Federal Policy

Chris LaGrand and I explain why Build America, Buy America lands hardest on affordable deals, where capped rents and fixed awards leave added costs nowhere to hide.

Homefront briefing on the House's 396–13 passage of the ROAD to Housing Act, the build-to-rent fix it delivered, and whether the Senate will keep it.

A bill surviving amendment is not the same as a bill advancing. What matters now is whether the bank language stays attached and whether Senate leaders spend floor time on it.

Three provisions, three different theories of what makes housing expensive: who buys existing homes, how long review takes, and whether local governments can plan past one appropriations cycle.

Appropriations reveal priorities more plainly than speeches. This bill protects vouchers and homelessness aid while trimming public housing, and asks for performance without funding the underlying shortage.

Transportation money is one of the few levers Washington can pull on local land use. The design problem is calibration: incentives too soft change nothing, too blunt and the politics collapse.

A 396–13 vote signals unusual agreement on housing. Whether that consensus survives the Senate, and whether the manufactured-housing provisions change what gets built, are separate questions.

Two legislators who both want a housing win disagree about whether investor limits protect tenants or constrain the capital stack. The split is really about which constraint they think binds.

The same zoning or financing reform can produce very different results in Denver, San Diego, and Tucson. What varies is which constraint actually binds in a given market.

Politico examined how federal housing policy aimed at limiting institutional investors may be constraining capital and slowing new housing production, raising concerns about unintended consequences for supply.

Homefront briefing on Section 901, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, and the targeted fix needed to protect new housing production.

Homefront briefing on federal housing policy, market behavior, and what uncertainty means for what gets built.

I joined The Rent Roll to explain how the Road to Housing Act's BTR provision froze capital, why the seven-year sell rule is unworkable, and what Congress should fix

Homefront briefing on federal housing policy and what the build-to-rent restriction could mean for housing supply.

Remarks at the Council of State Governments East housing event on the emerging federal housing supply agenda, what is moving in Congress, and why state action remains decisive.

Remarks on why America's housing shortage is a systems problem, how fragmented governance produces underbuilding, and why a modern housing framework is needed to align local action, state capacity, federal investment, and accountability.

I explain why land scarcity now drives housing costs everywhere, and how long-term ground leases on underused public land could unlock hundreds of thousands of homes.

Semafor examined the growing bipartisan federal agenda around housing supply, including proposals aimed at reducing barriers to development and rewarding local reform.

I examine why local housing reform needs support from state and federal institutions, especially when capacity, incentives, mandates, and political risk shape implementation.

I follow missed rent payments through owners, workers, lenders, local governments, and future development to show how a rental shock propagates.

I recount how New Rochelle rezoned its downtown around its train station, and why the Build More Housing Near Transit Act aimed to encourage that approach.

I place the emerging supply and access movement in a longer history of American housing policy and ask whether a fifth wave was forming.

I use a visit to Mason County, Washington, to show that rural communities face their own housing shortage, and what local, state, and federal policy could do.

Bloomberg CityLab examined the growing effort to make housing affordability and underproduction a national policy issue, including Up for Growth's early work on housing supply.