Biden and Trump have wildly different approaches to bringing home prices and rents down

Since taking office, Biden has pursued a grab bag of policies to incentivize affordable home construction and preservation, loosen regulations that restrict home construction, and subsidize homeownership and the cost of renting. As president, Trump proposed massive cuts to federal housing assistance for the neediest households and rolled back some fair housing policies, while urging states and cities to pursue some zoning reform — a goal that progressives also tend to support.

There have been some bipartisan efforts at the federal level to address the housing crisis. Generally, Republicans tend to be content with states and local governments controlling housing policy, while Democrats are traditionally more supportive of federal subsidies and intervention.

But lawmakers across the ideological spectrum are quick to concede the country is facing a crisis. Home prices have risen 47% since the pandemic, mortgage interest rates are hovering around 7%, and over half of renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing, making them cost-burdened, according to a new Harvard report on the state of US housing. Even as the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates, demand and prices have stayed high, keeping housing inflation stubbornly elevated .

Americans are increasingly concerned about it. US adults listed housing costs as their second-most pressing financial issue in a recent Gallup poll . The concern is bipartisan, although more pronounced among Democrats. Three in four US adults — 83% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans — say the lack of affordable homes is a "significant" problem.

As president, Biden has pushed a series of pro-housing policies and generally come out in favor of more federal participation in housing policy.

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Among those policy pushes was the "Housing Supply Action" plan , which leverages federal grants and loans to incentivize states and cities to loosen land use regulations and facilitate new construction. The administration has also pushed a slew of initiatives to boost the supply of affordable housing, including encouraging the conversion of office buildings into homes with billions of dollars in federal grants and loans and boosting support for manufactured housing.

Biden's fiscal year 2025 budget proposal, which represents a sort of wish list of the administration's priorities but would require action from an often-gridlocked Congress to become law, includes $258 billion for housing initiatives, including tax credits for first-time homebuyers, homeowners who sell their starter homes, and those who build or renovate starter homes, and an expansion of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and housing choice vouchers for renters.

Biden has discussed housing in the State of the Union and on the campaign trail, including in Nevada , which is facing a particularly severe affordability crisis. "If inflation keeps coming down — and it's predicted to do that — mortgage rates are going to come down as well, but I'm not going to wait," he said during a speech in Las Vegas in March.

In another indication that the White House is centering housing policy as the election nears, Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this week announced $85 million in funding for 21 cities to subsidize affordable housing development and the construction of supportive infrastructure, including power lines and water mains.

Some of Biden's farthest-reaching policies were cut from the Inflation Reduction Act , and still others are unlikely to make it through Congress, where Republicans have opposed the vast majority of Democrats' housing proposals.

While some housing policy experts have praised the Biden administration's policies, many of the same experts say its actions haven't gone far enough to address the crisis.

Where Trump stands As president, Trump didn't pursue as many policies directly intended to make housing more affordable. While in office, Trump's proposed budgets included significant cuts to agencies that provide federal housing subsidies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development. His proposed 2021 budget would have cut housing assistance and community development aid — including shrinking the housing voucher program and slashing funds for public housing — by about 15%, not factoring in inflation, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Trump rolled back certain fair housing protections, including imposing a higher bar for proving housing discrimination and eliminating an Obama-era rule designed to reduce racial segregation. Trump claimed Biden wanted to "abolish" the suburbs and assured suburbanites they would "no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood" after he dismantled the Obama rule, which Biden later restored . The Trump administration also created "Opportunity Zones," designed to incentivize businesses to invest in low-income neighborhoods. But the program has done little to boost affordable housing.

Trump hasn't talked much about housing policy on the campaign trail, despite arguing that Biden hasn't done enough to control housing costs. Last year, he unveiled a vague proposal in a video posted to Truth Social to build up to 10 new American cities on federal land as a way to give American families "a new shot at homeownership."