The number of people experiencing homelessness has hit a record high, more than half of renters are cost-burdened (PDF), and mortgage interest rates are at their highest since 2000—housing in the United States has reached a crisis point. According to Lael Brainard, director of the White House National Economic Council, a decade of lagging residential construction, increased demand for housing, and a global pandemic inflating costs, has led to an acute shortage of affordable housing.

In last week’s State of the Union, President Biden implored Congress to address the high costs of housing and committed to using administrative action, with an emphasis on helping first-time homebuyers and driving down rents. And this week, the administration released its 2025 budget, which includes a request for $258 billion in federal funding to build or preserve 2 million units and to fund numerous other housing proposals. These proposals—while pending Congressional approval—demonstrate a newfound commitment from the Biden administration on housing affordability and a clear recognition of the problem at hand.

In a recent event at the Urban Institute, Brainard detailed the administration’s housing plans and—in conversation with Mary Cunningham, Urban’s senior vice president for research management and program development—discussed how its proposals could “meet the needs of renters and aspiring homeowners, unlock today’s housing market, and build housing to meet tomorrow’s needs.”

The director’s remarks—along with insights from other housing experts—emphasized the urgency for a national housing strategy that can create affordable homeownership opportunities, drive down rental costs, and promote equity for people who have long been locked out of equal housing opportunities across the entire housing continuum.

Homeownership has long been a key to climbing the housing ladder in the United States, but in recent years, those keys, which have always been hard to come by for many people, have become even more difficult to obtain and more expensive to use. For people with lower incomes, less wealth, and less upward mobility, the current housing market is all but unattainable. Young people have lower homeownership rates than previous generations at the same age and are facing multiple barriers.

In recent months, mortgage interest rates have risen to their highest point since 2000, while the number of active listings on the market has fallen by more than half since 2016. Of the listings that are on the market, fewer than 15 percent are priced at $200,000 or less, whereas more than 40 percent were in 2016.

For Black and Latinx people, who’ve had limited opportunities to build intergenerational wealth because of systemic discrimination and structural racism built into the housing market, this decrease in affordability is an even larger barrier. “Communities of color are often more likely to experience homelessness, they are more likely to be renters, and they are less likely to be homeowners,” (PDF) said Michael Neal, a senior fellow in Urban’s Housing Finance Policy Center. “This suggests that public policy has to go beyond just bringing balance to the housing market; it also needs to root out instances of systemic racism to ensure that everyone is able to benefit.”

Read the full article about housing affordabiity by Wesley Jenkins at Urban Institute.