Home prices have risen and continue to rise at twice the rate of wage growth. As wage growth stagnates and housing costs continue to climb, most Americans are stuck with an inability to comfortably pay for housing.
With supply shortages across the country, the simple answer to the high rental rates is, of course, to build more housing. But the reality is significantly more complicated than simply jump-starting construction.
A variety of market forces, policy decisions, and demographic changes have converged to make building affordable housing a difficult, and politically fraught, proposition.
But, how did a nation that prides itself on opportunity become one in which a shortage of affordable housing options seems to have no immediate solution and where so many renters and buyers struggle?
h/t JudeBel