Affordability remains the top concern for American families.

This episode explains why. From inflation and housing to tariffs, sound money, and artificial intelligence, we explore how policy shapes prices, opportunity, and economic growth.

The best affordability policy isn't another government program. It's creating an economy where people are free to build, invest, innovate, and compete.

Get show notes at vanceginn.substack.com. 

Originally published at National Review. 

Washington's 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act went into law on July 11 without President Trump’s signature. The benefits of that bill are questionable, and Trump hoped to incentivize Congress to also pass the SAVE America Act, which didn’t happen. This federal housing bill gives governors and state lawmakers an opportunity to think before copying one of Congress’s worst ideas.

The newly passed bill gets some things right. It would ease some federal environmental reviews, improve manufactured-housing rules, and encourage local governments to remove other barriers that discourage building housing in Opportunity Zones and other areas. Those steps could help because America needs more homes, and we need them soon.

But Congress also targeted large institutional investors that own at least 350 single-family homes. That sounds simple. It is bad economics.

Milton Friedman often reminded people to look beyond good intentions and ask what incentives a policy creates. Restricting one group of buyers does not build a single new home. It can mean less investment, fewer rentals, slower repairs, more uncertainty, and higher prices than we would otherwise have.

Housing affordability mostly comes down to supply. When more people want homes than the market can provide, prices rise. Politicians can blame Wall Street, landlords, out-of-state buyers, or anyone else — but the real issue is still scarcity.

Government helped create that scarcity. Zoning rules limit where homes can be built. Minimum lot sizes force families to buy more land than they need. Parking mandates add costs. Permitting delays slow construction and raise financing costs. Impact fees increase home prices. Property taxes push up ownership and rental costs every year.

Blaming investors after blocking supply is like blaming umbrellas for rain. The data do not support the panic. In particular, institutional investors buy a very small share of housing. 

A recent report found that, “Institutions, defined by the proposed legislation as entities with 350+ homes in a portfolio, own ~0.7 percent of the 92 million US single-family homes and institutional investors of this size have been scaling back acquisitions — accounting for just 1 percent of all U.S. home purchases, down from a 4 percent peak in 2022.”

⁠Realtor.com likewise found institutional investors accounted for about 1 percent of national single-family home sales over the past decade, and their purchases have fallen since the 2021 peak. Most investor activity comes from smaller landlords. ⁠Realtor.com reported that investors bought 11.3 percent of homes in 2025, but mom-and-pop investors led the activity. Separately, the ⁠Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that large institutional owners have never accounted for more than 2 percent to 5 percent of purchases in any quarter.

​What’s more, even forcing every institutionally owned single-family rental into owner-occupancy would barely change the market. ⁠Brookings estimates available owner-occupied homes would rise only about 1 percent to 2 percent. That is not an affordability plan; it is a talking point.

Bad landlords exist. So do bad tenants, homeowners, builders, lenders, and politicians. Handle real misconduct with contracts, fraud laws, property standards, and local accountability. Broad ownership restrictions punish investment and reduce options.

Single-family rentals serve real families. Some households want a yard, more space, and neighborhood stability without buying right away. Others cannot qualify for a mortgage or want flexibility. Build-to-rent communities and professionally managed rentals help meet those needs.

A simple question cuts through politics: Compared with what?

If an investor cannot buy and repair a home, who fixes it? If a build-to-rent project is discouraged, where do those families live? If capital leaves because lawmakers threaten ownership limits, how does that create more homes? It does not.

Lawmakers should move the other way: Avoid special taxes on institutional owners, reject purchase caps, protect build-to-rent communities, and skip restrictive reporting rules. Real and effective reforms include legalizing more housing, shortening permitting timelines, limiting excessive fees, restraining government spending, and limiting property taxes before increasing budgets become a response to rising housing costs. States should also protect property rights when Washington tells people whom they may buy from, sell to, or rent from. Model legislation, legal challenges, and market-access protections would do better than anti-investor grandstanding.

None of this is about defending Wall Street. The issue is supply, competition, and choice. Prices send signals. High housing prices tell us homes are too scarce. Punishing buyers will not fix that.

Congress already made the investor mistake. Governors and state legislators should not make it worse. Housing needs more homes, not more scapegoats.

