28 Post-Neoliberal Housing Policy Ideas
Introduction
The housing affordability crisis gripping American cities demands bold, structural solutions that move beyond the failed market fundamentalism of recent decades. In their groundbreaking housing policy white paper, Vanderbilt Law professors Ganesh Sitaraman and Christopher Serkin present a transformative framework for post-neoliberal housing policy that rejects the notion that deregulation alone can solve our housing challenges. Instead, they argue that housing markets have always been shaped by public policy choices and legal rules requiring intentional market-crafting rather than passive deregulation to achieve genuine housing affordability and expanded housing supply.
This comprehensive approach organizes 28 specific housing policy proposals across four strategic categories that address the structural roots of the housing crisis: industrial policy for housing production, public options for housing and financing, Pigouvian tax policies targeting property hoarding, and market-shaping regulations that prioritize community needs over speculative investment. Together, these ideas form an integrated strategy for rebuilding America's housing ecosystem around accessibility rather than extraction.
Industrial Policy for Housing Production
The first category recognizes that construction innovation has stagnated while costs have soared. An explicit industrial policy for housing would deploy government tools to drive down construction costs through technological advancement and workforce development. Key proposals include promoting modular construction methods that could reduce building costs by 20% while accelerating timelines by 20-50%, according to McKinsey analysis. Government could act as a market maker by committing to purchase significant quantities of modular housing, enabling manufacturers to achieve economies of scale.
Standard-setting represents another critical intervention establishing interoperability standards for plumbing, electrical systems, and building components would allow bathroom and kitchen modules to be "dropped in" during construction, dramatically reducing costs for the most expensive rooms to build. Complementing this, governments could create pre-approved building designs and "pattern books" that satisfy code requirements upfront, eliminating redundant review processes that inflate soft costs. South Bend, Indiana, and Nashville, Tennessee, have already pioneered such approaches to accelerate infill development.
The framework also champions manufactured housing as America's largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing policy, home to 18 million residents. Yet pervasive stigma and discriminatory zoning restrict its deployment. Policy reforms would mandate equal treatment allowing manufactured homes anywhere single-family housing is permitted while expanding Federal Housing Administration support for financing these units, which currently face denial rates exceeding 50% due to complex titling rules.
Addressing the construction labor shortage requires targeted workforce development programs to train the estimated 500,000 additional workers needed industry-wide. Simultaneously, governments could reduce land acquisition costs through strategic use of eminent domain for land assembly overcoming holdout problems that inflate development costs while directly investing in infrastructure expansion to unlock growth without burdening developers with impact fees that ultimately raise housing prices.
Public Options for Housing and Financing
Rejecting neoliberal privatization dogma, the authors advocate for robust public options for housing policy that coexist with private markets while ensuring universal access. This begins with governments building more housing directly learning from Vienna's successful model of mixed-income public housing that maintains affordability citywide. Unlike America's historically poverty-concentrated projects, new public housing could adopt utility-style rate regulation, setting rents based on cost recovery plus modest returns rather than market rates, keeping prices accessible while ensuring financial sustainability.
Critical enablers include repealing the 1998 Faircloth Limit that caps public housing policy units at 1999 levels regardless of population growth a constraint that prevents housing authorities from expanding supply even when demand surges. Mortgage innovation offers additional pathways to affordability: portable and assumable mortgages would allow homeowners to transfer low-rate loans when moving, increasing market liquidity during interest rate spikes; 40- and 50-year mortgages would reduce monthly payments by spreading principal repayment over longer terms; and perpetual interest-only mortgages could create hybrid ownership models with dramatically lower carrying costs while preserving appreciation benefits.
These financing tools recognize that mortgage markets have never been purely private they've been shaped by federal intervention since the New Deal. Expanding this tradition through innovative products could significantly increase purchasing power without destabilizing financial systems, particularly when risks are managed through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's securitization infrastructure.
Tax Policies Targeting Speculation and Hoarding
Rather than blanket tax cuts that primarily benefit wealth holders, the framework proposes targeted tax policies for housing policy affordability that discourage socially harmful behaviors. Second homes would face higher property tax rates to reflect their opportunity cost in tight markets effectively injecting progressivity into property taxation while freeing units for primary residents. Complementary transfer taxes on investor-owned properties could further disincentivize treating housing as a pure financial asset.
Vacancy taxes would impose escalating penalties on unoccupied units, preventing landlords from withholding supply to manipulate rental markets a practice particularly prevalent among large corporate owners seeking to avoid price resets. Similarly, taxes on unoccupied foreign-owned investment properties would combat the use of American housing policy as offshore asset storage, which research shows has driven displacement in gateway cities since China relaxed capital controls in 2008.
