Principles for Enhancing Housing Availability and Affordability

Housing Availability

Introduction

The United States is in the grip of a deep and widening housing crisis. From bustling coastal metros to fast-growing Sun Belt suburbs and even rural towns, millions of Americans are struggling to find a place to live that doesn’t consume an unsustainable share of their income.

The document, signed by a broad coalition of housing availability experts, economists, civil rights leaders, and policy organizations, presents a clear diagnosis: an unprecedented shortage of homes estimated at as many as 7 million units is the primary driver of skyrocketing rents and home prices. The solution, they argue, lies not in a single silver bullet but in a coordinated set of reforms aimed at enabling more housing of all types, reducing regulatory barriers, and pairing new supply with targeted subsidies for the lowest-income households.

This summary breaks down the document’s core arguments, its four key principles, the background causes of the crisis, and the wide-ranging consequences of inaction, including reduced economic growth, rising homelessness, and persistent segregation.

The Core Problem: A Severe Housing Shortage Caused by Restrictive Land-Use Regulations

For decades, housing has been the cornerstone of American opportunity and stability. Homeownership remains the primary source of wealth for most families, and housing is the single largest monthly expense for renters and owners alike. Yet, between 2017 and 2024, national rents surged by 28%, with some high-demand areas seeing increases of up to 70%. By 2024, a staggering 50% of all renters were considered “cost-burdened,” spending more than 30% of their income on housing availability, and one-quarter spent over half. For prospective homebuyers, a family earning the median national income of $83,782 would need to devote 41.8% of their earnings to afford a median-priced home.

What explains this dramatic deterioration? The document points to a robust body of evidence from ideologically diverse researchers: rigid land-use regulations and zoning laws are a major cause. Across much of the country, local ordinances often ban or severely restrict the construction of lower-cost housing options like duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, accessory dwelling units (ADUs such as backyard cottages or converted garages), and small apartment buildings. In addition to outright bans, many rules mandate large lot sizes and excessive off-street parking, effectively making smaller, more affordable homes illegal to build or prohibitively expensive.

In contrast, jurisdictions that have acted to allow more housing including Minneapolis, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Houston, have seen much slower rent and home price growth. The message is clear: adding housing supply makes housing availability more affordable for people of diverse backgrounds, incomes, abilities, and family sizes.

The Four Key Principles for Housing Reform

The document lays out four actionable principles designed to guide state, county, and municipal policymakers. These principles aim to increase housing availability, lower costs, and provide more choices for Americans.

1. Enable More Housing of All Types, Including Smaller, Less-Expensive Options

The first and most fundamental principle is to legalize and encourage a diverse range of housing types. For too long, many communities have prioritized large single-family homes, effectively zoning out modest-sized “starter homes,” townhomes, duplexes, triplexes, manufactured housing availability, condominiums, and apartments. This one-size-fits-all approach forces people into long commutes, overcrowded conditions, or housing that doesn’t meet their physical or family needs.

By enabling more housing types, families gain choices about where to live, how much to spend, and how close to be to jobs, schools, transit, and family. Accessory dwelling units, for example, can provide rental income for homeowners while creating independent, lower-cost housing for seniors, young adults, or people with disabilities. Manufactured housing availability offers a factory-built, more affordable alternative to site-built homes. The key takeaway is that a healthy housing market requires a spectrum of options, not just luxury units.

2. Avoid Inflexible Mandates

While well-intentioned, many local requirements meant to preserve quality of life can backfire. Rules mandating minimum off-street parking, excessive building setbacks, and strict building height limits often become overly prescriptive. They drive up construction costs per unit and encourage sprawl by forcing development outward rather than upward or infill.

Loosening or eliminating these inflexible mandates makes the housing market more efficient. It gives community leaders, residents, and builders the flexibility to develop lower-cost housing availability options. For instance, reducing or removing parking minimums near transit stops can lower the cost of an apartment building by tens of thousands of dollars per unit, making it feasible to build smaller, more affordable rentals. The goal is not to eliminate all rules but to ensure they are not so rigid that they prohibit the very housing that communities need.

3. Spur Apartment, Condominium, and Townhouse Development in High-Use Areas

The third principle focuses on location. To stabilize housing availability costs quickly, towns and cities should actively encourage apartment buildings, condominiums, and townhouses in high-use, accessible areas. This includes:

Building more densely in these locations accomplishes several goals at once. It increases housing availability supply where demand is highest, reduces vehicle miles traveled (and thus emissions), supports local businesses by putting more customers within walking distance, and makes more efficient use of existing infrastructure like roads, water, and sewers. This is often the quickest path for cities to stabilize rents and home prices because it adds units in places where people already want to live.