Originally published on Substack. 

​This week reinforced a lesson that cuts across nearly every policy debate in America:
​
People work better than government.

That may sound obvious, but it’s amazing how often policymakers forget it.

Whether the topic is poverty, jobs, housing, taxes, budgets, or inflation, the instinct in Washington and many state capitals is often the same: create another program, spend more money, or expand government authority. Yet the evidence continues to point in the opposite direction.

Take economic mobility. In my recent article for The Daily Economy⁠, later republished by RealClearMarkets⁠, I challenged the myth that America has a permanent underclass trapped in poverty.

The reality is that most people move through income brackets over their lifetimes as they gain skills, build careers, start businesses, and accumulate wealth. The goal of public policy shouldn’t be managing outcomes—it should be expanding opportunities.
​
The same principle showed up in the latest U.S. jobs report.

​While headlines celebrated job growth, my analysis found much of the increase came from government and government-dependent sectors. A bigger government payroll is not the same thing as a stronger economy. Lasting prosperity comes from productive private-sector growth, entrepreneurship, investment, and innovation. That’s where rising living standards come from, not government expansion.
​
Housing affordability tells a similar story. In my recent RealClearMarkets commentary⁠, I argued that America’s affordability challenges stem largely from supply constraints.

​Too many policymakers focus on restricting growth instead of expanding supply. Whether it’s housing, energy, water, or data centers, abundance—not scarcity—is the path to lower prices and greater opportunity.
​
The question of ownership remains central as well. In my latest property tax work, including Wyoming’s path toward property tax relief⁠, I continued making the case that if government can tax your property forever, ownership is incomplete.

Families should own their homes, not rent them from government through perpetual taxation. The solution starts with spending restraint and using surpluses to reduce and ultimately eliminate property taxes.
​
That same spending restraint is at the heart of the Sustainable Budget Project. Whether examining Alabama’s $18,000 spending problem⁠ or Alaska’s resource trap⁠, the lesson remains remarkably consistent: government spending that grows faster than population growth plus inflation eventually leads to higher taxes, slower growth, and fewer opportunities.

They’re largely the result of inflation, Federal Reserve policy, rising funding costs, and increased lending risks. When policymakers abandon fiscal discipline, families eventually pay the price.
​
One of the highlights of the week was seeing my work published internationally through the Instituto de Liberdade Econômica⁠, where I made the case that free-market capitalism remains the greatest engine of prosperity ever discovered.

No economic system has done more to lift people out of poverty, improve living standards, and expand opportunity.
​
My economic episode this week was on how government failures hurt our ability to prosper in many ways.

Across all these issues, the lesson is the same. Economic mobility requires opportunity. Housing affordability requires abundance. Ownership requires property rights. Growth requires entrepreneurship. Prosperity requires freedom.

Government has an important role, but it cannot replace families, businesses, churches, charities, and communities. Those institutions remain the real engines of human flourishing.

The more we trust people, the more they prosper. And that’s exactly what public policy should be designed to achieve.

Affordability remains one of the biggest challenges facing American families.

While inflation has come down from its peak, prices remain far higher than they were just a few years ago. Housing costs are elevated, insurance premiums continue rising, groceries cost more, and many households are relying on credit cards simply to make ends meet.
​
The result is a troubling milestone: Americans now carry a record $1.25 trillion in credit-card debt, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

A recent Wall Street Journal article, “Americans Are Falling Behind on Their $1.25 Trillion Credit-Card Bill,” highlighted the growing financial stress facing households across the country. The article documented the problem well, but I believe it missed an important part of the story.

Too often, higher credit-card interest rates are blamed on banks. But banks do not operate in a vacuum. Interest rates throughout the economy are heavily influenced by Federal Reserve policy, and lenders must account for both their cost of funds and the risk of lending.

In short, the rise in credit-card rates is largely a consequence of inflation, monetary policy, and increasing delinquency rates—not simply the actions of banks.

I submitted the following letter to the WSJ editor in response (WSJ couldn’t use it).

Letter to the Editor

Your article, “Americans Are Falling Behind on Their $1.25 Trillion Credit-Card Bill,” highlights the financial stress many households face but misses a key reason credit-card interest rates have risen so sharply: Federal Reserve policy.

