Everyone except Trump seems to agree, affordable housing is a crisis | The Excerpt
Everyone except Trump seems to agree, affordable housing is a crisis | The Excerpt
Dana Taylor, USA TODAYThu, June 25, 2026 at 1:29 PM UTC
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Everyone except Trump seems to agree, affordable housing is a crisis | The Excerpt
On the Thursday, June 25, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: Americans are stretched thin and you probably know why: Housing. Will Trump end up signing the 21st Century Road to Housing Act now on his desk and if he does, will it make housing any more affordable? Francis Torres, Director of Housing & Infrastructure for the Bipartisan Policy Center, joins The Excerpt to share his analysis of the crisis.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Americans are stretched thin and you probably know why. Housing. It's become increasingly, persistently unaffordable, and for many, simply out of reach. Americans are moving less, forming fewer households, and are spending too much of their income on housing, according to an annual report just released by Harvard. Will the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, now on Trump's desk, ever be signed into law? And if it does, will it make any dent in the issue? House Speaker, Mike Johnson, on Wednesday assured reporters that the answer to both questions was yes.
Mike Johnson:
That's not a Republican or a Democratic problem, it's an American problem, so Americans are fixing it. And so we're going to reduce regulation so builders can build, we're going to limit institutional investing in the housing market. We're going to bring the American dream back within the grasp of hardworking American families. Critical to do, great policy. The president, when we go through the details of the bill, he's going to understand that it's a good product, and certainly something that fulfills his promises to bring down the cost.
Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, June 25th, 2026. For more on the state of America's housing crisis, I'm now joined by Francis Torres, Director of Housing and Infrastructure for the Bipartisan Policy Center. So good to speak with you, Francis.
Francis Torres:
Likewise. Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Can you start us out by just giving us broad strokes of how big the housing shortage really is, who's impacted, and how bad is it?
Francis Torres:
So we know that for decades, the United States has significantly under-built homes, especially in places with a lot of economic activity and vibrancy, with high opportunity. So over the years, this has really been a problem that has grown. We've seen places increasingly have low vacancy rates, we've seen households and families have a hard time finding homes to buy or rent, particularly near opportunities for their work or education, and ultimately, it's range is in the millions in terms of how many homes need to be built to take us out of this hole. But really, all serious observers understand that we have this problem that's built up over the years, and it won't be solved unless we also address the supply constraint.
Dana Taylor:
The Housing Act just passed by Congress on Tuesday is a bipartisan piece of legislation. That was a year in the making, and although Trump hasn't signed it yet, it seems to address the crisis on a number of fronts. Let's take the big ones one by one, beginning with one of the most talked about provisions, the limit placed on large investors. Tell me about that.
Francis Torres:
So I really appreciate your framing because it is true, this is a bill that tackles the housing affordability challenges that America faces in many different ways, but I do want to emphasize, that is just one of a whole suite of provisions that would get at providing more housing supply to American families. That particular one has certainly been the subject of conversation here in Washington because of just disagreements between members of both parties or even within parties about the full extent of institutional investor involvement in the housing market. And well-intentioned people can disagree on how big of a problem it is nationally. It certainly has spaces or places across the country where it's been more salient, but I would just say only one of a huge swath of provisions that would, when implemented, help address these supply constraints we're facing across the country.
Dana Taylor:
Many analysts have pointed to the sharp decline in new housing development following the 2008 recession as a major reason for the current housing shortage. Investors just weren't willing to pour their money into a market where so many mortgages had just defaulted. How does the new legislation address this?
Francis Torres:
So this legislation creates a lot of different incentives and also streamlines programs and regulations, focused all on addressing this constraint of supply and facilitating investment in homes and different kinds of housing. So for example, there are several measures in the bill that open up financing options, both for households and for developers. One really salient one is around what are called accessory dwelling units, which is a type of housing that's been increasingly common and built out in different parts of the country, often known as granny flats, for example. These are homes that are built exactly as you would expect from the name, as an accessory unit in a larger plot of land where there's already a main house. And even though they have become very common to build, there were limited options for financing the purchase or development of these ADUs. So this bill would just provide greater options for households interested in doing so, and just one of a suite of provisions that focus on this financing aspect of the housing crisis and incentivize both households and developers to spend more of their capital in housing.
I would also note that one of the main bottlenecks in housing development has been around zoning and land use, and restrictions that exist at the local level for development of a diverse array of homes, multifamily housing and other types of homes. This bill provides guidance and best practices on what are some of the key measures that can help address this problem. It also creates further leverage for federal government using federal funding to incentivize cities, municipalities, local governments to take up regulatory reforms that would facilitate development in their communities. And so there is this aspect of financing and then making it easier for investors with capital to move into housing, but there's also a significant set of ideas in here around making it easier to build different kinds of homes as well.
Dana Taylor:
Francis, there's also provision in the new law about manufactured housing. Can you tell me about that?
