of their own.
Additionally, Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that foreign-born households accounted for about 25 percent of household growth between 2019 and 2023. In other words, immigration contributed significantly to demand, but 75 percent of household growth during that period still came from the native-born population. Moreover, the major run-up in home prices began during the pandemic, before international migration accelerated in 2022 and 2023.
And there is yet another wrinkle: immigrants don’t only consume housing – they help build it. In 2023, immigrants represented roughly one-third of workers in construction trades nationally, with substantially higher shares in several of the fastest-growing states.
Finally, net international migration fell sharply in 2025 and 2026 according to Harvard’s 2026 data, yet America’s housing affordability problems are still here.
The responsible position is straightforward: control the border and enforce immigration law but recognize that whatever population America admits legally must be planned for. Population growth matters, immigration matters, domestic migration matters, household formation matters, interest rates matter, and housing supply matters. The mistake is picking the single factor that fits our politics while ignoring all the others.
“Why not just give first-time buyers down payment assistance?”
I tend to agree. There’s nothing wrong with helping qualified working families clear a financial hurdle to buy a home. But we have to think strategically, at least 2-3 moves ahead of the game.
If ten families are competing for five starter homes, giving all ten of them a check doesn’t magically create a sixth house. It just gives someone more cash to win a bidding war. So, unless supply can actually grow, we are still fighting over the exact same five houses.
Down payment assistance can help people compete; supply-side reform creates actual places for them to live. Serious housing policy understands the difference.
So How Do We Actually Fix It?
Here’s where politicians usually lose most of us. Anyone can describe a problem, and anyone can announce some grand plan that will fix it all, but the real challenge is turning good intentions into actual changes on the ground.
The answer starts with a simple framework: Three levels of government. Three distinct jobs. One public scorecard.
Step 1: Measure the Problem Locally
Before launching another program, states need an honest picture of what their housing market actually looks like – county by county and city by city:
How long does it take to get a permit approved?
What do development fees actually cost?
How many new homes are getting built versus local population growth?
How fast are rents and home prices rising compared to local paychecks?
Where is water, sewer, and road capacity maxed out?
Publish those numbers online where taxpayers can see them. You can’t hold anyone accountable if you don’t know where you started.
Step 2: Washington Measures What Washington Spends
Congress needs to give every federal housing program a clear mission and a few plain metrics to judge success – then post those results publicly. Focus on real outcomes, not how much taxpayer money was handed out:
Homelessness programs should be judged by whether people stay housed long-term.
Homebuyer assistance should be judged by whether families sustainably build equity over time.
Supply incentives should be judged by how many homes actually get built, how long it took, and what it cost.
If a program consistently fails, fix it, consolidate it, or shut it down.
Congress actually took a step in this direction when the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act was signed into law in July 2026. That law expands supply, streamlines reviews, supports manufactured housing, and curbs large institutional buying.
That’s a good step, but it’s not “fire-and-forget” – we have to track the results. Five years from now, taxpayers should be able to look at that law and answer a simple question: Did it actually work? Passing a bill isn’t the finish line – it’s the green flag.
Step 3: States Set the Rules of the Road
States should review local housing barriers and set a basic floor for predictability:
Projects that follow existing zoning rules should get straightforward, “by-right” approvals (if a builder’s plans follow all city/county written rules, they must be granted a permit with no arbitrary or “good ole boys” delays).
Permitting must have firm, published deadlines.
Local governments must clearly disclose all development fees upfront.
States should make it easier to build accessory dwelling units, townhomes, modular housing, and adaptive reuses.
This isn’t taking away local control. It’s making local control transparent and fair.
Step 4: Local Governments Make Growth Predictable
This is where homes actually get built or blocked. Every community should show residents and builders where growth is planned, what can be built, what infrastructure is needed, and what the rules are.
If a project follows the rules, getting approved shouldn’t require a two-year political battle. Community members should help write the long-term plan, but once the rules are set, local leaders need to stick to them.
Predictability works for everyone: residents know what can happen nearby, builders know if a project makes financial sense before spending millions, and local boards can’t rewrite the rules based on who shows up angry to a Wednesday night meeting.
Step 5: Growth Pays Its Fair Share – But Only Its Fair Share
The infrastructure argument is completely valid. New homes bring more students, more traffic, higher water usage, and heavier demands on public safety. (I’m looking at you Frederick County, VA)
So lay out the costs transparently:
If 2,000 new homes require a new water line or school expansion, calculate the exact cost.
Separate what is directly caused by the new development from what benefits the existing town.