Credit-card rates are typically tied to the prime rate, which closely follows the federal funds rate set by the Fed. As the central bank raised interest rates to combat the inflation created after years of excessive monetary expansion, borrowing costs increased throughout the economy. Credit-card rates rose with them.

Banks are not arbitrarily charging higher rates. They must price credit according to their cost of funds and the risk of lending. Rising delinquency rates and higher funding costs have made unsecured consumer lending more expensive.

Blaming banks for higher credit-card rates confuses cause and effect. The real story is that inflation and aggressive monetary tightening have left Americans paying more to borrow. If policymakers want lower borrowing costs, they should focus on restoring sound money and price stability rather than attacking lenders that are responding to market conditions.

Vance Ginn
Round Rock, Texas

What Policymakers Should Learn

The growing burden of credit-card debt is not merely a consumer finance story. It is a reminder that bad fiscal and monetary policy eventually reaches kitchen tables across America.

When Congress spends too much, deficits grow. The Federal Reserve often monetizes some or all of the deficit leading to inflation. The Fed often tries to clean up the mess from government failures. Families then pay the price through higher prices, higher interest rates, or both.

If we want Americans to have more opportunity to build wealth and less need to rely on debt, policymakers should focus on the root causes.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Sound money matters.

Price stability is essential for long-term prosperity. Inflation acts as a hidden tax that disproportionately hurts working families and those living paycheck to paycheck.

2. Fiscal restraint supports affordability.

Federal spending should grow no faster than population growth plus inflation. Excessive government spending contributes to inflationary pressures that ultimately make life more expensive.

3. Focus on causes, not scapegoats.

Higher borrowing costs are often the result of broader economic conditions, not simply the decisions of lenders responding to market signals.

The Bottom Line

Americans are struggling with affordability, and many are turning to credit cards to bridge the gap. But blaming banks for higher interest rates misses the bigger picture.

The real challenge is restoring the conditions that allow families to prosper: sound money, responsible budgeting, lower inflation, stronger economic growth, and greater opportunities to build wealth.

If we want lower borrowing costs tomorrow, we need better fiscal and monetary policy today.

Originally published at The Daily Economy. 

One of the most misleading ideas in American politics is that the United States has a large, fixed class of permanently poor people stuck at the bottom year after year, while everyone else moves on without them.

That story is emotionally powerful. It also happens to be a poor guide for serious policy.

Poverty is real. Hardship is real. Some people do remain trapped for long periods, and that deserves serious attention. But the popular picture of a vast, permanent underclass does not describe most Americans who show up in the bottom income quintile in any given year. As economist Anthony Davies has put it, many are there because of “retirement, homework, and diaper rash.” That line works because it captures something basic: a snapshot of income is not the same thing as a life story.

Students often have very low current earnings. So do many retirees living on savings or Social Security instead of wages. So do young parents working fewer hours, people between jobs, and entrepreneurs in low-cash-flow years. Treating all of them as members of a permanent poor class is not compassion. It is a category mistake.

The data back that up. The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances distinguishes between “actual” and “usual” income precisely because current-year income can be temporarily depressed. In 2010, about a quarter of families reported that their actual income was unusually low relative to normal. That matters because it means many households classified as poor in a given year are experiencing a temporary dip, not living permanently at the bottom. 

In fact, the same survey found that a large share of households in the lowest quintile by actual income ranked higher when measured by usual income instead.

The tax data tell the same story. A Treasury study tracking taxpayers from 1996 to 2005 found that about 56 percent moved to a different income quintile over the decade. More important, roughly half of those in the bottom quintile moved up by 2005, depending on the measure used. About 29 percent moved up one quintile, another 29 percent moved up at least two quintiles, and roughly five percent moved all the way from the bottom quintile to the top quintile. That is not what a rigid caste system looks like. It is a dynamic picture in which many people pass through low-income years rather than remain stuck there permanently.

This is where so much bad policy begins. Politicians see a one-year income snapshot and talk as if they are looking at a permanent social class. They are not. They are often looking at transition.

This does not mean every measure of mobility is strong. A lot of the confusion comes from mixing together two different questions. The first is short-run income mobility: do people move up or down within their own lives? On that question, the evidence clearly shows substantial movement. The second is intergenerational mobility: do children rise above the economic position of their parents? That is a different question, and the answer there is more mixed.