4. Lower Administrative Barriers

New laws alone are insufficient; the way those laws are implemented must change. Administrative barriers such as lengthy discretionary reviews, unpredictable permitting processes, and high upfront fees can delay or kill housing projects for years. The document calls for several specific reforms:

The document stresses that while these supply-side reforms are imperative, they are not sufficient on their own. Subsidies remain necessary to meet the housing needs of those with the lowest incomes, who cannot afford even the least expensive market-rate homes.

The Broader Consequences of Inaction

The background section of the document goes beyond affordability to show how restrictive land-use regulations and the resulting housing availability shortage are exacerbating several deep-seated economic and social problems.

Slowed Economic Growth and Reduced Opportunity

In prior decades, Americans moved freely to cities with dynamic job markets. Today, the share of Americans moving is the lowest since the Census Bureau began tracking in 1947. Why? Because workers who want to move to high-opportunity areas places with good jobs, good schools, and rising wages increasingly cannot afford the housing availability there. This “misallocation” of workers lowers national GDP, slows productivity, and traps people in regions with fewer opportunities. Removing unnecessary restrictions on homebuilding would not only enhance individual opportunity but also boost the country’s overall economic growth.

Government Overregulation and Property Rights

Zoning was originally designed to separate incompatible uses (e.g., factories from homes). However, over time, local governments have used zoning to exert stringent control over almost every aspect of residential property. Responsible zoning reforms do not weaken health and safety protections. Instead, they remove excessive controls over what type of residential housing availability is allowed controls that infringe on property owners’ rights to use their land as they see fit. Communities evolve: populations age, industries change, remote work rises, and people want to revive mixed-use main streets. Rigid zoning makes it hard to repurpose underutilized land. Reforms strengthen property rights by allowing owners to put their land to its highest and best use.

Homelessness and Displacement

The document presents stark data: the U.S. counted a record 770,000 people experiencing homelessness in 2024, with tent encampments becoming a common sight. Academic research consistently finds that high housing availability costs drive homelessness. For example, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that every $100 increase in median monthly rent is associated with a 9% increase in homelessness.

When wealthier residents cannot find a home, they compete with less affluent residents for existing units, driving up prices and displacing lower-income and middle-income families. Reforming land-use policies to allow more homebuilding is a critical part of the solution to reduce homelessness, keep families in their homes, and keep communities intact. That said, zoning reform alone cannot build homes affordable to the extremely low-income households subsidies and incentives are essential there, too.

Segregation by Income and Race

Importantly, the document does not shy away from history. Zoning was implemented a century ago in part to separate communities by class, race, and ethnicity. Even today, zoning that only allows single-family homes on large lots acts as a barrier that limits housing availability and affordability in high-opportunity areas for teachers, nurses, police officers, and other middle- and lower-income families. Furthermore, noxious land uses like factories, sanitation plants, and highways have been disproportionately sited near poorer neighborhoods and communities of color, in part because zoning policies often limit apartment construction to areas near such uses. Reducing regulatory barriers would allow poorer, middle-class, and historically marginalized families to move to neighborhoods with better resources, schools, parks, and jobs.

A Broad, Unusual Coalition

One of the most striking features of this document is the breadth of its signatories. The list includes progressive groups like the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the NAACP, free-market think tanks like the Manhattan Institute and Reason Foundation, industry associations like the National Association of Home Builders and the National Apartment Association, research institutions like the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, and civil rights organizations like the National Fair Housing Alliance. This diverse coalition spanning left, right, and center agrees that allowing more homebuilding of all types is a necessary condition for improving affordability, access to opportunity, and shared prosperity.

Conclusion: A Vision for More Affordable Homes and Communities

The document concludes by framing these principles as a vision for more housing availability, affordable homes and communities that would advance economic opportunity, reduce homelessness and displacement, and enhance individual liberty. The signatories encourage states, counties, and municipalities to embrace growth and allow the construction of homes of all types to fight skyrocketing costs and provide choices that fulfill the diverse needs of communities.

The key takeaway is balanced but urgent: land-use and zoning reforms to increase housing supply are a proven, evidence-based strategy to tame rent and price growth. But they work best when combined with targeted subsidies for the lowest-income households. Without both, the nation will continue to face high inflation, slowed economic growth, rising homelessness, and entrenched segregation. With them, we have a realistic path toward a future where every American can find a safe, stable, affordable place to call home.

Also Read: 2022-2027 Berlin Affordable Housing Plan