Thank you for the invitation. It is great to be here, and I am looking forward to the conversations over the next day. I am Mike Kingsella, CEO of Up for Growth, a Washington-based federal policy organization focused on solving America's housing shortage.

When I started this work in 2017, there were very few national organizations focused directly on housing underproduction. At the time, if you went to Capitol Hill and started talking about zoning, land use, and the shortage, people would tell you that you were in the wrong office. Talk to city councils. Talk to state legislators. That has changed. The center of gravity in the housing debate has moved from the local level to the state level, and now increasingly to the federal level as well.

What is different in this moment is that Congress is no longer talking about housing supply as a niche issue. It is now a bipartisan issue with real legislative momentum behind it. The Road to Housing Act in the Senate and Housing for the 21st Century in the House reflect a federal conversation that is becoming more serious about rewarding production, modernizing capital tools, and improving the operating environment for housing delivery.

Land use reform is one of the clearest signals in these proposals. Congress is looking at ways to increase transparency around local zoning, support by-right development frameworks, streamline environmental review, and create incentives for states and communities that align zoning with housing production. That is a notable shift. For a long time, Washington stayed out of these questions. Now it is beginning to use the power of the purse to encourage results.

On the capital side, the conversation is moving too. There are proposals to modernize federal housing tools, improve the economics of affordable housing production, expand support for factory-built and modular housing, and make it easier to finance smaller housing types, including accessory dwelling units. None of that solves the problem on its own, but together these changes start to address the friction that makes it harder and more expensive to build.

There is also a broader shift in posture. Congress is increasingly interested in rewarding actual production, not just planning. That matters. It is not enough to say that a community is studying the issue. There is a growing expectation that states and localities will reform the rules, build more housing, and then receive support based on performance.

At the same time, we should be clear-eyed about what is not yet in place. Federal housing policy remains fragmented and incomplete. Even if the current legislation moves, it does not amount to a fully coherent national housing strategy. Vouchers remain underfunded. Demand-side supports remain inadequate. Insurance is becoming a bigger driver of cost and instability, especially in climate-exposed markets. There is progress, but there is still much more to do.

That is why states matter so much. Washington can change incentives, but states control much of the operating environment. States determine the framework for local zoning authority. States influence permitting, environmental review, infrastructure prioritization, housing finance, and the practical conditions under which housing gets built. In that sense, states do not just participate in production. They shape it.

The encouraging thing is that states are already moving. Across the region, legislatures are advancing reforms on minimum lot sizes, manufactured housing, appeals processes, transit-oriented development, permitting, ADU finance, and parking near transit. This is exactly the kind of policy innovation that federal legislation should support and accelerate.

So the strategic message is simple. First, keep doing the work. States cannot wait for Congress. Second, demand more from the federal government. States know what implementation looks like. States know where the barriers are. And states should have a much stronger voice in shaping the next generation of federal housing policy. The places that unlock housing production will create more jobs, improve affordability, expand opportunity, and outperform the national average.

Congress can write incentives, but it is the states that will shape the outcomes. This is a moment for alignment across local, state, and federal levels of government. If we get that right, we have a real chance to build our way out of the shortage.

Selected Q&A

In the discussion that followed, I was asked about financing for accessory dwelling units. The short answer is that this remains a real barrier. House-rich, cash-poor homeowners often cannot access the financing they need to add a unit, even where ADUs are legal by right. That is both a market problem and an equity problem. The opportunity is to modernize federal tools, including FHA and related programs, so that smaller-scale housing production is easier to finance at scale.

I was also asked about messaging for state legislators. My view is that states should think in terms of minimum standards. We do this in many other policy domains. Housing should not be treated as the one area where the state has no role in setting a floor. At the same time, this is not a one-level-of-government problem. The most durable progress comes when federal resources, state leadership, and local implementation are working in the same direction.

And finally, on vouchers and tenant-based assistance, the answer is that supply and subsidy have to move together. We cannot build a durable affordability strategy by talking only about production, and we cannot build one by talking only about demand-side support. The shortage is structural, and solving it requires both more homes and stronger tools for households that are already under severe pressure.