The newer Census mobility data show that income mobility varies significantly by geography, age, race, and sex. And other work has shown that absolute mobility has weakened relative to earlier generations. Those are serious concerns. But uneven mobility is not the same as a large, fixed, poor class.

The latest Archbridge Institute report on social mobility in the 50 states broadens the analysis beyond annual income. Archbridge evaluates mobility through four pillars: entrepreneurship and growth, institutions and the rule of law, education and skills development, and social capital. It also distinguishes between natural barriers such as family instability or social networks and artificial barriers created by policy, such as excessive occupational licensing, weak school choice, or heavy regulation. That is a much better framework than casually conflating poverty, inequality, and mobility. 

​The state rankings tell an important story. In Archbridge’s 2025 report, Utah ranked first, followed by Vermont, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. At the bottom were Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, New York, and Arkansas. That does not prove one policy explains everything. It does show that institutions matter.

Mobility is shaped by the rules, incentives, and social conditions people live under. The poor are not static, but the barriers they face can be.

This is where the free-market case becomes especially important. If you care about mobility, you should care about growth. The AEI “Land of Opportunity” project and its essay on the greatness of growth and the American Dream make the point clearly: growth is not a side issue. Growth is the oxygen of mobility. 

A faster-growing economy creates more businesses, more jobs, more opportunity, more room for incomes to rise, and more chances for people to accumulate wealth over time. A slower-growing economy makes class lines harder and mobility weaker.
That is why policies that burden growth hurt the poor most over time. Heavy regulation, bad schools, housing shortages, excessive licensing, and weak property rights do not just reduce efficiency in the abstract. They reduce mobility in practice.

A recent article highlights how land-use rules and housing constraints quietly kill mobility by making it harder for families to move to places with better labor-market opportunities. Another essay points to research showing that economic freedom, especially lighter regulation and stronger property rights, is associated with greater intergenerational mobility.

That is the key insight the static-poor narrative misses. If policymakers really want more upward mobility, the answer is not to freeze people into permanent income categories and redistribute more aggressively. The answer is to remove the barriers that keep people from climbing.

That means stronger growth, more entrepreneurship, more housing, better schools, more school choice, lower regulatory burdens, and institutions that reward work, saving, investment, and family stability. It also means respecting people’s freedom to vote with their feet toward states, cities, and communities with better opportunity. Mobility is not just something economists measure after the fact. It is something people actively pursue when they are free to move toward better institutions and opportunities.

The myth of the static poor survives because it is politically useful. It turns a moving picture into a still frame. It makes the government look like the only answer. But it misses the reality that most Americans who are poor at one point in time do not stay there forever, that incomes often rise over time, and that wealth accumulation frequently follows when people are free to work, save, invest, and build.

The real task is not to manage a permanently poor class. It is to build a freer society where more people can rise.

Affordability continues to dominate the concerns of American families, and for good reason. As prices remain elevated, energy costs are squeezing household budgets, housing has become increasingly out of reach, and the value of every dollar continues to erode. But these problems didn’t appear out of nowhere; much of today’s affordability crisis is the result of years of bad policy.

In this episode of This Week’s Economy, we’ll examine why inflation remains a persistent burden, how housing shortages and overregulation continue driving up living costs, why tax and spending reforms matter for long-run affordability, and what the future of the Federal Reserve under Kevin Warsh could mean for restoring sound money and economic discipline.

Watch the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and visit my website for more information about my work at Ginn Economic Consulting at vanceginn.com and show notes at vanceginn.substack.com.

Originally published at RealClear Markets. 

Congress is finally moving on housing. President Trump is pushing for the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, the Senate passed its version 89-10, and the House recently released an amended version in May that tries to smooth out some of the bill’s rougher edges.

Housing affordability is a major economic problem facing American families. Mortgage rates are above 6 percent (and rising), existing-home prices remain above $400,000, and America is short more than 4 million homes. Young families feel locked out. Renters feel squeezed. Parents wonder whether their kids will ever own a home.

So, yes, Congress should act. But it should act in ways that increase supply, strengthen property rights, and remove barriers. It should not pretend Washington can fix housing by deciding who is allowed to buy what.

