Matthew Yglesias, Columnist

Biden’s Housing Agenda Needs a Renovation

If the president really wants to make homes more affordable, then there’s a lot more he could do.

April 7, 2024 at 12:00 PM UTC

Matthew Yglesias is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A co-founder of and former columnist for Vox, he writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. He is author of “One Billion Americans.”

There’s more he could do.
Photographer: Ian Maule/Getty Images North America

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As a longtime housing obsessive, I have to admit that Joe Biden is the best president the cause of zoning reform has ever had. I also have to admit that the number of people who care could fit into a medium-sized residential lot. If Biden is as obsessed as he claims with making housing more affordable, there is a lot more he could do.

I sometimes worry that the Biden administration has been listening too much to us land-use reformers. From the NEC to the CEA to Treasury to HUD and back, it is stacked with people who appreciate the central role of land-use constraints and zoning regulation in limiting the US housing supply and reducing affordability. When it comes to the housing market, however, the federal government’s main point of influence has been and always will be interest rates.