Trump wants to solve housing the way he solves everything else: alone
By Michael Jones
For most presidents, new housing policy begins the slow, grinding way: a proposal unveiled with fanfare, a draft bill shuttled to the Hill, months of hearings and horse-trading in committee rooms where fluorescent lights hum louder than the debates themselves, a budget request sweetened with fresh grants, a pitch to expand tax credits or rental assistance, maybe a gentle nudge to local governments that stand in the way of new construction. Even the executive branch’s own housing bureaucracy can only tinker at the edges—shifting program rules, piloting new incentives—while the real decisions depend on lawmakers.
The plodding process of translating ideas into legislation, negotiating them into law and into programs that touch people’s lives is frustrating to watch and even harder to lead. And perhaps it explains the prospect of President Donald Trump sweeping it all aside. It tells us so much about how he governs, how little patience he has for the ordinary way of doing business in Washington, and how uninterested congressional Republicans are in flexing their legislative might to maintain some semblance of the constitutional balance of powers.
The approach is worth scrutinizing since Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent floated the idea late last month of Trump declaring a housing emergency this fall. It fits into the president’s broader strategy of bypassing Congress through emergency declarations on trade, crime and immigration—a signal of his lack of faith in his own party’s ability to legislate on affordability and yet another proof point for Democrats’ claims of executive overreach in domestic policy.
“It’s not clear to me what emergency powers Donald Trump seeks to utilize or what his solution would be in terms of dealing with the housing unaffordability issue that is plaguing far too many Americans across the country,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told me. “Here’s a suggestion for the Trump administration: Try to legislate and maybe we can find common ground to get something done on behalf of the American people.”
Jeffries predicted that if Trump went through with an emergency housing declaration, it would be curtailed by the courts.
“That’s the reality of how Donald Trump has approached governing during his administration. The American people know it, which is why he remains deeply unpopular at this point in time, and why they are running scared because they have no track record of accomplishment to run on.”
Rep. Nikema Williams (D-Ga.), who represents Atlanta, one of the most expensive cities to live in, acknowledged that the nation is experiencing a housing crisis, but bristled at the notion that Trump is Mr. Fix-It.
“The solution is not to turn everything over to Donald Trump, which is what his plan is for everything,”
Williams told me last week. “So while two things can be true at the same time, we can be in the midst of an affordable housing crisis in this country, it also can be true that President Donald Trump is trying in every way possible to gain total control of everything in this country by declaring everything an emergency.”
Williams pointed to the housing provisions included in the House-passed Build Back Better Act in 2021 as evidence that solutions aren’t as elusive as they may seem.
“We have not met the mark. And so there is work to be done,” she added. “But I’m waiting for my Republican colleagues to get on board and to move forward. I mean, there are a number of things that we can be doing.”
Trump’s flirtation with declaring a housing emergency follows a second term already marked by sweeping uses of emergency authority in other areas.
On trade, his team has leaned on national emergency powers to impose or expand tariffs outside the normal congressional process, presenting it as a way to protect American industries while sidestepping lawmakers wary of broad tariff hikes. On crime, the White House declared an emergency to justify sending federal agents into cities under the banner of restoring law and order, even as local officials bristled at what they saw as a federal takeover of policing. And on immigration, Trump has revived and broadened emergency declarations at the border, using them to divert funds and expand enforcement authority without new legislation.
The policy outcomes have been mixed.
Tariff actions gave Trump leverage abroad but contributed to uncertainty for U.S. businesses and consumers. Crime crackdowns generated headlines but often sparked legal challenges and strained relationships with local governments. Immigration moves tightened enforcement in the short term, leaving Congress no closer to resolving decades of legislative deadlock.
Politically, though, the strategy has reinforced Trump’s brand as a president who acts unilaterally when Congress won’t bend. It rallies his base by portraying him as unafraid to use every tool at his disposal, while deepening concerns among Democrats and some institutionalist Republicans that the presidency is swallowing legislative prerogatives.
The proposed housing emergency would fit squarely in that mold: potentially impactful on the margins, legally contested, and almost certain to widen the debate over how far executive power should stretch in domestic policymaking.
The roots of today’s housing crisis run deeper than any single administration.
Construction never fully rebounded after the 2008 financial crash, leaving a structural shortage of homes that worsened as demand surged during the pandemic. At the same time, supply chain breakdowns, labor shortages and soaring material costs made it harder and more expensive to build. Local zoning restrictions and community opposition further throttled new construction, especially for affordable units.
The result is a chronic mismatch between supply and demand.
Home prices spiked during the pandemic and have stayed elevated, locking many first-time buyers out of the market even as mortgage rates climbed. Renters face similar pressures: vacancy rates remain tight and landlords have pushed through steady price increases.
These circumstances explain why shelter costs are now the single biggest driver of persistent inflation. While prices for goods like cars and appliances have cooled, housing accounts for a disproportionate share of Americans’ monthly budgets. Economists estimate that inflation would already be back near the Federal Reserve’s two-percent target if rent and home prices had grown at pre-pandemic rates. Instead, families are still squeezed by a cost-of-living crisis that feels most acute every time the rent check or mortgage bill comes due.
Congressional inaction is catnip for an administration hellbent on stretching the limits of Trump’s authority, and what makes the housing crisis such a tempting arena for executive action. Lawmakers across both parties agree affordability is a problem, but have failed to advance large-scale reforms, including expanding tax credits, boosting rental assistance or easing zoning barriers. The stalemate has left previous presidents looking for workarounds, with Trump now signaling he may go further than his predecessors by branding housing a national “emergency” and moving unilaterally.
When Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned for the presidency in 2024, she made housing affordability one of her marquee domestic policy planks.
Her proposals included a $25,000 down payment assistance program for first-time buyers and targeted incentives to expand the affordable housing supply. Harris tied those ideas to broader efforts under the Biden-Harris administration, which sought to increase the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, invest in new construction and ease zoning restrictions through federal grants.
The Biden-Harris team also launched initiatives to reduce closing costs, expand rental assistance, and speed the conversion of vacant commercial properties into residential units. Those efforts faced the same congressional bottlenecks now defining Trump’s term: Democrats never had the votes to push large-scale housing legislation through the Senate and even modest proposals often ran aground in a divided Congress.
Still, Harris’s record underscores an approach that would have likely emphasized working through legislation and incentives rather than asserting unilateral executive power. Where Trump signals a willingness to declare so-called emergencies to reshape the housing market on his own, Harris argued that affordability should be addressed through durable, congressionally backed reforms that could outlast a single presidency.
Even in the minority, Democrats aren’t sitting idly by.
Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), who sits on the Senate Banking subcommittee with jurisdiction over housing policy, introduced a five-part legislative agenda on Monday to combat the housing crisis.
“For too many in Delaware and across our nation, homeownership—or even affordable rent—is out of reach. And for too long, the federal government has been missing in action,” Blunt Rochester said at an event in her state to unveil the agenda. “My comprehensive housing agenda is a blueprint for making housing more affordable, accessible, and attainable for all Americans. Together, we will chart a New Way Home.”
Blunt Rochester’s former House colleagues also have ideas of their own, in hopes they can position themselves as the party with a forward-looking alternative to the unpopular One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Republican leaders are now looking to rebrand.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) and House Democrats from across the ideological spectrum last week convened the first-ever National Summit on the Housing Affordability Crisis on Capitol Hill, bringing together lawmakers, advocates, labor, industry, and community leaders to confront America’s growing housing emergency.
“If we’re going to actually tackle this affordability crisis that Trump said he was going to tackle on day one, we have to start with housing because that is what impacts people. This is not just a blue state issue. It is also a red state issue,” he told me. “Everything we’ve done has been too small, too slow and too expensive. We’ve got to think different.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
