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President Trump has promised to address the housing affordability crisis, a top concern for voters. At a cabinet meeting last week he did so directly, but not in the way frustrated home buyers might have expected.

“I don’t want to drive housing prices down,” he said. “I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes.”

The desire to protect the investments of existing homeowners while making ownership more attainable for first-time buyers is a conundrum that has flummoxed policymakers for decades. In a country where owning a home remains both a national aspiration and the greatest source of personal wealth, there is no way to lower costs for buyers without hitting the pocketbooks of owners.

Economists across the ideological spectrum have diagnosed the United States with an acute housing shortage that has raised home prices and rents. The remedy, they argue, is to focus on policies that increase the supply of housing, which should tame rising prices by bringing supply in line with demand.

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If the president were talking about almost any other good, this approach would seem uncontroversial — he regularly argues that expanded oil drilling can calm energy prices. But with housing, that basic calculation is not so simple.

In the years since the Covid-19 pandemic, home prices have risen about 50 percent. That increase is driving the frustration with the cost of living, especially among young people. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll, more than half of voters under 30 named housing as the thing they worried most about being able to afford. But because two-thirds of American households own their homes, that run-up in prices has simultaneously created trillions in wealth for their parents.

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Conor Dougherty covers housing and development, focusing on the rising costs of homeownership. He is based in Los Angeles.

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Trump Says Housing Prices Should Be Higher, Not Lower - The New York Times

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