Francis Torres:
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There's a provision that's really been talked about that would fix what's called the chassis requirement, and without getting too wonky about it, essentially, it would facilitate the development of manufactured housing, just broaden what can be done in that space. And we know that manufactured housing is growing in America. There's perhaps outdated ideas of what manufactured housing looks like, but really, it's a very vibrant innovative sector within the housing development world that has been hamstrung to a great extent by some regulatory restrictions on the delivery of these homes that are factory made. And so the bill would really just facilitate that delivery of these homes and make it a lot easier for households to invest in manufactured housing, and for manufactured housing developers to scale up their businesses to meet the housing supply needs of this country.
Dana Taylor:
The housing affordability crisis has been a hot issue in recent primaries with several cities across the country considering legislation to address the crisis. How big of an issue will this be for voters in the midterms, do you think?
Francis Torres:
I think a really significant issue, and this is not just me saying it. We've done some polling on this here at BPC, and we've seen that in a survey of a nationally representative sample of voters, around 89% of voters, regardless of party ID, identify this as an issue that they want to see Congress take action on. So it's great to see Congress taking bipartisan and bicameral action [inaudible 00:07:55] through this bill we're discussing, but ultimately, that is a reflection of voter concern around housing affordability.
We know there's a broader set of concerns around affordability writ large in this country, and housing costs are one of the main costs that households feel and that anchors their sense of how well they're doing. And so certainly, in as much as this bill puts forth ideas for how to address housing costs, how to build more housing, and ultimately, how to reduce costs by addressing these supply concerns by reducing bottlenecks and by streamlining the regulations that have kept us from being able to build more, it is tackling this issue that's really top of mind for voters, and one would certainly expect that lawmakers involved in drafting this bill and then voting for it will discuss it with their communities and their voters as something they're doing on affordability.
Dana Taylor:
Well, politicians are hoping that this legislation is passed so they can call it a win on the campaign trail. The impacts of the Road to Housing Act could take a while to affect affordable housing. Walk me through that, please.
Francis Torres:
Absolutely. What I would say here is for a narrow set of stakeholders, some of these reforms will take immediate effects. So for example, if you're really keen on financing an ADU purchase, an accessory dwelling unit purchase, then some of the changes this bill will put in place will help you. However, for the majority of American households, they're not going to see a change in their housing costs a month from now, in the very short term, but that's understood to be the case with this bill because this bill is really a starting step, an initial step by federal government to dig us out of a decades long bottleneck and building housing in the places that most need it. And so the goal that lawmakers have stated for this bill and that a lot of the provisions lay out is to tackle some of the bottlenecks and some of the problems that have kept us from providing the level of housing supply that the country needs over time.
And so you would expect to see the impacts of this bill in housing affordability a little bit further down the line, and we might be talking years from now. It also depends very significantly on the implementation of the bill's provisions, by federal agencies, but also their take-up by state and local governments and lawmakers at that level of government. A lot of what the bill lays out is creating a context for states, cities, municipalities to act upon and to pursue pro housing reforms. And so really, federal government is a partner here to lawmakers at other levels and more local levels, so ultimately, it will depend as well on their actions.
Dana Taylor:
The current shortage is affecting both buyers and renters. In Harvard's 2026 edition of their annual State of The Nation's Housing Report, they see nearly one in four homeowners are spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Interest rates are always a big part of the calculus for homeowners. Are any of the provisions in this new law expected to bring those costs down?
Francis Torres:
The Harvard Report really does emphasize the extent to which homeowners are burdened by high costs, and a key driver of these costs is interest rates. This bill doesn't address interest rates. That's a macroeconomic factor and that's ultimately up to the Federal Reserve, so there is an extent to which this bill is not going to tackle that particular concern. However, I do want to emphasize that the second order consequence of this bill passing, the first order consequence being the reforms that we'll immediately put in place, but their impact, if well implemented, will create just a supply increase that, the theory goes, should then reduce some of the cost burdens on American households, both renter households and homeowner households, as we have a more abundant housing market.
Dana Taylor:
Stubbornly high inflation has had a huge impact on household budgets this year. There is a lot of uncertainty in the US economy right now with a weakening labor market, skyrocketing gas prices and stubbornly high inflation, among other factors. How are these factors impacting housing affordability?
Francis Torres:
I mean, they're all huge factors impacting housing affordability, and I think you're getting at why this problem is so complicated. It's a problem that has many different roots. And so the macroeconomic environment, the interest rate environment has a lot to do with the costs that homeowners and prospective home buyers face. At the same time, there's a broader supply constraint that I've been discussing with you here that over time has also made it harder to access homes and driven up the cost of homes in the housing market. So all this to say, there's a multiplicity of inputs into this housing affordability challenge that we're facing. However, a lot of what this bill is trying to achieve is tackling those that federal government has within its domain, and helping state and local governments in tackling the ones that they can tackle directly through incentives and also through specific federal funding.
And so while this legislative action cannot really address all of the different aspects that drive housing unaffordability and that more broadly drive concerns of unaffordability in general, it is I think quite strategically tackling those that are within the remit of federal government to focus on.
Dana Taylor:
You've given us a lot to think about here, Francis. Thank you so much for joining me on The Excerpt.
Francis Torres:
Of course. Happy to join. Thank you so much.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. What story or topic would you like to hear about? You can reach out to us at podcasts@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump calls passing the SAVE America Act a "National Emergency" | The Excerpt
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