Housing Crisis

Fewer and fewer Americans can afford to buy a home, and prices grow faster every year. Most people can't even dream of achieving the kind of housing affordability their parents took for granted.

That's why we propose two bold ideas that could transform the housing market — and do it faster than politicians in either party are willing to admit is possible.

Restricting Foreign Property Purchases

Our first proposal is to restrict certain groups from buying residential property in the United States — specifically, foreign nationals and foreign-controlled entities. Lowering demand in this way would put downward pressure on prices, which is good for buyers but bad for sellers. That's a real tradeoff, and we're not pretending otherwise.

But consider this: nearly 20 countries completely ban property purchases by foreigners, and more than 40 others impose heavy restrictions. These aren't fringe outliers or signs of prejudice — they represent roughly half the world making a deliberate policy choice to keep housing affordable for their own people.

You know these countries. The Philippines, Thailand, China, India, and Vietnam all have total bans on foreign property ownership. Mexico doesn't allow Americans to simply cross the border and buy up land and houses — yet Americans can cross our border and do exactly that, driving up prices for everyone else.

And then there are Canada, New Zealand, and Switzerland — routinely ranked among the friendliest, most welcoming nations on earth — all of which ban property purchases by foreign buyers, including Americans. These countries aren't being prejudiced. They understand that protecting housing affordability for their next generation of buyers sometimes means drawing hard lines.

Conservatives who oppose foreign buyer restrictions often point to the benefits of foreign investment and the rights of current property owners to get the highest possible price when they sell. Those are legitimate interests. Liberals who oppose these restrictions tend to frame them as discriminatory — a violation of their core commitment to equal treatment. That concern deserves honest engagement too.

But Centrists believe homes are not like any other investment. A home is where families are built, where children grow up, where people plant roots. That gives housing a meaning that puts it in a category of its own — and makes the question of who can afford one an existential issue for millions of Americans, especially the young. When an entire generation concludes that homeownership is permanently out of reach, it doesn't just hurt their finances. It erodes their belief in the American Dream itself.

An Apollo Program for Housing

Our second proposal is equally ambitious: launch a national mission — on the scale of the Apollo program — to dramatically increase the supply of housing across America. Stop talking about getting to Mars and start building homes instead.

This idea draws predictable fire from both sides. The left tends to resist large-scale construction through environmental regulations, zoning restrictions, and red tape that, whatever their original intent, now function as a wall against affordable housing. The right, meanwhile, supports new construction and a revitalized lumber industry in principle, but has shown little urgency when it comes to forcing the issue.

Here's the centrist case: both sides say they want affordable housing. Increasing supply is the most direct path to getting there. The obstacles are political will and the special interests — on both left and right — that benefit from keeping supply constrained and prices high.

It's time to call that out and move forward anyway.

The Centrists also support the The Bipartisan Housing Affordability Act

The legislation aimed to increase housing supply, lower costs, and restrict large institutional investors' role in the single-family home market. Key provisions included:

Streamlining environmental review processes that slow homebuilding
New grants to help state and local governments boost housing supply
Easing construction requirements for manufactured homes
Expanding financing options and limiting large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes