Conor Dougherty

So if you want to have any real impact on affordability, you have to eventually attack that problem.

And attacking the mortgage rate stuff, all it really does is make it easier for more people to buy what is basically the same number of homes.

Exactly.

And the problem with the housing shortage is that it takes a long time to have any impact on.

And it's not a thing that the president has a lot of control over.

There are state regulations for how you build housing.

There are local regulations for how you build housing.

All this stuff that just breaks your brain, the White House doesn't have much control or even influence over.

Right.

Yeah.

So around the country, you are seeing states

really go after this supply problem.

You've seen Florida, Montana, Texas, California, Oregon, Arizona, Massachusetts, all of these states have had some kind of effort to essentially lower their housing regulations to make it easier to build housing in hopes that they will inspire home builders to go through a building boom.

But these solutions all take a really long time and they can also be controversial.

Right.

You know, in California, for instance, they just passed a law that changes zoning.

It makes it much easier to build higher density housing in existing neighborhoods.

Well, the legislature who passed that bill has been working on a version of this for 10 years.

And it only passed after people fought like crazy against it because they don't want taller buildings in their single family neighborhoods.

Even if all these things happen after going through all that difficult politics, it'll still be years before developers get projects approved, before they start building them, before there's enough units to impact the supply that people would really notice in prices.