Divide the bill fairly.
Impact fees shouldn’t be used as a stealth tax to keep newcomers out, nor should existing residents be forced to foot the bill for every bit of new expansion. Growth should help pay for growth – fairly, transparently, and tied directly to actual infrastructure needs.
Step 6: Bring Back the Bottom Rung
For decades, the American housing market worked like a ladder. You started small – a modest rancher, a small Cape Cod, a townhouse, or a home that needed some work. You built equity, and eventually, you moved up.
We need that bottom rung back.
That means allowing more diverse housing types in smart locations. It means embracing modern manufactured and modular builds, smaller homes on smaller lots, and converting empty shopping centers or office spaces where it makes sense.
And it means accepting an uncomfortable reality: A healthy housing market can’t guarantee ever-rising values for current owners alongside permanently affordable prices for the next generation. Those two goals eventually collide.
A house should be a place to live and a way to build security over time. But an economy that requires every generation to pay dramatically more than the last for the exact same starter home simply isn’t sustainable.
Step 7: Publish an Annual Scorecard
Then comes the part government usually tries to avoid: keeping score.
Publish a simple, single-page scorecard every year for every state and major locality:
Home price growth vs. local income growth
Rent burdens on average paychecks
Permits issued vs. completed homes
Average approval times
Local infrastructure capacity
Total housing spending vs. measurable real-world outcomes
Don’t change the metrics when the numbers look bad, and don’t hide them in a 400-page report. Put them on one page online, and let voters judge whether their government is actually delivering.
Washington Has Started – Now We Hold Them to It
This piece started with an OpenTheBooks analysis covering 2015 through 2024. But housing policy didn’t stop there.
With the passage of the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act in July 2026, parts of these reforms are no longer theoretical – they’re official federal policy. That makes accountability more critical than ever. Instead of arguing forever over party talking points, we now have concrete measures to track:
Did permitting and construction actually get easier?
Are more starter and modular homes hitting the market?
Did restricting Wall Street buyers open up doors for real families?
Did federal dollars produce measurable results?
These are the exact questions we need to ask candidates in November – and hold officials to results long after election day.
Passing new housing laws isn’t the goal. Making housing attainable for working families is. And those two things aren’t the same.
What to Ask on Election Day
On Tuesday, November 3, 2026, Americans will go to the polls to elect the entire U.S. House of Representatives and a third of the U.S. Senate. And, depending on where you live, you’ll also be voting on state legislators, county boards, city councils, and local referendums.
When people think about housing, they often look straight to Washington. But your local mayor, city council member, or county supervisor has far more power over whether a neighborhood of starter homes gets built than anyone in the U.S. Senate.
So, instead of accepting generic campaign promises to “make housing affordable,” we should be asking direct questions at town halls:
To Federal Candidates: Which federal housing programs are actually working, how do you measure that, and which ones would you end? What is Washington’s actual job here?
To State Candidates: When should the state step in on local land-use rules, and when should it back off? How do we increase supply without imposing one-size-fits-all mandates?
To Local Candidates: Which specific local regulations make housing needlessly expensive here? Which rules serve a genuine purpose, and which ones are just blocking growth?
To Every Candidate: How will you measure whether your housing policies actually worked five years from now?
These aren’t Republican or Democratic questions. They are serious questions that deserve serious answers.
Real Accountability
We often talk about federalism as a principle to keep Washington’s power in check and while that’s part of it, the other half is accountability.
If Washington spends hundreds of billions, Congress should prove what it accomplished.
If a state delegates land-use powers to towns, legislators should monitor what those rules are doing to young families.
If a county board blocks new construction, local officials should explain the consequences to buyers getting priced out.
No elected official should get to point fingers forever. The people paying the price aren’t federal bureaucrats, zoning boards, or economists.
It’s the 28-year-old couple sitting at the kitchen table staring at a mortgage calculator. It’s the family watching rent eat up half their paycheck. It’s the parent wondering if their adult children will have to move three states away just to buy a starter home.
We don’t need the federal government to guarantee everyone a house, and we don’t need Washington planning our neighborhoods. What we need is much simpler:
Let supply respond when demand grows.
Protect people who genuinely need help.
Build the infrastructure growing communities need.
Cut rules that drive up costs without adding real value.
Judge government programs on real-world results.
After decades of promises, subsidies, and endless regulations, Americans deserve to know who is responsible and whether what they’re doing truly works.
That is what accountability looks like. And that is what real governance is supposed to deliver.
