How Congress Plans to Take on the Housing Crisis | Hacker News Reader

How Congress Plans to Take on the Housing Crisis

wsj.com

4 pointspaulpauper14 comments

So we'll all just live in cheap trailers? This is how you make America great again?

Has anyone put two and two together to figure out that removing cheap labor from the marketplace does not make housing (or most other things) more affordable?

> So we'll all just live in cheap trailers? This is how you make America great again?

Well, you could count it on being a one step in a direction of reintroducing American manufacturing.

Are you arguing that citizens cannot do this work while being paid living wages in union jobs? Because I don't believe underpaying undocumented workers is a requirement to achieve a sustainable affordable housing pipeline.

Fix permitting [1] and homebuilder monopolies [2] while rebuilding a domestic talent pipeline for the trades [3], because young Americans need jobs they can build a life on [4].

[1] https://www.governance.fyi/p/a-housing-playbook-outline-for-...

[2] https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/its-the-land-stupid-how-t...

[3] https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/newsroom/press-releases/...

[4] https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-is-unemployment-f...

Are you arguing that citizens cannot do this work while being paid living wages in union jobs?

I am arguing this is a very real possibility.

This issue is bigger than just "living wages in union jobs".

Before workers can find good paying jobs building homes, buyers have to able to afford the homes these high paid workers build.

It's really a supply and demand, chicken or egg type problem. It's not easily solved by simply removing cheap labor.

I agree removing cheap undocumented labor is going to potentially exacerbate the problem in the short term. I am also mindful that a significant portion of the US economy runs on exploitation of undocumented immigrant labor. If the US remains undesirable to immigrant labor in the short term, the system will be forced towards using domestic labor if houses are to be built. I am anti exploitation, not anti immigrant, to be clear. We cannot kick the can forever on enabling exploitation of labor at scale, imho.

In the short term, if you want to make housing more affordable, destroy demand for housing in the US (which this administration has done, unintentionally, by repeatedly damaging the economy with policy). This is faster than building new housing. Happy accidents. You see parallels to this with the Iran conflict oil supply and price shock that is going to force an energy transition very quickly.

More US Counties See Population Drops Under Trump’s Immigration Crackdown - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-26/us-census... | https://archive.today/OGwWj - March 26th, 2026

The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/trump-imm... | https://archive.today/LdA0d - January 30th, 2026

At the same time, there are a lot of sellers of existing inventory out there who simply have not made peace with forward looking real estate price levels. They are married to pandemic market conditions, which is unfortunate. Those who must sell will, and over time, prices will come down to more reasonable price levels as closed sales set comparables for future near term transactions.

Over Half of Home Listings Have Been Lingering on the Market For More Than 2 Months - https://www.redfin.com/news/stale-housing-inventory-february... - March 30th, 2026

Update on the “Lock-in Effect” in the Housing Market: Below-3% & 4% Mortgages Fade Very Slowly - https://wolfstreet.com/2026/03/27/update-on-the-lock-in-effe... - March 27th, 2026

Prices of New Single-Family Homes Drop Further, Inventory of Completed New Homes for Sale Highest since 2009 - https://wolfstreet.com/2026/03/19/prices-of-new-single-famil... - March 19th, 2026

Broadly speaking, the current administration has done far more to cool the economy with dysfunctional policy (tariffs, immigration) than the Fed would be able to do with target rates. If you need workers, they exist domestically (based on unemployment rates and job opening statistics as of this comment). Employ them or go without.

(lots of parallels in the US residential real estate market to private equity at the moment; valuations are too high and unreasonable with no buyers, and lots of folks disappointed by fundamentals and reality)

What you are saying is all super reasonable but I don't think any of this will be happening. The prices literally never come down. When there is an inkling that they might the "Big Gov" (maybe it will be this administration, maybe it will be next) will 100% prop it up, it'll be Kamala's $25k or it'll be another thing but housing is deeply tied into the US Economy and the government (on purpose, not like DJT doing what he's doing... lol) just won't let any of this happen - the prices are not coming down significantly and demand is not going to cool - on the whole.

I live in DC area and since the beginning of this 2nd DJT term we've have DOGE and significant layoffs affecting Northern Virginia and AI-related layoffs and issues with construction (like you I am stoked for anything that prevents people exploitation) etc and yet prices have gone up, most houses in my area (around the Dulles airport) sell within a week. Deep inside VA, my sister-in-law lives in more rural area - same thing, housing prices are going up, everything is selling in reasonable amount of time considering the conditions and interest rates... additionally if we start employing more of "our" people to work there will be a lot more housing demand - not less, no?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

https://www.haver.com/articles/u-s-fhfa-house-price-growth-c...

Note the trend. Just as the Fed drains M2 with quantitative tightening, time is needed to drain inflated residential real estate equity, grounded in mortgage rates (priced off of treasuries) and what wages can support.

Would you agree though that this is very regional in nature? We have majority of regions in the United States seeing housing price increases even with everything that has been going on (especially mortgage rates, weak job market...)

Yes, all real estate is local.

yes but this isn’t, no!? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

National trends vs local trends. If you'd like, I can buy you an hour of time with an economist subject matter expert on this if you'd like to dive deeper on the nuance.

sorry for late reply, in HN purgatory with the rate limiting cause months ago I had an "argument" with someone :)

hehehehe not necessary. finding it interesting to see statement that real estate is local in nature alongside national trends. in some regions real estate will naturally go down due to myriad of reasons but on the whole the more populous regions will keep the real estate market afloat and thriving.

we can bookmark this and re-visit in a year/two/... but I'd put $1k into charity of your choice that we will 100% not see any significant price reductions or any significant housing issues in USA (this is gamble for me considering that our current leaders are generally clueless about everything and God only knows who will lead this country in the upcoming years :) ).

If you want to make housing more affordable, destroy demand for housing in the US.

In other words, make the country less prosperous.

And by doing this, those hoped for high paying construction jobs may never materialize.

As I said, this is not a problem that can be addressed quickly or easily or to anyone's satisfaction.

> In other words, make the country less prosperous.

Prosperous for who? Shareholders? Asset holders? No loss, citations below. Wages must go up, that is it. And constraining the domestic labor supply is one component of that. "Line go up" is not a serious strategy, "American Prosperity" is a fairy tale told to and believed by the unsophisticated to continue the grift. Prosperity theology at nation state mythology level.

> And by doing this, those hoped for high paying construction jobs may never materialize.

Jobs will continue to exist so long as demand exists, and wages will be bid up as the US working age population declines, compressing prime working age population cohort (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060). See "The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival" (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42657-6) for details and models on this topic.

US Labor Force Demographics Are Worsening - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47492787 - March 2026

31% of Wealth Owned by People Over 70 - https://www.apolloacademy.com/31-percent-of-wealth-owned-by-... - December 7th, 2025

Investors are making up the highest share of homebuyers in 5 years - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/07/home-sales-investors-make-up... - October 8th, 2025 ("Investors continue to own about 20% of the 86 million single-family homes in the country")

A Visual Breakdown of Who Owns America’s Wealth - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-o... - March 4th, 2025

The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U.S. stocks - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-... - October 18th, 2021 ("The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U.S. stocks")

Per the St Louis Fed: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.stlouisfed.org/ins... ("The State of U.S. Wealth Inequality | February 05, 2024")

> How much wealth inequality is there in the U.S.? The top 10% of households by wealth had $6.5 million on average. As a group, they held 66.6% of total household wealth. The bottom 50% of households by wealth had $50,000 on average. As a group, they held only 2.6% of total household wealth.

(to understand the system, you must decompose the system; the purpose of the system is what it does)

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