The United States is in a full-blown housing crisis — and Congress just passed the most significant bipartisan housing legislation in a generation: The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act cleared the Senate 89-10, co-sponsored by Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott. So why won’t it fix the problem? In this episode, we break down exactly what the bill does, what it deliberately leaves out, and why the structural forces driving housing unaffordability in America—rising mortgage rates, institutional investors, zoning failures, generational wealth inequality, and decades of racial exclusion—are largely untouched by any legislation currently on the table. From the redlining of Levittown and Stuyvesant Town to the 2008 financial crisis and the asset inflation chasm it created, we trace how homeownership became both the engine of the American Dream and the mechanism of its denial. We also look at what actually works, like how Vienna’s social housing model has kept half a city affordably housed for over a century, and ask the question no one in Washington wants to answer: short of a depression, what does it actually take to make housing affordable again?
Resources
National Mortgage Professional: What’s The Rookie Home Buying Age? Not 40, New Analysis Shows
HUD: The 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress
National Low Income Housing Coalition
Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies: The State of the Nation's Housing 2025
Congress: H.R.6644 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act
The White House: Stopping Wall Street from Competing with Main Street Homebuyers
U.S. Census Bureau: Housing Vacancies and Homeownership (HVS) Q4 2025
Enterprise Community Partners: Four Key Findings from the 2025 State of the Nation's Housing Report
National Low Income Housing Coalition: The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes 2025
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: FHA Loan Production Report June 2025
Bipartisan Policy Center: What's in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act
NPR: Senate Passes Bipartisan Housing Bill Targeting Large Investors
National Mortgage Professional: What's the Rookie Home Buying Age? Not 40, New Analysis Shows
National Association of Realtors: 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers
Gravel Institute: How Socialists Solved the Housing Crisis
Book Love
Richard Rothstein: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Mehrsa Baradaran: The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap
UNFTR Resources
Episode: The Economics of Racism.
Video: The Economics of Racism.
Episode: Housing in America.
Video: Congress Just Passed a Housing Bill That Changes Nothing.
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