That is the problem with the bill’s treatment of institutional investors. The Senate version included a stricter ban on large institutional investors buying single-family homes, along with provisions that raised concerns for build-to-rent projects. The House version softened the approach by preserving exemptions for build-to-rent and renovate-to-rent models. That is an improvement, because build-to-rent can add supply and provide needed rental options.

But the better question is why Congress is targeting lawful buyers at all.

In a free market, a homeowner should be able to sell to the buyer offering the best combination of price, certainty, timing, and terms. That buyer may be a young family. It may be a local landlord. It may be a builder. It may be an investor willing to renovate a neglected property or finance the construction of new rental homes. 

The government should not interfere with private property rights because politicians want to look tough on Wall Street. That is not how free-market capitalism works. It is not how America’s version of capitalism should work either.

The common concern is understandable. Nobody wants families priced out by politically connected firms with cheap capital. Nobody wants neighborhoods hollowed out by absentee owners who neglect properties or abuse tenants. Fraud, collusion, deceptive fees, and poor management should be addressed directly. But broad restrictions on ownership are a top-down response to a supply problem.

And the facts do not support blaming investors for the national crisis. A GAO report found institutional investors owned only 1 percent to 3 percent of single-family homes in six studied metro areas by 2024. Other research finds institutional investors own less than 1 percent of single-family homes nationally. They may matter in certain local markets, but they did not create a nationwide shortage of millions of homes. The government did.

Zoning restrictions, minimum lot sizes, parking mandates, permitting delays, impact fees, environmental reviews, and local veto points have made housing too hard, too slow, and too expensive to build. Then, politicians blame investors for responding to the scarcity that the government created.

When demand rises and supply is restricted, prices go up. If lawmakers want lower prices, they must let supply respond.

That is why the best parts of the ROAD to Housing Act are the supply-side pieces. The House Financial Services Committee says the amended bill cuts barriers to construction, modernizes HUD programs, and allows banks to deploy more capital into communities. Other highlights include manufactured housing, rural housing, financing, and regulatory streamlining.

The investor restrictions move in the opposite direction. Even softened, they rest on the wrong premise: that Washington should decide which buyers are acceptable. Once the government claims that power, it will not stop with “large institutional investors.” The same logic can easily spread to other disfavored buyers, financing models, or rental arrangements.

That should alarm anyone who cares about property rights.

Housing affordability will not be restored by banning buyers. It will be restored by allowing builders to build, owners to sell, renters to choose, and markets to work.

Congress should fix the ROAD to Housing Act by keeping the supply-side reforms and stripping out the anti-market central planning. The goal should not be to punish ownership. The goal should be housing abundance.

Originally published on Substack .

​Housing affordability is hammering families. First-time buyers face high mortgage rates, high home prices, and too little inventory. Renters are paying more each month while trying to save for a down payment. Employers struggle to hire when workers cannot afford to live near jobs.

So yes, Congress should act.

But the right goal is not to look tough on investors. The right goal is to make housing more abundant.

That is why the House should fix the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act before final passage.

The Bill Is Moving

The Senate passed the ROAD to Housing Act by an overwhelming 89-10 vote. The bill is now before the House, where lawmakers are deciding whether to accept the Senate version or amend it.

The key dispute is the Senate’s language targeting institutional investors in single-family homes. The provision would restrict certain large investors from buying additional homes and could pressure some firms to sell properties over time.

The White House and Senate leaders want quick action. Politico reports they are skeptical of House changes, while The Hill describes a growing House-Senate clash. President Trump has pushed for a housing win and backed the message that homes should be for people, not corporations, according to Politico.

The politics are moving fast. That makes it even more important to get the economics right.

The Target Is Too Small

Institutional investors are an easy target. They sound large, distant, and politically convenient.

But they are not the main cause of unaffordable housing.

A GAO report found institutional investors owned only about less than 1 percent to 3 percent of single-family homes in the metro areas studied. Realtor.com research found institutional investors represented roughly 1 percent of national single-family home sales over the past decade.

That does not mean every investor acts well. It means this is not the root of the crisis.

The root is supply.

Supply Is the Crisis

For years, policymakers made housing harder to build.

