As Election Day approaches, much of the electorate has indicated housing policy's impact on young voters' civic engagement. And for good reason: the housing market today is the least affordable it’s been in decades. Policymakers today have the power to improve the housing market for young people; to incentivize housing supply increases, particularly for affordable housing; and to open up more equitable paths to wealth building, as the traditional path of homeownership has become less feasible for many.

Home prices are higher relative to income than they have been. Housing supply (particularly affordable supply) is seriously lacking for owner- and renter-occupied units, and despite recent cuts, interest rates remain near their pandemic-era highs. At age 30, 42 percent of millennials are homeowners, but 51 percent of baby boomers and about 60 percent of those in the Silent Generation were homeowners by that age. About 45 percent of people ages 18 to 29 are living at home with their parents—the highest the figure has been since the 1940s.

Making Homeownership Accessible via Housing Policy Would Likely Boost Young Voters' Civic Engagement

As Gen Z and millennial households near their homebuying years, they are still waiting for policies and investments like the ones that housed and uplifted many of their parents and grandparents, demonstrating housing policy's impact on young voters. A growing share of young people have given up the prospect of homeownership entirely—not because they do not wish to be homeowners but because they can’t afford it.

Among young people who do plan to buy homes, more than one-third plan to leverage financial support from family or friends to help fund down payments. But not everyone has access to the generational wealth now needed to be competitive in today’s homebuying market, which has created a growing gap between the rich and the poor among younger generations. Younger generations are also more racially and ethnically diverse than past generations and have inherited the long-standing racial homeownership gap, which was created and bolstered by historical policy and practice, providing further evidence for housing policy's impact on young voters.

Without appropriate interventions, the overall homeownership rate of Gen Zers and millennials is likely to remain below that of their parents and grandparents for at least the next several decades. Delayed homebuying could have consequences too. Urban Institute research finds that households who buy their first home before age 35 gain substantially more housing wealth by age 60 than those who buy later. The generational disparities in homeownership and housing wealth could ripple for decades to come, making housing policy's impact on young voters' civic engagement not simply an issue for this election year, but for many years to come.

Read the full article about housing policy by Amalie Zinn, Jung Hyun Choi, LaQuon Gibson, and Simrun Singh at Urban Institute.