Soaring Housing Prices Are Now Causing 'Hopelessness' Among Buyers

Anyone who hasn't been living under a flat rock in an uncharted wilderness for the last few years is aware of the United States' ongoing housing crisis, the spike in home prices that has many younger people frustrated. It happens in too many American families; I've written before how our younger two kids, living in the Denver area, are only able to afford a nice townhome in a safe part of the city because they are a three-income household, where our youngest lives with her sister and brother-in-law. Too many young people are making such choices today, driven to it by spiking housing prices in our major cities.

The problem isn't limited to our cities, either. Oh, if you already own a home, the rising prices are great; our Alaska home, out in the woods, has (according to real-estate site Zillow) increased in value by a nearly six-figure jump since we moved in, which matters not a jot to us since we'll never willingly leave this place; unrealized value isn't adding anything to markets or bank accounts.

In real estate, as in well, everything, supply and demand apply, and the biggest problem with our housing market today is supply. The Trump administration is reportedly considering a national housing emergency to help deal with the problem.

As the Trump administration considers declaring a national housing emergency, an affordable housing developer who began his career at Lehman Brothers unequivocally agrees the proclamation is overdue.
"I think for sure we're in a national housing emergency. I think we've been here for some time," Dan Coakley, Property Markets Group Affordable principal, told Fox News Digital.
"As far as I'm concerned, it's right on time," he added. "If you look back over the last 10-plus years where there's been a housing emergency, no White House has really taken ownership of this issue, despite the fact that, in my view, it's probably the most important issue out there in the political realm and in the realm of what's most meaningful in the lives of everyday people."
On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the Washington Examiner that the Trump administration may declare a national housing emergency this fall, citing rising prices and dwindling supply.

There's something not mentioned in this piece, and it's something that may be having a big effect on the supply side in the next few months: The ongoing efforts to remove illegal aliens from the United States. Every one of these families and individuals who are living in the United States in violation of immigration law is occupying some kind of housing, be it a house, an apartment, a townhome, or a cardboard box in an alley. It's likely enough of them are renting apartments or houses that we may well see an easing of supply in the next few months as the administration's efforts continue, and as RedState's own Susie Moore just informed us, those efforts just got another big legal boost.

I'm wondering about the actions Washington may take in this emergency declaration, though.

Coakley recommended three main levers the White House should pull in their effort to tackle a national housing emergency: funding, tariff relief and zoning reform.
"You can put more money toward the issue, which certainly is needed," he explained. "The ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ actually did a great job of allocating significantly more tax credits, I think a 13% increase to the states, which is really the primary source of funding for affordable housing development."
"Reductions or elimination in tariffs on certain key materials… timber, lumber… gypsum… glass," Coakley added, urging a federal fast-track to product delivery. "You can also reduce other kind[s] of non-economic barriers to development."

That may all help, although I'm skeptical about the "funding" portion. Depending on what form that may take, any government subsidies, if applied directly to home buyers, for example, will just have an added inflationary effect on housing prices. Things are already bad enough, especially in the big, blue cities.

Zoning reform, that's the needed article - that and development deregulation. Those are local issues, not federal ones. Washington has limited ability to deal with those matters, emergency or not. As long as those big, blue cities remain, well, blue, none of that's going to change; restrictions on development and NIMBYism will remain the order of the day, people in San Francisco will still be sleeping in pods, and as with so many other things, other issues, not much is likely to change without the voters in those cities having some kind of road-to-Damascus moment and change how they are voting.

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