This article is part of the Under the Lens series
Shelter in a Federal Storm: State and Local Housing Solutions for a Time of Federal Hostility
It is a difficult time to live in the United States and care about your fellow human beings.
For people who work in the housing sector, there is an additional level of frustration—and irony. There is widespread and vigorous agreement that housing costs must be addressed. It’s so strong that even this administration—which has no trouble dismissing the overwhelming will of the people on multiple fronts—has felt it needs to be seen taking action on housing costs.
Trump issued two largely performative executive orders in March 2026 about easing regulations that affect housing construction and mortgage lending, though his allegedly telling a GOP leader that “No one gives a [bleep] about housing,” does complicate his attempt to look pro-housing. Congress last year increased housing tax credits (buried in a bill that will make millions of Americans more housing insecure), and this year has taken a serious try at passing a housing bill full of a variety of decent, if modest, measures. (It’s uncertain as of this writing if it will pass). But the reality is that at the root, the federal government is abandoning housing affordability—not to mention fair housing—as part of its general abandonment of everyday Americans. Whether it’s raising housing costs through tariffs and deporting and terrorizing construction workers, demonizing Housing First and disrupting homelessness funding, making life so expensive on every front there’s less left for housing costs, or systematically dismantling HUD’s workforce and turning the department into a vehicle for attacking the right wing’s favorite scapegoats, the federal government is currently no friend to housing affordability—no matter what it says.
This is, however, a big—and, importantly, rather decentralized—country. In the past, I have lamented how few tenant protection issues were handled at the federal level in the U.S. compared to those in, say, the United Kingdom. But in times like these, that decentralization can be a strength.
From the moment this administration took office, when we asked readers what they wanted us to cover during these times, one of the top responses we received was, “What can we do at the state and local level?” Our new series, Shelter in a Federal Storm: State and Local Housing Solutions for a Time of Federal Hostility, provides an initial tasting menu of what is being done—and what could be done—to advance affordable housing and housing justice in the face of a federal government that is often absent or hostile.
We touch on housing development approaches that reduce reliance on federal funds and talk about state-level fair housing and consumer protections. We explore state-level coalitions that are winning reforms to make affordable housing easier to build and examine how all levels of government are—or could be—tweaking their programs to make a dollar spent go further. We learn from Chattanooga, Tennessee, how an overhaul of a property tax abatement program led to the city’s first development with affordable units in an affluent area. We explore different angles on tax policy to raise funds or reduce land speculation, discuss ways to reduce evictions and shift tenant organizing strategies, and more.
State and local actions will never fully replace the might and resources of the federal government, and relying on them more will inevitably increase the inequitable outcomes between places with varying levels of political will and resources. Nonetheless, there is much that states and local jurisdictions can do right now on housing, and that is good news. Action is an antidote to despair. In some cases, the current situation might even spark long-overdue changes. Nearly all the strategies we discuss in this series could work just as well to complement a supportive federal government as they do to carve out independence from an unsupportive one.
As always, this series is just a start. What are you seeing that other jurisdictions could learn from? Do you have an ambitious idea about what states or localities might do that seems particularly timely? Do you have stories about how your agency or organization is navigating the federal chaos and trying to mitigate harm within it? Let us know at [email protected].
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The challenge of “affordability”, i.e. housing, on any asset isn’t limited to the costs involved. We need to talk about, and address, the income side of the equation. “The housing crisis cannot be resolved simply by increasing supply without additional interventions that address the influence of land values, speculative, investments, and inequality in the housing market and that in certain circumstances, increasing supply will actually exacerbate the housing crisis.”
Layla Law-Gisiko, President, The City Club of New York, Mar. 17, 2025
If we contextualize this challenge by discussing the “additional interventions” of adopted city economic policies which heavily subsidizes an aggressive, built environment, commercial real estate agenda, then we’ll finally get somewhere. I have not been successful in instigating this needed discussion, much less any taking course correction as a result of this collaboration. For decades, we have only been addressing one side of this equation.