Owning a house appears further and further out of reach for many people in the U.S. The problem is a national one. The median price for an American home is now just over $400,000. On average, houses cost five years of the median salary for someone working in the U.S. In some cities on the West Coast and in parts of Florida, that ratio is now eight years of salary to buy a home.

Rents have also gone up significantly. Since 2020, the nation’s average rent is 27 percent higher. Some cities have seen much bigger gains – Miami’s average rent is up 51 percent. Housing policy advocates point to one big cause: the U.S. has not built enough housing for a growing population. But “build more housing” is a complex problem, not a single policy fix.

Congress recently turned its attention to the problem of housing affordability. The Senate passed a bill with a basket of different policies, aiming to bring down the cost of housing and encourage more building.

What’s in the bill specifically? And how could those policies make a dent in the housing crisis? And how has the housing crisis evolved in the past few years?

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