To increase the supply of affordable homes, Congress should make greater investments in the National Housing Trust Fund (HTF).
Creating a federally guaranteed investor mortgage combined with an optional construction loan will assemble a larger base of qualified borrowers financially positioned to purchase and build more housing inventory.
Deeper affordability milestones would garner exponentially more credits to steer resources toward greatest needs. Additional credits would be awarded for proposals in regions facing urgent supply shortages.
Instead of limiting reconstruction projects to a one-for-one replacement, HUD should allow communities to rebuild homes to a number of units allowed by their locally adopted zoning and development codes.
These policy proposals will simplify the affordable housing qualification process for all federal housing programs, primarily focusing on PBV and LIHTC, to move eligible households into vacant units more quickly.
A uniform software tool for inputting building permit data would make the U.S. Census Bureau’s Building Permit Survey (BPS) more reliable, and it would also facilitate more fine-grained geographical analysis of new housing development.
Congress needs to amend the definition of a manufactured home to remove the phrase “on a permanent chassis.” By doing this, Congress can eliminate wasted construction materials, allow new multifamily design options under the HUD Code, and unleash competition from factory-built manufactured housing.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) should prioritize funding water projects for local governments that would expand the production of new housing in their service areas if given the water resources to do so.
The federal government should remove housing tax benefits for all landowners in cities that refuse to build housing at a necessary pace.
We propose that the federal government use highway funding as a legal mechanism to force states to adopt zoning reform.
The programs meant to create housing abundance have instead created a complex network of paperwork that is redundant, rigid, and discouraging.
The good news is that the tools, data, and proof of concept all exist today; what is needed now is for the federal government to build, or fund the creation of, a National Housing Policy Simulator.