Zoning limits density. Permitting takes too long. Fees raise costs. Environmental reviews delay projects. Inflation raises materials and labor costs. Higher interest rates make financing harder. Property taxes and insurance make monthly payments more expensive.

Then lawmakers act surprised when housing becomes unaffordable.

But the math is simple: demand rose, supply lagged, and prices jumped.

A useful housing bill should attack that supply problem directly. The House and Senate housing packages include some constructive ideas on financing, housing programs, and local flexibility. Those should be improved and advanced.

But federal ownership restrictions move in the wrong direction.

Renters Need Options

The Senate provision also risks treating rental housing as less legitimate than homeownership.
That is a mistake.

Renters are families, workers, retirees, students, and people rebuilding financially. Some are saving for a down payment. Some need flexibility for a job move. Some cannot afford today’s mortgage rates. Some simply prefer renting for now.

A healthy market needs both ownership and rental options.

Forced sell-offs or ownership caps could reduce available rental homes, delay renovations, discourage build-to-rent projects, and raise rents in tight markets.

That would not help renters become homeowners. It would make the ladder harder to climb.

Capital Builds Homes

Homes require capital.

Builders need financing. Older homes need renovation. Rental communities need long-term investment. Markets need liquidity so homes can be bought, repaired, rented, and sold.

Institutional investors can provide some of that capital. They are not the whole market, but they are part of the ecosystem that supplies rental housing and renovation funding.

If Congress tells investors that housing capital can be targeted whenever politics shift, capital will respond. Some projects will slow. Some renovations will wait. Some money will move elsewhere.

Less investment today means fewer homes tomorrow.

That is not affordability.

My North Star

The North Star for housing policy should be clear:

More homes. More options. Lower costs.

Every provision should be judged by that standard.

Does it increase supply?

Does it reduce barriers?

Does it lower development costs?

Does it create stability for renters and buyers?

Does it encourage people to build, renovate, and invest?

If not, it should be removed.

As has been argued at The Daily Economy and in the Washington Examiner, affordability comes from abundance, not scapegoating.

Fix the Bill

The House should remove or substantially narrow the forced-sale and institutional-investor provisions.

A stronger housing bill would:

• speed up permitting
• reduce zoning barriers
• reduce regulatory uncertainty
• avoid picking winners and losers

Milton Friedman taught that policy should be judged by results, not intentions. A policy that sounds pro-family but reduces rental supply and discourages construction is not pro-family.

Congress should pass a housing bill that expands opportunity instead of shrinking options.

Three Takeaways

First, the ROAD to Housing Act is moving quickly after Senate passage, and House action soon could determine whether the final bill expands supply or discourages investment.

Second, institutional investors are a very small share of the housing market, while the real affordability problem is too little housing supply.

Third, the right answer is abundance: faster permitting, fewer barriers, lower costs, and stable rules that encourage building.
​
Build more homes. Fix the bill. Let people prosper.

Originally published on Substack.

Some in Washington have suddenly discovered affordability while the Trump administration continues to blame Biden or say people “feel” okay.

Americans are right to be upset.
​
As the new Cato Institute affordability handbook (authored by Cato scholars, such as Ryan Bourne, Romina Boccia, Norbert Michel, Scott Lincicome, Travis Fisher, Colin Grabow, and others) notes, by early 2026 consumer prices were still about 24 percent higher than five years earlier, while borrowing costs on mortgages, car loans, and credit cards had also jumped.

Families do not experience the economy through press releases. They experience it through rent, groceries, insurance, health care, child care, and monthly payments that still do not fit comfortably inside a paycheck.
But here is the problem Washington keeps refusing to face: most of the political class wants to solve affordability with the same tools that made it worse.
Cap prices. Punish profits. Expand subsidies. Add mandates. Restrict trade. Pick winners. Manage outcomes.
That is not a cure. It is just more politics in place of markets.
As I argued in Affordability Is the Test—and Washington Keeps Failing It, families do not care whether economists say inflation has cooled if the cost of everyday life is still elevated. Affordability is the issue because it decides whether households can actually live, save, build, and plan. The answer is not more management from above. It is more room for the private economy to work.
The North Star
A key insight in Cato’s handbook is that affordability is not one problem. It is several: the aftermath of persistent inflation, expensive credit, and supply restrictions in housing, energy, health care, transportation, food, and finance.

