Why This Matters

Despite the attention the nation’s housing shortage is getting, there is remarkably little grasp of the scale or contours of the challenge. Estimates of the national shortage vary widely, and all suffer from a conflation of different parts of the housing market. 

Key Takeaways

The authors of this brief explain the variation in estimates and dig beneath the national numbers to assess the shortfall at the local level. This provides a picture of the state of the nation’s housing stock as a collection of discrete housing markets that look more like what households experience, allowing policymakers to see more clearly how supply and demand intersect with pricing and affordability, and thus where and how they might most usefully engage.