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Discussion: America's affordable housing crisis

TY Mathers · 2025-12-03T22:17:58.803412+00:00

The United States is widely considered to be in the middle of a housing crisis; home prices are up about 60% over the last decade (after adjusting for inflation). More recently we have seen a sharp rise in homelessness. As this crisis is becoming more prominent, we are seeing a shift towards politicians who claim they can combat the crisis head on, most notably Zohran Mamdani in NYC. Here are some natural questions for discussion: Can we describe the root cause(s) of the housing crisis? Are there any particular policies that have played a major role in the problem? What are viable solutions to the problem? Are we able to point to any cities that have implemented successful policies for combating this issue? Zohran Mamdani's proposed plan to address housing costs in NYC has two major components: building more affordable housing and freezing rent. Is this likely to be a successful platform? I'm particularly interested in the latter component; are we able to point to specific data to suggest whether rent freezes are a successful tactic for keeping housing costs down?