Undeveloped land held by corporate homebuilders warrants taxation too. Industry consolidation has enabled firms to sit on land banks until prices reach maximum profitability, artificially constraining supply. Land value taxes could accelerate development while exempting legitimate multi-parcel assembly projects. Finally, direct regulation of institutional investors including potential divestment requirements under proposals like the End Hedge Fund Control of Homes Act would address evidence showing that private equity ownership correlates with higher rents, poorer maintenance, and reduced affordability.
Market-Shaping Regulations for Equity and Access
The fourth category embraces regulation as a tool for market design rather than obstruction. Sophisticated cost-based rent regulation modeled on public utility rate design could ensure landlords receive reasonable returns on capital investments while preventing exploitation of scarcity. Unlike rigid rent controls that disincentivize maintenance, utility-style regulation rewards upkeep by allowing returns calculated as percentages of capital expenditures—aligning landlord incentives with tenant interests.
Consumer protection measures would ban algorithmic pricing platforms like RealPage that facilitate de facto price-fixing among corporate landlords, while prohibiting junk fees that obscure true rental costs. Landlord registries would pierce LLC anonymity, making property owners identifiable for accountability and enabling better data collection on market concentration.
Zoning itself becomes a tool for abundance through supply-side zoning innovations. Density minimums already adopted in Portland and Charlotte near transit corridors would require developers to build multiple units per parcel rather than defaulting to profit-maximizing McMansions. Maximum home size restrictions could similarly channel development toward smaller, more affordable housing policy units rather than relying on uncertain "filtering" dynamics. Primary residence zoning would reserve neighborhoods for full-time occupants in markets overwhelmed by second homes, while minimum occupancy requirements could combat persistent vacancies in urban cores.
Institutional investor-free zones might prohibit corporate ownership of single-family rentals in specific neighborhoods, addressing evidence that institutional landlords drive higher tenant turnover and worse conditions. Finally, extending zoning reforms to override restrictive homeowners association covenants as California has done with accessory dwelling units—would prevent private governance from undermining public policy goals.
Toward a Post-Neoliberal Housing policy Future
These 28 proposals collectively reject the neoliberal fallacy that housing markets function optimally when left to private actors. Instead, they recognize that every housing policy market is already shaped by legal rules, tax policies, and public investments the question is whether those interventions serve speculative finance or community stability. By embracing industrial housing policy, public options, targeted taxation, and smart regulation, this framework offers a path toward housing systems that prioritize shelter over speculation.
The approach acknowledges that no single housing policy silver bullet exists solving the housing crisis requires simultaneous action across production, finance, taxation, and regulation. Context matters too: not every proposal fits every locality, demanding nuanced implementation attuned to regional housing dynamics. Yet the core insight remains universal: achieving genuine housing policy affordability requires governments to actively shape markets toward public purposes rather than abdicating responsibility to private actors whose profit motives often conflict with community needs.
As America confronts record unaffordability with median home prices now requiring incomes far beyond what typical workers earn, this post-neoliberal vision offers more than technical fixes. It presents a philosophical reset: housing policy as infrastructure essential to human dignity and economic participation, worthy of the same public commitment we extend to roads, schools, and utilities. By deploying the full toolkit of policy innovation across these four domains, communities can build housing ecosystems where shelter remains accessible to working families rather than becoming another asset class for the wealthy a fundamental prerequisite for equitable, thriving cities in the 21st century.
Toward an Integrated Housing Policy
These 28 ideas function not as isolated interventions but as mutually reinforcing components of a coherent post-neoliberal housing strategy. Industrial housing policy reduces construction costs while public options expand non-market supply. Tax policies disincentivize speculative hoarding while market-shaping regulations ensure new supply reaches those needing shelter rather than investors seeking appreciation. Crucially, this framework rejects the false dichotomy between "supply-side" and "demand-side" approaches recognizing that expanding supply alone cannot solve affordability when financialization, monopoly power, and speculative demand distort markets.
The post-neoliberal vision acknowledges housing as both commodity and human right a tension neoliberal policy resolved entirely in favor of commodification. By deploying the full toolkit of public housing policy industrial strategy, public provision, targeted taxation, and intelligent regulation communities can rebuild housing markets that serve people rather than capital. This isn't about eliminating markets but shaping them toward social ends: ensuring shelter remains accessible, neighborhoods remain stable, and housing policy serves its fundamental purpose as foundation for human flourishing rather than vehicle for wealth extraction. As Sitaraman and Serkin demonstrate, the policy tools exist; what's required is the political imagination to deploy them comprehensively toward a more just and affordable housing future.