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
In this spring 2026 series, we looked at a variety of ways to answer the question, “What can be done at the local level while the federal government is retreating or hostile?”
Many of the articles focused on ways to pay for or incentivize affordable housing development:
- Free Land, Retail Rents, and Other Ways Cities Are Cutting Reliance on Federal Housing Funds: Though the federal role will always be necessary, local governments and developers themselves are looking for ways to develop affordable housing with less federal subsidy. Here are some of the approaches they are trying.
- How We Rewrote a Tax Incentive to Encourage More Affordable Housing: Chattanooga, Tennessee, aligned its housing tax incentive with the actual cost of charging more affordable rents. Developers are participating.
- Are Dedicated ‘Sin Taxes’ a Useful Path for Affordable Housing Funding?: In the hunt for ways to fund affordable housing, taxes on controversial activities, from gambling to short-term rentals, are often appealing. Here’s how that’s been working in four communities.
- How States Can Build Housing Together: A Proposal to Create Joint Authorities: Housing markets don’t stay within state boundaries. Why should housing finance agencies?
- State and Cities Advance Affordability by Lowering Utility Costs: Climate funding from the federal government has become unreliable. But state and local programs in the Northeast offer alternative ways to make homes more efficient for low-income residents and reduce their utility bills.
Other articles in the series looked at broader changes to regulations, tax policy, or financial policy that would improve the budgets and independence of state and local governments and/or encourage housing development.
- Property Taxes Aren’t the Cause of Our Housing Crisis, They’re a Solution to It: Taxing land and buildings at different rates can discourage land speculation and encourage housing development.
- How Public Banks Can Meet Public Needs: As federal funding streams face cuts, the idea of public banks is gaining ground as a tool for states and localities to finance community development.
- Making Money for Housing Go Further: Housing funding programs are notoriously fragmented. One way to make limited housing dollars go further is to improve the systems that distribute them.
- Supply Reforms Put Housing on the Agenda, Even in Red States: Bills designed to ease regulations that limit housing diversity and supply are being passed across the country. Affordable housing advocates in four states spoke with us about the coalitions that have formed to advance these bills, and how they might fit within the larger housing advocacy framework.
It’s not just about generating funding. We also considered how states and local governments can better enforce antitrust laws, fair housing and fair lending protections, and representation in eviction courts.
- States Can Put the Brakes on Landlord Collusion and Junk Fees: States can pursue legal remedies under antitrust laws when landlords collude to raise rents or use deceptive practices to institute extra fees, even if the federal government backs away from these cases.
- Avoiding Evictions: How State and Local Policy Can Keep Tenants in Their Homes: At a time when support for housing homeless people is under attack, preventing unnecessary evictions—which are costly as well as cruel—is more important than ever for local governments. Here are some of the approaches being tried.
- When the Feds Step Back on Fair Housing, Can States Step Up?: It’s not new for states and localities to have their own fair housing and community reinvestment measures—but as the federal government backs away from enforcement, their versions may become more important.
Local governments are not the only ones that can take local and state action—tenant organizers are also considering which tactics make the most sense for them in the political environments they are in.
- Rent Strikes, Targeting Tax Breaks, and Data: Tenant Organizing Beyond Legislative Campaigns: In a time of both federal and state legislature intransigence, tenant organizing strategies that emphasize building-level organizing and other creative approaches are gaining ground.
These articles are just a sampling of the strategies available to take action locally on housing and community reinvestment. There are so many more. Local governments could pass a pied-à-terre tax, a luxury building transfer tax, or a tenant opportunity to purchase law; use data to direct funding in ways that don’t increase the risk of displacement; and resist pressure to criminalize homelessness. Governments and community developers alike could make the most of the revamped version of Opportunity Zones (OZs) and be thoughtful about which areas are designated as OZs. Housing advocates could start mixed-income neighborhood trusts. States, especially, could review their own processes for contracting with nonprofits to ensure they aren’t adding harm through delays and unrealistic expectations in an already chaotic time.
As I said at the start of this series, none of this will replace the scale and power of a supportive federal government, but it can make a real difference. Let us know what’s working in your community.
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