Housing costs have doubled in a generation. The median home costs 7.7x the median income — up from 3.5x in the 1980s. Here's a plan to build the homes America needs.
We're a policy platform with 50 researched positions on every major issue. This page breaks down our housing plan — but there's much more to explore.
The median American home now costs $412,000 — roughly 7.7 times the median household income. In the 1980s, that ratio was 3.5x. Housing didn't get more expensive because houses got better. It got more expensive because we stopped building enough of them — and allowed Wall Street to turn shelter into a speculative asset.
The crisis has five interlocking causes, and addressing any single one without the others won't work. First, zoning restrictions: the majority of residentially zoned land in American cities is restricted to single-family homes. Apartments, duplexes, and townhomes — the kinds of housing that made cities affordable for a century — are effectively illegal in most neighborhoods. These restrictions were originally enacted for explicitly racial reasons and continue to segregate communities by income and race today. They are the single largest barrier to housing affordability in the United States.
Second, NIMBYism — the political phenomenon in which existing homeowners oppose new construction in their neighborhoods, regardless of how desperately housing is needed. NIMBY opposition adds years to permitting timelines, kills affordable housing projects, and ensures that the supply of homes never catches up with demand. In San Francisco, it takes an average of 4.5 years to approve a new housing project. In Tokyo, which has flexible zoning, the same process takes six months — and Tokyo's housing costs have remained stable for two decades.
Third, insufficient construction. The United States has underbuilt housing by an estimated 3.8 to 7.2 million units over the past two decades. Population growth, household formation, and migration to job-rich metro areas have all outpaced the rate of new construction. The infrastructure to build faster — skilled labor, permitting capacity, building materials — has been systematically neglected.
Fourth, institutional investors buying homes. In 2023, institutional investors purchased roughly 26% of single-family homes sold in some major metro areas. Firms like Blackstone, Invitation Homes, and American Homes 4 Rent have acquired hundreds of thousands of single-family homes, converting them from ownership opportunities into permanent rentals at premium prices. These firms aren't building homes — they're buying existing ones and extracting rent from families who can no longer afford to buy.
Fifth, algorithmic rent-fixing. The company RealPage provides software used by landlords managing over 16 million apartment units. The software collects real-time rent data from competing landlords and recommends coordinated price increases — effectively enabling price-fixing at industrial scale. The Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit, and studies estimate the software inflates rents by 5-10% in markets where it's widely adopted. This is not a free market — it's a cartel with an algorithm.
Sources: NAR, Census Bureau, Harvard JCHS, DOJ antitrust filings. See the full housing issue page for complete sourcing.
Housing First is an evidence-based model that provides permanent housing to homeless individuals without preconditions — no sobriety requirements, no employment mandates, no hoops to jump through. You get a home first. Then you get help. And it works better than anything else we've tried.
The traditional approach to homelessness requires people to "earn" housing by first completing treatment programs, maintaining sobriety, or finding employment. This approach has a fundamental problem: it asks people to solve complex life challenges while living on the street. Research consistently shows that stable housing is the foundation people need before they can meaningfully address addiction, mental health, or employment — not the reward for addressing them.
Finland is the strongest proof of concept. Beginning in 2008, Finland adopted Housing First as a national strategy, converting shelters into permanent housing units and providing wraparound support services. The result: Finland is the only country in Europe where homelessness has declined — by over 40%. Every other European country that maintained the traditional "treatment first" approach has seen homelessness increase over the same period.
The cost argument is equally decisive. The emergency services cycle — shelters, emergency rooms, jails, crisis interventions — costs an average of $35,578 per person per year. Permanent supportive housing costs approximately $12,800 per person per year. Housing First doesn't just produce better outcomes — it saves taxpayer money. Houston housed over 25,000 people using this model and reduced homelessness by 63%. Utah's Housing First pilot initially reported a 91% reduction in chronic homelessness, though subsequent reporting revealed the decrease was partly due to changes in how homelessness was counted. The evidence is overwhelming: when you give people homes, most of them keep them.
| Metric | Emergency Approach | Housing First |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per person/year | $35,578 | $12,800 |
| Housing retention rate | ~40% | 85-90% |
| ER visits reduction | No change | ~60% decrease |
| Jail bookings reduction | No change | ~75% decrease |
Sources: National Alliance to End Homelessness, Urban Institute, Finland Ministry of the Environment. See the homelessness issue page for detailed sourcing.
