Housing touches all aspects of people’s lives. Where a person lives affects their economic opportunities, health outcomes, and access to jobs, services, schools, and amenities. Yet today, housing is moving out of reach for many, as a result of interconnecting challenges across incomes, housing tenures, and generations.

Homeownership, rental housing, and homelessness are inextricably linked. The primary cause of homelessness is a lack of affordable rental units. High rents reduce renters’ ability to save and rising interest rates and house prices further prevent renters from buying their own home. Many young adults are delaying household formation altogether, and the billowing population of older Americans will pose a new set of housing challenges. As the nation’s demographics change, the additional headwinds faced by households of color from historical discrimination and ongoing structural racism threaten to further strain the points of failure in the country’s housing system.

How did the US get here? Simply put, localities haven’t built enough housing, and what has been built is too expensive. The US has millions of units fewer than what is needed, with households of the lowest incomes facing the greatest shortages. Meanwhile, the country’s existing housing stock is aging, in need of repair, and threatened by climate change.

This report summarizes the underlying causes and state of the current crisis. Then, it reviews a wide variety of tools available to federal policymakers to advance affordable and stable housing for all, including increasing supply and meeting the urgent needs of the precariously housed. It outlines a cascading and interlocking set of federally driven strategies within two action areas—expand the housing supply and empower households to buy, rent, and stay in their homes. These strategies are summarized below.

A Road Map for a National Housing Policy

Expand the Housing Supply

• Catalyze new construction for sale and for rent.
  • Stimulate starter home and affordable rental construction.
  • Encourage local action to accelerate housing supply.
  • Expand public and social housing options.
• Unlock and preserve existing housing inventory.
  • Increase owner-occupant access to for-sale homes.
  • Preserve inventory of affordable rental homes.

Empower Renters and First-Time Homebuyers and Assist the Unhoused

• Level the playing field for first-time and first-generation homebuyers.
  • Boost the purchasing power of first-time homebuyers.
  • Provide targeted assistance to first-generation homebuyers.
• Empower and protect low- to middle-income renters.
  • Offer relief and protections for low- and middle-income renters.
  • Protect renters vulnerable to housing instability.
• Assist and protect the unhoused.
  • Prevent and end homelessness.
  • Protect people enduring unsheltered homelessness.
• Leverage existing tools.
  • Adequately fund the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
  • Finalize the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule.