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Commentary: Declining Permits, Rates, and the Need for Evergreen Affordability
While the “rate shock” period is not yet over, one thing is clear: We need housing policies to foster an environment where affordability is an evergreen value.
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State Legislatures and Housing Reform – February 2026
There has been a lot of movement at the state level since this month, including more governors making reform a priority, exaction reform in Arizona, and Indiana’s reform bill clears its first Senate committee.
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Reaction: Housing Permits in 2025 End At Four-Year Low
The United States ended 2025 with a preliminary seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.448 million housing units authorized in the United States, a 6.2 percent increase over the revised November estimate, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s monthly housing report released this morning
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New Report Finds Minnesota’s 2038 Energy Mandate Could Add More Than $44,000 to New Home Cost
Earlier today, Housing Affordability Institute released a new analysis that found Minnesota’s 2038 residential energy efficiency mandate could significantly increase the cost of building new homes, adding between $25,773 and $44,171 per home by 2038 and pricing out tens of thousands of prospective buyers.
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New Report Identifies Lot Size Zoning as Key Constraint on Housing Production in Minnesota
Report finds prevailing zoning rules in growth regions prevent housing production from reaching historic levels.
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State Legislatures and Housing Reform – January 2026
Throughout 2026, Housing Affordability Institute will be tracking housing policy reforms working through state legislatures across the United States.
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Commentary: Housing Reform in an Age of Closed Minds
Housing reform may be one of the last vestiges of bipartisanship in America, but that doesn’t mean it’s immune from partisanship and entrenchement in a broader, nontraditional sense.
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Reaction: Housing Permits and Starts Climbed in September, Dipped in October
The seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing units authorized in the United States fell 0.2% in October 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s monthly housing report released this morning.
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Tracking State-Level Reforms in 2026
State legislatures will once again be central to housing policy in 2026.
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Year in Review: Advancing Understanding and Solutions for Housing Affordability
As 2025 comes to a close, we’re reflecting on the work undertaken by Housing Affordability Institute to further the housing policy discussion.
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Commentary: Prices rise; homeownership declines. Now what?
Back in 2018, Minnesota was facing a 50,000-unit housing shortage, a deficit already fueling rising prices and limiting options for first-time buyers. The State of Minnesota’s Task Force on Housing set the audacious goal of closing the deficit within five years. Getting there would not be easy and would require a restructuring of Minnesota’s housing…
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Report: Housing Shortage, High Construction Costs Driving Minnesota’s Declining Homeownership Rate
After the largest single-year decline in homeownership in four decades, housing economist Elliot Eisenberg, Ph.D., finds Minnesota’s housing shortage and the unresolved high cost of construction are contributing to a homeownership decline in Minnesota.