The Common Good housing plan attacks the crisis from both sides: massive supply expansion to bring prices down, and demand-side protections to keep families housed while the market rebalances. It treats housing as infrastructure — not a speculative asset.
The plan is built on five core provisions, each targeting a specific structural failure in the current housing market. Together, they would add millions of units to the housing supply, protect tenants from predatory pricing, and create a path to homeownership for families currently priced out of the market.
For the complete plan with legislative detail, cost projections, and sourcing, see the full housing issue page and the related infrastructure and labor policies.
No — and the Common Good Party does not support national rent control. But that doesn't mean tenants should have no protections. The answer is strong tenant protections, massive supply expansion, and a ban on the algorithmic price-fixing that is actually driving coordinated rent increases.
The economic evidence on traditional rent control is genuinely mixed. Strict price caps on existing units do protect current tenants in the short term — and that matters. But they also discourage new construction, incentivize landlords to convert rental units to condos or let buildings deteriorate, and create a two-tier market where controlled tenants never move and everyone else pays more. San Francisco's experience is instructive: rent control protected existing tenants but reduced the overall rental supply by 15%, driving up market rents for everyone not lucky enough to have a controlled unit.
What the Common Good plan does instead is more effective than rent control without the downsides. The plan bans algorithmic rent coordination through platforms like RealPage — which is not a free-market phenomenon but collusive price-fixing enabled by technology. It establishes strong tenant protections including just-cause eviction requirements, limits on security deposits, mandatory lease renewal rights, and 90-day notice for rent increases above 5%. And most importantly, it addresses the root cause: the shortage of affordable housing supply. You don't need to cap prices when you build enough housing to meet demand.
The distinction matters. RealPage isn't "the market setting prices." It's competing landlords sharing pricing data through a common algorithm to maximize rents — the definition of anticompetitive behavior. Banning that is not rent control. It's antitrust enforcement. For more on the Common Good approach to market regulation, see the affordability policy.
Less than we're already spending on it. The United States spends billions every year managing homelessness through emergency rooms, jails, shelters, and crisis services. Providing permanent housing costs less per person and produces dramatically better outcomes. The choice isn't between spending and not spending — it's between spending effectively and spending wastefully.
The current emergency approach creates a revolving door. A chronically homeless individual cycles between the street, emergency shelters, hospital emergency rooms, and jail — costing an average of $35,578 per year in public services. These are not treatment costs. They are crisis management costs that address none of the underlying causes and produce no lasting improvement in the person's situation. Cities spend millions per year on this cycle and have nothing to show for it except rising homelessness counts.
The evidence from cities and countries that have adopted Housing First is unambiguous. Finland reduced homelessness nationally and saved money doing it. Houston housed 25,000 people and reduced its homeless population by 63% — becoming a model that conservative and liberal mayors alike have studied. The math is straightforward: permanent supportive housing at $12,800 per person per year is cheaper than emergency cycling at $35,578, and it actually solves the problem. For the full cost analysis and implementation plan, see the budget and fiscal responsibility page.
| Model | Approach | Result | Cost Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland (national) | Housing First, shelter conversion | -40% homelessness | Net savings |
| Houston, TX | Housing First, coordinated entry | 25,000+ housed, -63% | Reduced ER/jail costs |
| Utah (pilot) | Housing First, chronic focus | -91% chronic homelessness (partly reclassification) | $8,000 saved/person/yr |
| US Emergency Approach | Shelters, ER, jail cycling | Record 653K homeless | $35,578/person/yr |
Sources: National Alliance to End Homelessness, HUD PIT Count, Finland Ministry of the Environment, Houston Coalition for the Homeless.
The United States has the most expensive housing relative to income among wealthy democracies, the lowest rate of social housing, and the highest rate of homelessness. Countries with active housing policies — public construction, tenant protections, flexible zoning — have lower costs and fewer people on the street.
| Country | Price/Income | Social Housing | Homelessness | Key Policy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 7.7x | 1% | 18/10K | Market-driven |
| Germany | 5.2x | 5% | ~79/10K | Tenant protections |
| Austria | 4.8x | 23% | 3/10K | Social housing |
| Singapore | 4.5x | 80% | <1/10K | Public housing |
| Finland | 5.0x | 13% | 1/10K | Housing First |
| Japan | 4.5x | 6% | 2/10K | Flexible zoning |
The pattern is unmistakable. Countries that treat housing as a public good — through active government construction, strong tenant protections, or flexible zoning that allows supply to meet demand — have more affordable housing and less homelessness. The United States is an outlier not because Americans earn less, but because American policy treats housing as a private investment vehicle first and a human need second.
Japan is particularly instructive. Tokyo's housing costs have remained remarkably stable despite being one of the world's largest and most desirable cities — because Japan's national zoning framework allows housing to be built where people want to live. Vienna's social housing system, which houses 60% of the city's residents in publicly subsidized housing, is so popular that middle-class families actively choose it over market-rate alternatives. Singapore's public housing, which houses 80% of the population, is architecturally distinguished and well-maintained, shattering the American assumption that government housing must mean deprivation.
For a detailed side-by-side comparison of party positions on housing, see the Compare Parties page. For more on how international models inform the Common Good approach, see the full housing policy.
The housing crisis persists in part because widely believed myths prevent effective policy. Real estate industry lobbying, political convenience, and genuine misunderstanding have created a set of assumptions that the evidence does not support. Here are the four most persistent myths — and what the data actually shows.
Myth: "We just need to build more."
Reality: Supply absolutely matters — the US is short an estimated 7.2 million affordable units. But supply alone is not sufficient. Without guardrails, institutional investors buy what gets built. In markets where new construction has boomed, investors have purchased 20-30% of new units, converting them to high-rent properties. Building more is necessary, but building more while Wall Street buys what you build is running on a treadmill. The Common Good plan pairs supply expansion with investor caps and tenant protections — because you need both. See the housing policy for the complete framework.
Myth: "Rent control is the answer."
Reality: Traditional rent control protects current tenants in the short term but constrains supply over time, as landlords reduce investment in controlled properties and new construction becomes less attractive. The evidence from San Francisco, New York, and Stockholm shows that strict price caps create two-tier markets where insiders benefit and everyone else pays more. The more effective approach — supported by the Common Good plan — is strong tenant protections (just-cause eviction, notice requirements, security deposit limits) combined with massive supply expansion and a ban on algorithmic price-fixing. Protect tenants and build more. That works better than capping prices in a market where there aren't enough homes.
Myth: "Homelessness is a choice."
Reality: The number one cause of homelessness in America is cost — not addiction, not laziness, not mental illness. Research from the University of Chicago and HUD consistently finds that the strongest predictor of homelessness in a metro area is the gap between median rent and median income. Every $100 increase in median rent is associated with a 9% increase in homelessness. The states with the highest rates of homelessness — California, New York, Hawaii — are not the states with the highest rates of addiction or mental illness. They are the states with the highest housing costs. Homelessness is a housing problem. The solution is housing.
Myth: "Government housing means 'the projects.'"
Reality: America's failed public housing projects of the mid-20th century were the product of specific policy choices: deliberate underfunding, racial segregation, concentration of poverty, and punitive management. They are not evidence that government housing cannot work — they are evidence that poorly designed government housing doesn't work. Modern social housing in Vienna, Singapore, and Helsinki is high-quality, well-maintained, architecturally distinguished, and mixed-income. Vienna's municipal housing is so desirable that families wait years for units. Singapore's public housing, home to 80% of the population, features modern amenities and strong community design. The Common Good plan's National Housing Corporation is modeled on these successes — mixed-income, professionally managed, and built to last.
Click any question to expand the answer.
Have a question not answered here? Read the full housing issue page or visit our site-wide FAQ.
Check back soon for policy analysis of housing news.
653,104 Americans are homeless on any given night. The median home costs 7.7x the median income. Read the full plan and see exactly how we build our way out — with sources, costs, and implementation details.