- The acute shortage of housing has created a severe housing crisis across the country.
- A record number of Americans are spending more on their mortgages and rent than they can afford.
- Biden and Trump have offered different approaches to federal housing policy.
The United States is facing a housing crisis: A severe housing shortage, high interest rates and rising construction costs are causing record numbers of Americans to spend more than they can afford on homes and become homeless.
The economy is likely to be a central focus of the first presidential debate this week, with former President Donald Trump promising to attack President Joe Biden specifically on inflation, and Trump has repeatedly criticized his successor for not doing enough to curb home prices.
Since taking office, Biden has promoted a range of policies to encourage the creation and preservation of affordable housing, ease regulations that restrict homebuilding, and subsidize homeownership and renting. As president, Trump proposed deep cuts to federal housing assistance for the neediest families and rolled back some fair housing policies, while urging states and cities to pursue zoning reform, a goal that progressives also tend to support.
There have been several bipartisan efforts at the federal level to address the housing crisis. Republicans have generally tended to be comfortable with state and local governments controlling housing policy, while Democrats have traditionally supported federal subsidies and intervention.
But lawmakers across ideologies are quick to acknowledge the country is facing a crisis. According to a new Harvard report on the state of housing in the United States, 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 a strain on the cost of housing. Demand and prices have remained high, and housing inflation has remained stubbornly elevated, despite the Federal Reserve raising interest rates.
Americans are increasingly concerned about home affordability. In a recent Gallup poll, U.S. adults ranked housing costs as their second-most pressing financial issue. The concern is bipartisan, but is more pronounced among Democrats. Three in four U.S. adults — 83% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans — say the lack of affordable housing is a “serious” problem.
where Biden stand
As president, Biden has pushed through a series of pro-housing policies and has generally signaled support for greater federal involvement in housing policy.
Among those policy initiatives is a “Housing Action” plan that would use federal grants and loans to incentivize states and cities to relax land use regulations and promote new construction. The Administration is also promoting a series of initiatives to increase affordable housing, including providing billions of dollars in federal grants and loans to help convert office buildings into housing and providing more support for manufactured housing.
Biden's fiscal 2025 budget proposal, a kind of wish list of his administration's priorities but one that would require stalled congressional action to become law, includes $258 billion for housing measures, including tax credits for first-time homebuyers, homeowners selling their first home, and homeowners building or renovating their first home, an expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, and Housing Choice Vouchers for renters.
Biden has discussed housing issues in his State of the Union addresses and on the campaign trail, with Nevada facing particularly steep home price increases. “If inflation continues to fall, and we expect it to, mortgage rates will fall as well. But I'm not going to wait,” Biden said during a speech in Las Vegas in March.
In another sign of the White House's focus on housing policy as the election approaches, Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced this week that they would provide $85 million in funding to 21 cities to help develop affordable housing and build supporting infrastructure such as power lines and water mains.
Some of Biden's most far-reaching policies were stripped from the Inflation Control Act, and others are unlikely to pass Congress, where Republicans oppose most of the Democratic housing proposals.
While some housing policy experts have praised the Biden administration's policies, many of the same experts say the administration's actions don't go far enough to address the crisis.
Trump's stance
As president, Trump did not pursue many policies directly aimed at making housing more affordable. During his time in office, Trump's proposed budgets included deep cuts to agencies that provide federal housing subsidies, such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development. His proposed fiscal year 2021 budget would have cut housing assistance and community development assistance by about 15%, not adjusted for inflation, including shrinking the housing voucher program and reducing funding for public housing, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Trump has rolled back some fair housing protections, including raising the bar for proving housing discrimination and repealing Obama-era rules designed to reduce racial segregation. Trump claimed Biden wanted to “abolish” suburbia and assured suburbanites that they would “no longer suffer or be financially hurt by low-income housing being built in their neighborhoods” after repealing the Obama-era rules, which Biden later reinstated. The Trump administration also created “Opportunity Zones” to encourage businesses to invest in low-income areas, but the program has done little to increase affordable housing.
Trump hasn't spoken much about housing policy during the campaign, even as he has argued Biden hasn't done enough to curb housing costs. Last year, in a video posted to Truth Social, Trump unveiled a vague proposal to build up to 10 new American cities on federal land as a way to give American families “a new chance at homeownership.”
In another video titled “Ending the Nightmare of Homelessness, Drug Addicts and Dangerous Mental Illnesses,” Trump says he will “ban urban camping” and promote efforts to criminalize the homeless. Trump has also promised to crack down on immigration, which his campaign claims will relieve pressure on the housing market. Campaign spokeswoman Carolyn Leavitt said in a statement to NPR that Trump will “stop the unsustainable influx of illegal immigrants that are driving up housing costs, cut taxes for American families, and [and] Eliminate costly regulations.”