Housing Affordability & Homelessness

Updated July 2026 28 primary sources

High borrowing costs, a homelessness policy shift, and new supply legislation are all reshaping housing debates.

Mortgage rates remain elevated even as price growth cools — The 30-year rate has hovered near 6.5% through mid-2026, keeping payments high even as home-price growth slowed to roughly 2% annually and rents softened in many metros (CNN, Redfin).
Homelessness declined slightly but remains far above 2013 levels — HUD's 2025 count found 745,652 people homeless on a single night in January 2025, the first year-over-year decline (down 3.3%) since 2016, though still up 27% since 2013 (HUD, National Alliance to End Homelessness).
Cities are increasingly criminalizing encampments, but a policy shift just hit a legal setback — Following the Supreme Court's 2024 Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling, more than 350 cities passed encampment-criminalization laws, and the Trump administration's July 2025 executive order and HUD funding overhaul pushed policy away from "Housing First" toward treatment-and-work requirements — a shift a federal judge partly struck down in June 2026 as "arbitrary and capricious" (ACLU, POLITICO).
Congress passed new legislation to expand housing supply — The Housing for the 21st Century Act became law in July 2026 after Trump initially declined to hold a signing ceremony for it (CNN).

The Two Positions

Where each side stands

Every point below is sourced to a real organization, official, or news report — click through to read it in full context.

Conservative

Federal homelessness policy should demand accountability, not fund a "slush fund"

HUD Secretary Scott Turner reframed the Continuum of Care program, capping permanent-housing spending at 30% of funds (down from roughly 90%) to redirect money toward treatment, work requirements, and transitional housing, arguing the prior approach fueled a "homeless industrial complex" (HUD, POLITICO).

Encampments are a public-safety crisis that cities have a duty to clear

The Cicero Institute argues street camping enables drug crime and violence and that states should ban unauthorized camping and empower attorneys general to sue cities that refuse to enforce clearance (Cicero Institute, Cicero Institute).

Trump's executive order restores order after decades of permissive policy

President Trump's July 2025 order "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets" directs federal agencies to prioritize grants for jurisdictions that enforce camping and drug-use bans and expand involuntary civil commitment for people who cannot care for themselves (Reuters, City Journal).

Housing First has failed and treatment-first approaches are the pragmatic alternative

Cicero Institute commentary contends two decades of Housing First and permissive policy toward public disorder failed to reduce chronic homelessness, and the executive order's blend of treatment, accountability, and enforcement is "not about punishing people" but restoring functional systems (Cicero Institute).

Restrictive local zoning, not demand alone, is the core driver of unaffordability, and deregulation is the fix

Heritage Foundation research has praised localities that loosen zoning restrictions such as accessory dwelling unit bans, calling excessive zoning "a less ostensible form of economic segregation" that raises costs for the middle class (The Heritage Foundation).

Mass immigration has added significant demand pressure that supply alone cannot absorb quickly

Vice President JD Vance and HUD's 2025 "Worst Case Housing Needs" report argue that a roughly 6-million-person increase in the foreign-born population from 2021–2024 drove rents and prices higher, with HUD stating immigration accounted for "nearly all" of the increased housing demand in some markets (HUD User, New York Post).

Progressive

HUD's funding overhaul threatens to push tens of thousands back onto the street

Internal HUD documents reviewed by reporters estimated the Continuum of Care funding cuts could put roughly 170,000 formerly homeless people, many elderly or disabled, at risk of losing permanent housing starting in 2026 (The New York Times, Spotlight PA).

Criminalizing homelessness doesn't solve it — it just hides poverty from view

The ACLU says that in the two years since Grants Pass, over 350 cities have passed laws letting them fine, jail, or forcibly displace unhoused people even with no shelter beds available, warning this "criminalizes survival" rather than addressing root causes like unaffordable housing (ACLU, ACLU of Washington).

Trump's executive order attacks evidence-based Housing First policy and endangers civil liberties

The National Alliance to End Homelessness condemned the July 2025 order for mandating sobriety, cutting harm-reduction funding, expanding involuntary institutionalization, and requiring personal health data be shared with law enforcement (National Alliance to End Homelessness, ACLU).

The real driver of unaffordability is a multimillion-unit supply shortage, not immigrants

PolitiFact rated Vance's claim that 30 million "illegal immigrants" are driving up housing costs "Mostly False," citing research finding unauthorized immigration added less than half a percent to home costs versus a 46% increase from higher mortgage rates, while economists point to a 4-to-7-million-home shortage from years of underbuilding (PolitiFact).

The country lacks enough affordable homes for its lowest-income renters in every single state

The National Low Income Housing Coalition's 2025 "Gap" report found a shortage of 7.2 million rental homes affordable and available to extremely low-income renters, with only 35 such units available for every 100 extremely low-income renter households (National Low Income Housing Coalition).

Proposed HUD budget cuts would gut the programs that keep people housed

The Trump administration's FY2026 budget request proposed slashing HUD funding by 44% overall and rental assistance by 43%, eliminating the Community Development Block Grant and HOME Investment Partnerships programs that fund affordable housing development (National Low Income Housing Coalition, Urban Institute).

Common Ground

Key facts both sides cite

Data and polling that inform the debate — both camps draw on these figures, even when they read them differently.

Homelessness point-in-time count — HUD's 2025 count found 745,652 people homeless on a single night in January 2025, a 3.3% decrease from 2024 but a 27% increase since 2013, with 266,320 people (about 36%) unsheltered (HUD, National Alliance to End Homelessness).

National housing shortage — Estimates from Freddie Mac, Goldman Sachs, and other analysts put the U.S. housing shortfall at roughly 4 to 7 million homes, a gap traced to over a decade of underbuilding after the 2008 financial crisis (CBS News, Pew Research Center).

Mortgage rates and home prices — The 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.49% in July 2026 per Freddie Mac, and the median existing-home price hit a record $440,600 for June 2026, according to the National Association of Realtors (CNN); Redfin separately put the national median sale price at $398,771 in May 2026, up 2.0% year over year (Redfin).

Public opinion on affordability and causes — A CBS News/YouGov-adjacent Pew finding shows 62% of Americans are concerned about housing costs and more than 8 in 10 say buying a home is harder than for earlier generations; a separate Economist/YouGov poll found 54% call interest rates a "very important" driver of housing costs versus 27% who say the same of immigration (CBS News, YouGov).

Sources

Every citation on this page

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