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Housing Affordability Can Be Solved in This Generation
America has 22.4 million rent-burdened households and a housing production rate still well below the levels needed to close the gap. This toolkit, developed with Professor Matthew Kwatinetz of the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate, makes the case that rental housing affordability is not an intractable problem but a solvable one. Drawing on original data analysis and a comprehensive scan of housing policy research, the report charts a three-part path to affordability through local deregulation, preservation of naturally occurring affordable housing and targeted public subsidy. It also introduces a new metric, Time to Address (TTA), to measure how quickly different policies can move the needle.
What's Included in the Toolkit
- A sizing of today's affordability shortfall: 22.4 million rent-burdened households and the demand-side math behind it
- Time to Address (TTA), a new metric that measures how quickly a given policy can move the needle at scale
- Policy case studies on deregulation, tax incentives and NOAH preservation, each graded on speed, scale, cost and targeting
- A coordinated three-part policy pipeline sized to close the gap within a generation
- Housing 101 reference materials covering development finance, feasibility economics and a full Affordable Housing Glossary
How to Use the Toolkit
The toolkit is designed to work both as a complete argument and as a modular reference.
Download the full report for the end-to-end case: why rental housing affordability is solvable within a generation, why no single policy gets there alone and what a realistic, coordinated pipeline looks like.
Or, dive into specific sections using the chapter menu below.
Chapter Descriptions
Executive Summary
Approximately one-third of American households rent their homes, and today roughly half of those residents are rent-burdened. This section outlines the scale of the affordability shortfall, estimated at 22.4 million households, and presents the three-part policy framework examined throughout the toolkit: local deregulation, preservation of naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) and targeted public subsidy. It also introduces the core finding that no single policy tool is sufficient to close the gap and that progress within a generation requires deploying all three levers in combination.
America's Rental Housing Supply
Decades of declining housing production relative to population growth have produced today's affordability crisis. Multifamily completions are down 33 percent since 1973 and development costs in many markets have risen three- to twenty-fold over the same period. This section documents both the drop in market-rate and subsidized production and the widening gap between housing costs and household incomes.
Demand: How Many Housing Units Are Needed to Solve the Rental Affordability Crisis
The U.S. faces two distinct affordability challenges: a supply shortfall affecting moderate- and middle-income residents and a deeper gap for the 10.1 million extremely low-income households for whom no private-market solution will be sufficient without subsidy. This section sizes the total need at 22.4 million units and maps the interventions required to address each tier.
Time to Address: A New Metric to Assess Policy Solutions
Time to Address (TTA) is a metric developed to answer a critical question: how long would a given policy take to meaningfully reduce rent burden at scale. This section applies TTA to evaluate and compare different policy approaches across markets, showing that no single tool—whether deregulation, subsidy, preservation or income assistance—can close the gap alone.
The Importance of Local Policy
Local decisions on land use, entitlement, fees and rent regulation are among the most significant determinants of whether a housing market moves toward or away from affordability. This section examines how those choices shape TTA horizons and why the same federal policy environment can produce dramatically different outcomes across metros.
The Hidden Factor: Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing
Naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) accounts for more than 70 percent of affordable units in urban America, yet between 2012 and 2022 more than 2.1 million low-rent NOAH units were lost. This section examines how NOAH is formed, where it is at risk and why preserving it is as important as building new supply.
Cost Drivers: The Economics of Housing Production
Regulation accounts for an average of 40.6 percent of multifamily development costs, and when combined with labor, materials, financing and entitlement timelines, these drivers explain why dormant development capacity remains idle across many markets. This section identifies which cost drivers are within housing providers' control and which are not, and why understanding both is essential to any realistic affordability strategy.
Policy Case Study: Deregulation
Regulation constrains affordability in two ways: it limits overall supply and raises the cost of the units that do get built. This section examines how reducing or removing requirements that add cost or delay without commensurate public benefit lowers the feasibility threshold for new development, activates dormant private capacity and enables the market to produce more housing at attainable price points.
Policy Case Study: Tax Incentives
Open-eligibility, by-right tax abatement programs reduce operating costs and improve project feasibility without requiring per-project legislative action. This section draws on real-world programs to show how well-designed tax incentives enable multifamily housing providers to produce or preserve affordable units at market scale and on faster timelines than discretionary subsidy programs.
Policy Case Study: Revive & Retain—NOAH Through Public-Private Partnerships
Preservation-focused public-private partnerships have demonstrated the ability to protect and activate existing affordable rental supply at 30 to 80 percent lower cost per unit than new construction. This section draws on case studies from cities across the country to show how these programs convert vacant units and stabilize at-risk NOAH properties faster than new construction pipelines can deliver.
Conclusion: An Executable Path to Affordability
This section synthesizes the toolkit's three-part strategy into a concrete policy pipeline sized to close the affordability gap within a generation. It maps the estimated contribution of each intervention against the 22.4 million household need and identifies a coordinated, actionable path that does not depend on any single federal program or legislative action.
Housing 101
This reference section covers foundational concepts in housing affordability policy and finance. Topics include key definitions, sources and uses of development capital, operating and capital budget structure, cost impacts to feasibility and income limits and rent standards under federal affordability programs. A Policy Research Report Card and full Affordable Housing Glossary are also included.
Appendix
The appendix includes three supporting data charts: annual housing completions by purpose, a state-level TTA analysis and a metro-level TTA analysis with NOAH market identification across the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan statistical areas. Full references and acknowledgements are also provided.
