What Americans Think About Housing
Housing costs are too high, but Americans aren’t unified on solutions
Costs are high and getting higher
There’s no question that Americans think housing is too expensive: 79% say that housing costs are “too high” or “way too high,” and 62% say it’s become harder to find housing they can afford over the past three years. 72% also agree that it’s become harder for people moving to their community to find housing they can afford. Renters are especially pessimistic about housing costs: They are more likely than homeowners to think that housing costs are “way too high” (48% to 39%), and to believe that it’s become “much” harder to find housing they can afford in the past three years (46% to 33%). Overall, it’s a bleak picture of the current state of housing prices.
Respondents are also not optimistic about the future: 82% think it will be harder for young people to buy a house when they grow up. We don’t see any indications that Americans view housing prices as a temporary problem or one with a clear solution coming soon.
Americans aren’t sure that more housing = lower prices
When asked about increasing the number of homes in their community, 44% think it will raise prices at least slightly, compared with just 24% who think it will lower prices, and another 32% aren’t sure either way. This perception is fairly consistent across demographics, including educational attainment, partisanship, race, age, and homeownership status. Keep this in mind for later questions asking about barriers to building new housing.
What do respondents think building more housing will do? Opinion is mixed: Most think there will be no change to their personal finances, and are evenly split on its effect on home prices (29% improve, 26% stay the same, 27% worsen). They’re slightly more optimistic on the number of jobs, with a majority saying it’ll stay the same or improve. A big concern seems to be crime, with 41% expecting it to go up. There are also more Americans concerned that the cost of goods like groceries will rise (36% will go up, 39% stay the same, 5% will go down) and that the environmental impact will be more negative (40%) than positive (10%).
Despite all of this, 54% say that building new housing would be good for their community. There are clearly more factors than pure costs going into this consideration.
What raises costs?
Respondents believe that the primary drivers of high housing prices are investors using housing for profit (48%), the high cost of building materials (46%), and the rent-setting power of landlords (43%). Only 9% say that the length of time it takes to build housing is one of the biggest causes. Recent efforts to tie immigration to housing prices do not seem to have worked, with only 28% of Republicans (17% overall) citing immigration as a cause of high prices. Similar factors are identified as barriers to building more housing, including high construction costs and financing (76%), landlords and developers focusing on high-profit projects (67%), and zoning laws and building regulations (68%).
We asked respondents about a variety of housing proposals, and had them indicate if each proposal would decrease costs, leave costs about the same, or increase costs. It’s notable that we see high “not sure” percentages across all proposals (between 23% and 32%). This is pretty common throughout this survey, potentially meaning that Americans don’t yet have strongly formed views on the mechanics of housing policy.
The proposals most selected as likely to decrease costs are “reducing environmental regulations on housing development” (36%), “prohibiting banks and corporations from buying single-family houses” (36%), and “increasing public spending on affordable housing” (35%). Even for these top proposals, a significant margin thought they would instead increase costs—18%, 22%, and 26%, respectively. The worst performing proposal is “requiring local governments to approve housing development projects that meet state-set building standards” (31% say it will increase costs, 17% say it will decrease them).
What changes to housing policy do Americans support?
Right now, the biggest winners are proposals around streamlining permitting processes and getting housing built faster. At the top is requiring local governments to approve housing that meets their standards, with +51 support. This is despite 31% of respondents believing that such requirements would increase housing costs overall. Making permitting for new housing faster and easier also does well, with +48 support. Allowing housing to be built without parking spaces is by far the least popular at -46. Increasing the number of units per site from one to four (-27) and removing limits on how many housing units can be built in an area (-11) also do very poorly.
In an informed debate framework, where respondents were presented with arguments for and against a policy, requiring local governments to approve projects meeting standards within 60 days holds up, retaining plurality approval (42% support, 31% oppose), while eliminating single-family zoning performs poorly (27% support, 50% oppose).
Summary
Even if Americans aren’t convinced that additional housing is the way out of the affordability crisis, they generally support the increased building of homes. They see high costs, slow processes, and profit-seeking behavior as sharing blame for the cost crisis. While they think new housing in their community will overall provide benefits, they’re wary of increased crime and rising everyday costs. Clear, consistent standards and limited timelines are popular, but changes to the overall makeup of housing and communities are less so.
Methods
This survey was run by Tavern Research via an online sample of 2,123 respondents fielded over web panels from July 29, 2025, to July 31, 2025. The margin of error is 3%.
Dustbin
We included home ownership status (owning vs. renting) as a crosstab here, but it didn’t pop as much as expected. For example, there was no real difference on the question of if more homes in your community would raise or lower prices. Owners and renters seem equally uncertain on this!
Policy Brief
BLUF: Voters have mixed views on housing overall, but understand that costs are high and more housing is generally a positive thing. Leaders should embrace this reality with innovative and practical plans to deliver housing while tending to concerns that may arise when changes occur within a community.
SO. WHAT NOW?
- Focus on affordability—Voters rightly recognize that the cost of housing is too high and only getting higher. Policies and messaging should be framed around addressing this deeply salient issue. There is a concern that more housing could bring more negative impacts like crime, so it’s important to ground policies in improving communities—more housing = more tax base = more funding for schools, public safety, and services. The issue is supply. Making additional supply seem beneficial to others is critical.
- Don’t get too technical—Too often, the conversation about increased housing supply turns to technical jargon around ADUs, permitting, tax incentives for homeownership, and other policy terms that don’t have a practical meaning for people. Keep the policy relevant by connecting it to people’s bottom lines: More housing makes things cheaper for everybody.
- Blow up the process—Voters have a very clear idea about the need to turn the housing permitting and construction process on its head. This presents leaders an opportunity to upend the system entirely, create streamlined processes that have high salience for many voters, and address one of the nation’s most pressing problems. Don’t focus on #s of units. Focus on beating the clock.
GET SMARTER
Our team of experts offers policies that state leaders could implement right now to build more housing rapidly and help states facing population declines begin to shift the trend.