Gary Mullins (Libertas)
The Publius Project
Sources
OpenTheBooks – Extreme Makeover: American Dream Edition? Government Intervention, Affordability, and the Dream of Home Ownership, 2026. Principal report behind this article, including the 2015–2024 comparison of household-income growth and home-price growth, analysis of approximately $460 billion in HUD program spending, and the state-level regression analysis.
OpenTheBooks – “Extreme Makeover: American Dream Edition?”, August 23, 2026. Summary and discussion accompanying the full OpenTheBooks housing report.
U.S. Census Bureau – American Community Survey, Table S1901: Income in the Past 12 Months. State-level median household income data used in comparisons of income and housing-price growth.
U.S. Census Bureau – “Number and Percentage of State-to-State Movers Increased Between 2021 and 2022,” November 21, 2023. Data on interstate migration, including increased state-to-state movement during and following the pandemic.
Federal Housing Finance Agency – FHFA House Price Index. Federal data measuring changes in single-family home prices nationally and by state using repeat-property transactions.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development – Eliminating Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing: Federal, State, Local, and Tribal Opportunities, January 2021. HUD review of zoning, permitting, fees, land-use regulations, and other governmental barriers that can constrain housing supply and increase development costs.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development – Housing Choice Voucher Program. HUD description of the federal rental-assistance program and the populations it is designed to serve, illustrating why HUD programs should be evaluated according to their individual missions rather than solely against home-purchase prices.
HUD USER / Cityscape – “How Can Procedural Reform Support Fair Share Housing Production? Assessing the Effects of California’s Senate Bill 35.” Research examining whether streamlined and more predictable approval procedures can accelerate housing development.
HUD USER / Cityscape – “Learning from Land Use Reforms: The Case of Ramapo, New York.” Case study examining land-use reform, multifamily development, growth, and the infrastructure demands that can accompany additional housing.
Congressional Budget Office – Estimates of the Cost of Federal Credit Programs in 2026. CBO analysis of federal housing and real-estate credit assistance, including mortgage guarantees through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Congressional Budget Office – Answers to Questions for the Record Following a Hearing on An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034, Part 1. CBO analysis of the recent immigration surge and housing. CBO concluded that increased immigration raises housing demand, estimated that the surge had already added roughly 200,000 households at the time of its analysis, and projected that its effect on the housing shortage would peak around 2030 before housing supply catches up. CBO also noted that the price effects are greater in places where zoning, land-use rules, or geography constrain new supply.
Congressional Budget Office – The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036. CBO analysis of recent housing-market conditions, including the rapid increase in home prices from 2020 through 2023 as strong demand collided with limited inventory.
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System – Monetary Policy Report, July 2026. Federal Reserve discussion of financial conditions, interest rates, Treasury yields, and agency mortgage-backed securities, whose yields are an important factor in the setting of home mortgage interest rates.
U.S. Government Accountability Office – Rental Housing: Institutional Investor Ownership of Single-Family Rental Homes, GAO-26-108675, March 24, 2026. GAO examination of institutional-investor ownership in Cincinnati, Dallas, Jacksonville, Nashville, Phoenix, and Seattle. Institutional investors owned less than 1% to 3% of all single-family homes in the six markets studied, although their share of single-family rental homes was substantially higher in some markets.
Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University – Riordan Frost, “The Role of the Recent Immigrant Surge in Housing Costs,” October 29, 2024. Analysis of immigration and housing demand finding that foreign-born householders accounted for about 25% of U.S. household growth from 2019 through 2023. The study also notes that the major pandemic-era surge in home prices and rents began before immigration accelerated in 2022 and 2023, while immigrants simultaneously provide a significant share of the construction workforce.
Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University – The State of the Nation’s Housing 2026, June 2026. National housing-market assessment documenting persistent affordability problems, slow household formation, housing-supply conditions, declining residential mobility, and the sharp recent decline in net international migration.
U.S. Government Publishing Office / Office of the Federal Register – 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, Public Law 119-101, approved July 11, 2026. Official text of the bipartisan federal housing law enacted in 2026 to increase housing supply and address other housing-market issues.
Federal Election Commission – Election and Voting Information. Federal election information confirming the November 3, 2026 general election date.
U.S. House of Representatives – Representatives / Congressional Elections. Official House information regarding the two-year terms of representatives and the regular election cycle for all voting House seats.
U.S. Senate – Class II Senators Whose Terms Expire in 2027. Official Senate listing of Class II Senate seats reaching the end of their current terms following the 2026 election.