Every once in a while, a problem comes along that is so big, so intertwined with everything else, that we stop seeing it. Housing in America is like that. It’s the air we breathe, the floor beneath our feet, the backdrop of our lives, and right now, that foundation is cracking.
We have millions of working families who can’t find an affordable home in the cities where the jobs are. We have tent encampments under highway overpasses and on courthouse lawns. We have a pattern of growth that paves over farmland and locks people into two-hour commutes. We’ve normalized it all, as if the dislocation, the loneliness, and the waste were just the price of modern life.
It’s not.
This week, a new national plan was released that says: stop pretending these are three separate problems. The shortage of affordable housing, the rise of homelessness, and the endless creep of suburban sprawl are the same problem wearing different masks. Solve them together, and you can solve them faster, cheaper, and better.
The plan envisions adding more than seven million homes in the next decade, ending chronic homelessness, and reshaping our growth so that communities are walkable, transit-connected, and economically vibrant. It’s not pie-in-the-sky. It borrows from proven local successes: Housing First programs that turn every dollar into $1.80 in social benefit; modular construction that trims months and millions from project timelines; smart growth policies that cut infrastructure costs nearly in half.
The message is simple: if we build the right kinds of housing in the right places, we create a virtuous cycle. Housing becomes more affordable. Homelessness declines. Our cities become more livable. Tax dollars go further. We all breathe easier.
The question is whether we can see the house we all live in — and whether we have the will to fix it together.