During the first Trump administration, the editors of America wrote that our faith demands compassion not only for migrants and refugees but for all Americans who seek new homes, whether in search of economic opportunity, a safe neighborhood or simply more room for growing families. “A truly compassionate and inclusive society,” we wrote, “must work toward not only universal health care but also decent and affordable housing for all.”

Eight years later, our immigration policies are even more inhumane, and the affordable housing crisis in the United States has gotten worse.

This March, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned of a shortage of 4.5 million homes in the United States, “rooted in a decade of underbuilding following the Great Recession and surging demand from millennials entering prime home-buying years.” In addition to making it more difficult to raise families, this shortage depresses economic activity, as employers struggle to attract workers to areas without enough homes.

One poll last year found that 74 percent of Americans considered the lack of affordable homes to be a significant problem. Housing became a key issue in the 2024 presidential campaign, with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris touting a plan to build three million new homes nationwide and Republican nominee Donald Trump promising that low taxes and fewer regulations would spur homebuilding. This year, housing affordability has been a signature issue for Zohran Mamdani, who unexpectedly won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York; in one poll, it was cited as the most important issue facing the city by voters under 35. As part of his housing plan, Mr. Mamdani has proposed building 200,000 affordable housing units over the next decade using city funds. 

The affordable housing shortage is reflected in a historically low mobility rate. The Wall Street Journal reports that only 7.8 percent of Americans changed residences in 2023, the latest year for which data is available, “leaving many people in homes that are too small, in jobs they don’t love or in their parents’ basements looking for work.” This was the lowest mobility rate since the Census Bureau began keeping records in 1948; throughout the ’50s and ’60s, about one-fifth of all Americans would move in a given year.

It is possible that if we do nothing, the housing crisis will slowly become less acute. The United States has a steadily dropping birth rate, and the Trump administration is seeking to end immigration almost entirely. (“The United States is on track to see negative net migration for the first time in at least five decades,” the White House boasted in August.) This combination could mean that the population of the United States will soon shrink for the first time in its history. 

But a shrinking population means less economic activity and thus a lower standard of living. The failure to build enough affordable housing for new families is symptomatic of a low-expectations society hoping for problems to go away instead of solving them. The same thinking can be seen in the hope that we can simply ban homelessness or corral the homeless into overcrowded shelters—an “often dehumanizing way of caring for the poorest among us,” as the U.S. bishops wrote way back in 1988. 

Because it is linked to so many other issues, the United States must address its housing crisis as soon as possible.

There have been some signs of progress, mostly at the local level. In order to ramp up the production of homes and apartments, numerous states and cities have enacted zoning reform and other legislation to allow for accessory dwelling units (additions to single-family homes), residential construction in commercial zones, the loosening or elimination of parking space requirements, more apartment buildings near public transit, and other ways to fast-track housing development.

But efforts to build more housing are still sluggish. According to the National Association of Home Builders, construction began on a total of 1.36 million new homes in 2024, a 3.9 percent decline from the previous year and still far below the levels before the Great Recession in 2007. The homebuilding industry now faces further uncertainties that could dampen activity, including tariffs on construction materials that could drive up the prices of homes still further and a longstanding shortage of skilled construction workers.

The church has long recognized the shortage of affordable housing in the United States. In their 1988 statement mentioned above, “Homelessness and Housing: A Human Tragedy, A Moral Challenge,” the U.S. bishops wrote, “We are reminded by the Gospel that the first human problem Jesus faced on earth was a lack of shelter.” More recently, in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” they wrote, “The lack of safe, affordable housing requires a renewed commitment to increase the supply of quality housing and to preserve, maintain, and improve existing housing through public/private partnerships, especially with religious groups and community organizations.”

In its advocacy efforts, the U.S. church should put housing on the same level as health care and education. In “Faithful Citizenship,” housing does not get its own section but is discussed under “Preferential Option for the Poor and Economic Justice”—though the inability to find affordable housing is hardly limited to “the poor” today. 

The church can also articulate how Catholic social teaching supports efforts to build more housing. The principle of solidarity compels all of us to find solutions to not only homelessness but also housing insecurity, and it does not permit us to retreat behind physical walls in gated communities or to use zoning against the possibility of new neighbors. And while the principle of subsidiarity says that we should take local concerns into account in development planning, it does not mean that the smallest units of government should be able to veto all forms of housing. 

The church can do more than advocate for more housing; in some cases, it can develop its own land and properties as housing, including closed parishes and convents. Examples include the Archdiocese of New York’s former headquarters on First Avenue in Manhattan, which is being developed into 422 apartments, and a former Catholic church in New York’s East Village, which is being converted into more than 500 affordable housing units.

None of these ideas will solve the housing crisis overnight, not when it has taken decades to get this bad. But simply waiting for housing demand to fall as fewer Americans decide to start families and fewer migrants are able to find opportunity here is not a life-affirming option. Pope Francis asked us to do a better job protecting our common home, and that call does not refer only to protecting the natural environment. It also means recognizing that housing is a basic human right.

This article appears in November 2025.