Framing the Housing Affordability Debate

Recent polls show 54% now consider housing unaffordable and the cost of homeownership dominates Americans’ economic anxieties. The popular “abundance” narrative says there’s a housing shortage and suggests cutting zoning or environmental rules will let us build our way out of it. But we don’t have  a simple net shortage of units—we have a deep mismatch between what gets built and what workers get paid. After 50 years of wage stagnation, the median mortgage payment is over $2,200 while median weekly earnings are $1,200. That’s a gap deregulation or more luxury condos won’t close. The solution isn’t to just build more. It’s also to pay people more.

END NOTES:

• To be considered affordable (30% of income) the median mortgage of $2,259 would require weekly earnings of $1,737. But the median weekly wage for full-time workers is $1214. 
• Where is the Housing Shortage? Of the nation’s 381 metropolitan areas, only four experienced a housing shortage between 2000 and 2020. (Op-ed from the author in Barron’s here.)
• The US Housing Crisis is Really About Low-Wage Jobs. Kathryn’s take from 2024 in Bloomberg Opinion.
• Rate of U.S. homeownership has been climbing since bottoming out in 2016 (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
• Mortgage Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income is about what it was in 2019 (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
• Median Sales Price of Houses Sold for the United States shot up about $90,000 from 2019 to 2025 (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
• Housing Affordability and Housing Demand (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)

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