The budget proposal that President Biden sent to Congress last month included a big focus on housing. The administration’s push to tackle this pressing problem, particularly in an election year, is not surprising: Polling has consistently shown housing costs to be a significant pain point for Americans.
It’s unlikely, though, that flooding the housing market with more taxpayer money and reams of regulations from Washington will provide relief. Instead, individual communities and their governments will be the ones to solve this crisis by adopting innovative and localized solutions.
Biden’s budget asks for $258 billion for housing. A significant portion of this money would go toward a $10,000 tax credit for home sellers and $10,000 in tax credits, over two years, for first-time home buyers. There are additional aspects of the plan that simply provide money to help cover housing costs, such as grant programs to help at-risk individuals stay current on their housing bills. Further proposals would pump more money into existing federal programs that ignore market realities and are bogged down by bureaucracy and waste. These initiatives would provide limited relief to small segments of Americans but would not address the underlying problem.