Published March 20, 2026
The success of the Democratic Party’s “affordability” push seemed initially to catch President Donald Trump by surprise. Yet high housing costs don’t merely weigh on young people’s minds; they directly inhibit their ability to start families. Increasingly unaffordable housing has been shown to have a direct relationship to lower marriage and fertility rates. Good thing, then, that the real estate developer in chief has decided to get serious.
Enter the new executive order, “Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction,” which the White House announced last Friday. The measure seeks to cut red tape and reduce associated costs. Most notably, however, it endorses the idea that the only way to make housing affordable is to build more of it.
Nothing takes up a bigger share of a typical family’s paycheck than its rent or mortgage payment, and no focus on “affordability” would be complete without a plan to make housing less expensive. Progressives, and even some populist conservatives, recommend simply subsidizing demand. Yet that’s a trap. Without limiting costs and unleashing supply, more money spent on affordable housing programs or filling new savings accounts would bid up the cost of units that are already bought or built.
The White House’s executive order, by contrast, correctly sees supply-side reforms as essential. In doing so, it also successfully threads a political needle. The order encourages states and localities to adopt more of the “yes in my backyard” spirit to ease the housing crunch — but in a way that is politically palatable to those who fear that progressive urbanists are out to destroy the suburbs.
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Patrick T. Brown is a fellow in the Life and Family Initiative at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where his work focuses on developing a robust pro-family economic agenda and supporting families as the cornerstone of a healthy and flourishing society.