But the policy North Star is still simple. If you want lower costs and more options, you have to make it easier to produce, easier to build, easier to invest, easier to compete, and easier to adapt.

That lines up closely with what I have been writing.

In Families Flourish Under Free-Market Capitalism, I made the point that affordability is not primarily a demand problem. People will always want more and better things. The real issue is whether policy allows enough supply, innovation, and competition to meet those wants at lower cost. In The State of the Economy: Texas, DFW, and Beyond, I put it even more plainly: affordability is a supply problem. That is the lens policymakers should use.

Housing Is the Clearest Example

Cato’s housing chapter makes the point Washington still struggles to say out loud: housing is expensive because too many governments make it hard to build housing.

Zoning rules, minimum lot sizes, parking mandates, accessory dwelling restrictions, manufactured-housing barriers, and other local rules suppress supply and push up prices. That is not a market failure. That is a policy choice failure.

That is why I have emphasized in my housing testimony before the Texas Senate and in Rethinking Housing Affordability that affordability gets worse when government blocks supply and then blames investors, demand, or capitalism. You do not make homes cheaper by preserving scarcity. You make them cheaper by letting more homes get built.

Health Care Is No Different

The health-care section of Cato’s handbook is just as blunt: subsidies do not solve affordability problems. In many cases, they are the problem because they separate consumers from prices and drive spending through third parties. The result is more spending without real cost discipline.

That tracks directly with my own work in Solving the Healthcare Affordability Crisis, where I argued that we do not need more bureaucratic middlemen controlling dollars and decisions. We need more direct relationships, more price transparency, and more consumer control. If you keep subsidizing a broken financing structure, you do not get affordability. You get a more expensive version of the same broken system.

Tariffs and Price Controls Make It Worse

This is where both parties really go off the rails.

Cato’s handbook points to tariffs, transportation restrictions, and food-market interventions as drivers of higher prices. That should not surprise anyone. Tariffs are taxes. Protectionism is a hidden cost on households. And price controls do not make things cheaper to produce; they just distort supply, access, and investment.

I have made that case repeatedly in my own work. In Price Controls Won’t Fix America’s Insurance Crisis, I argued that politicians keep reaching for caps and controls instead of addressing the barriers and distortions causing the problem. In my free-trade writing, I have also stressed that tariffs may sound tough, but they squeeze working households and raise costs across the economy. If the goal is affordability, you do not tax the things people buy and the inputs businesses need.

Markets, Not Mandates

The broader lesson from the Cato handbook is one I think policymakers need to hear again and again: affordability does not come from smarter political micromanagement. It comes from freer markets.

That means tighter fiscal and monetary discipline so Washington does not reignite inflation. It means fewer subsidies and mandates that mask costs instead of lowering them. It means fewer tariffs and trade barriers that raise everyday prices. It means clearing away the rules that choke off housing, energy, health care, and transportation supply. And it means respecting the role of prices and profits in guiding decisions better than politicians ever can.

That is the North Star.

Americans do not need more affordability theater. They need the freedom to produce, build, compete, and choose.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Affordability is mostly a policy problem, not a market failure.

Cato’s handbook shows that today’s cost pressures come from inflation, expensive credit, and supply restrictions across key sectors.

2. The cure is more supply and competition, not more control.

That is true in housing, health care, and trade.

3. The North Star should be economic freedom.

If policymakers want lower prices and more opportunity, they should stop replacing markets with politics and start letting people prosper.

Washington may call this the year of affordability.

Good.
​
Now it should stop doing the very things that make life unaffordable.

Originally published on Substack.

Washington is doing that thing again where it mistakes a slogan for a solution. The latest proof is the White House’s new executive order, “Stopping Wall Street from Competing with Main Street Homebuyers”, paired with a growing bipartisan push to “ban Wall Street” from buying homes.

It sounds pro-family. It feels decisive. It is mostly politics, not economics.

Even some Republicans are following the herd. Senators Hawley and Merkley’s bipartisan bill would prohibit large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes, townhouses, and condos.

Senate Democrats just rolled out the American Homeownership Act, which targets “Wall Street landlords” by stripping key tax benefits and reinvesting the savings elsewhere.

Here’s the hard truth: if your diagnosis is wrong, your treatment will fail.

Institutional investors are not the cause of unaffordable housing. The core cause is a housing shortage created and protected by government.

The housing crisis is a supply crisis

America did not build enough homes for decades. A widely cited estimate from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that if housing growth from 2000–2020 had matched the pace from 1980–2000, the U.S. would have roughly 15 million more housing units. That is the real missing ingredient: supply.

And the biggest barriers to new supply are not on Wall Street. They’re at City Hall.

Local governments control zoning, density, parking minimums, minimum lot sizes, height limits, and endless neighborhood veto points. Those rules make it illegal or financially impossible to build the kind of housing families need, where they need it.

You cannot fix government-created scarcity with more government restrictions. That is doubling down on failure.

Investors are not “taking over” housing

The narrative says families are being “outbid” by institutional investors everywhere. The evidence says something very different.

The American Enterprise Institute finds institutional investors’ market share is less than 1% nationally, with only 22 counties reaching 5–10%.

The Mercatus Center reports large institutional owners have never exceeded 2.5% of home purchases in any quarter.
Most investor-owned inventory is held by small mom-and-pop landlords. And more importantly, much of the institutional activity is shifting away from buying existing homes and toward building new rental communities.

This matters because the policy proposals are aimed at a tiny slice of the market, while ignoring the actual constraint: not enough homes.

Single-family rentals help families, not “Wall Street”

Here’s what gets lost in the political shouting.

Single-family rentals are a pressure valve for families who are not ready to buy, cannot save a large down payment, or are priced out by interest rates. When supply is tight, rentals in good neighborhoods can be a lifeline.

That is not theory. Research by Tom Mayock finds that increased single-family rental supply can help economically disadvantaged children access higher-performing schools.

And the broader research on neighborhoods is clear: Raj Chetty’s work shows that moving to lower-poverty, higher-opportunity neighborhoods improves long-run outcomes for children, especially when they move young.

So when lawmakers talk about “helping families” by shrinking the single-family rental industry, they are playing with real lives. Less rental supply means higher rents, fewer options near good schools, and less mobility for working families.

If Congress meddles anyway, the least-bad guardrails matter

I don’t like carveouts. But if Congress insists on intervening, then write the bill to avoid detonating the single-family rental market.

Two provisions are now being debated that matter a lot:

1) Preemption over the states.

If a federal bill moves, preemption can prevent a patchwork of state bans, including a unilateral ban from California. A 50-state mess of restrictions is how you guarantee uncertainty, reduced investment, and fewer homes built.

2) An investor-to-investor sales exemption.

This is the other key fix under discussion: allowing institutional investors to sell homes to one another. That does not compete with families and it helps preserve single-family rentals. It also avoids forced liquidations that can trigger fire sales, displace renters, and depress neighborhood values.

I still prefer Congress not meddle at all. But if it does, these guardrails help reduce much of the collateral damage.

The Rotterdam warning: bans raise rents

If lawmakers want a real-world test case, look at the Netherlands. A study of the Dutch “buy-to-let” restrictions finds the ban increased rental prices, consistent with reduced rental supply.

That is what happens when government tries to outlaw a category of buyer instead of fixing supply. Scarcity wins.

What policymakers should do instead

If you actually want affordability, do the boring work that matters:

• Legalize more housing types locally: duplexes, ADUs, lot splits, and modest density
• Streamline permitting and end open-ended delays
• Cut fees and mandates that raise construction costs
• Stop treating property taxes as a harmless funding source. They punish ownership and investment, year after year
• Encourage building, including build-to-rent, to expand options for families

The best evidence for this approach is painfully simple: when supply rises, housing prices and rents fall.

Call to action

If you want to help families, stop chasing applause lines and start focusing on increasing housing supply.

Tell your city council and county commissioners: reform zoning, speed up permits, and allow builders to build. Tell Congress: don’t scapegoat a tiny share of the market, and don’t double down on government failure with more government.

And if you want a deeper dive, see my writings and the full breakdown on this issue at vanceginn.com.

Government failures broke housing. Markets kept it functioning. The solution is less government and more building, mostly at the local level.
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