More than 40 million Americans, including both renters and homeowners, are struggling to afford housing costs. In a recent poll, most registered voters in five key battleground states reported that addressing housing costs would improve their personal situations. Yet 52 percent of those voters said they hear politicians talk about the cost of rent and housing “not much” or “not at all.” Permanently affordable housing is a popular policy, and candidates across the aisle should take note.

With Election Day fewer than three months away, candidates up and down the ballot looking to speak to issues that voters care about should consider supporting solutions to the affordable housing crisis.

Permanently affordable housing, or housing that is insulated from the private, speculative market, is one solution to the housing crisis that both Democrats and Republicans favor. Sixty percent of Republicans who participated in the recent poll reported they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports permanently affordable housing. (Although the poll reports that  affordable housing is popular among Democrats, it does not provide specific figures.)

Expanding the nation’s stock of affordable housing is one way to decommodify housing, or decouple access to housing from the ability to pay for it. In recent research, we identified developing new permanently affordable housing units as one of three key strategies that state and local governments are pursuing to decommodify housing. Here we highlight promising, federal-level policy proposals that candidates for the presidency and other offices could use as starting points for creating policy platforms that address the most pressing issues on voters’ minds.

Creating new permanently affordable housing units is the most direct way for the federal government to support decommodification. One recent proposal suggests the federal government might accomplish this by creating a federal Green Social Housing Development Authority.

Read the full article about permanently affordable housing by Samantha Atherton and Samantha Fu at Urban Institute.