Housing & Cost of Living

Zoning Reform — Direct to Citizens

Federal incentives for municipalities that modernize zoning laws are delivered directly to citizens — specialized education funding, greater and easier access to national parks, and other tangible benefits. The goal is to bypass the state redistribution machine that dilutes funding through committees and administrative bloat before it ever reaches the people it was meant to serve.

Minneapolis's 2019 zoning reform (effective 2020) is the country's leading test case: it legalized duplexes and triplexes citywide on land that had been zoned single-family-only. The honest result is mixed, not a clean success story, and worth presenting that way rather than overselling it. Direct uptake in the newly-upzoned areas was modest — only around 20 new duplex/triplex buildings were built specifically on former single-family lots in the first several years. What actually drove Minneapolis's above-average housing production compared to peer cities was the broader reform package: eliminating parking minimums and upzoning along transit corridors, not the single-family-to-duplex change in isolation. One academic study (Kuhlmann, Journal of the American Planning Association) did find the upzoning raised nearby property values by 3–5% — an early signal that the market responded to the added development potential, even if new construction has been slower to follow. The lesson isn't 'upzoning alone transforms a city overnight' — it's that comprehensive reform, of which ending single-family-only zoning is one piece among several, is what actually moves the needle.

Corporations Out of Single-Family Homes — Entirely

Corporations are banned from owning single-family homes. Not limited — banned. Individual landlords are protected and encouraged; the goal is more people owning and renting single-family homes, not fewer. Corporations can still own apartment buildings, hotels, and resorts. Single-family homes are a vehicle for family wealth and generational stability — not corporate balance sheets.

This is a targeted fix, not a claim that corporate ownership is the primary driver of the national housing crisis — it isn't, and pretending otherwise would undersell the much larger zoning problem above. GAO's 2026 review found that in the roughly twenty metro areas where institutional ownership is concentrated, it correlates with higher rents and higher eviction rates — that's the specific harm this policy addresses. Institutional investors do provide real liquidity and faster acquisition-to-market timelines in some markets; the 15%-per-year phase-out (rather than an immediate forced sale) is designed specifically to avoid disrupting that liquidity abruptly while still ending corporate ownership of the asset class over time.

Forced Divestiture — 15% Per Year

Existing corporate portfolios of single-family homes are subject to mandatory divestiture at 15% of current holdings per year. A company holding 100,000 homes must sell 15,000 in year one, 15% of the remaining 85,000 in year two, and so on. This allows the market to absorb supply gradually rather than flooding it all at once. Sales go to the open market — no restrictions on buyers.

Energy Independence

Lower household costs and stabilize fuel prices through expansion of renewables, nuclear power, and responsible domestic drilling. New drilling permits are phased out over time — existing operations are protected. Energy independence reduces costs, strengthens national security, and removes economic leverage from foreign adversaries.

Environmental Review Reform

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — the bipartisan federal housing law that passed Congress 85-5 in the Senate and 358-32 in the House in June 2026 — streamlines NEPA environmental review for housing through expanded categorical exclusions and a new HUD authority to treat housing assistance as 'special projects' with simplified compliance. This platform supports that direction and would go further: a hard statutory deadline — a shot clock — on environmental review completion for housing projects that meet basic safety and environmental-impact thresholds, so review becomes a genuine safety check again instead of a tool for indefinite delay. The federal law expands the exemptions; it doesn't put a clock on the process itself. This platform would do both.

Building Code Modernization

Washington isn't catching up to federal housing reform on building codes — it's already ahead of it, and has been for decades. Seattle has allowed single-stair apartment buildings up to six stories since 1977. Washington State passed SB 5491 in 2023, requiring the State Building Code Council to adopt statewide single-stair reform up to six stories by July 2026. In 2026, Washington enacted the nation's first statewide scissor-stair reform, going further than any other state. The new federal housing law only directs HUD to issue guidance encouraging point-access block buildings — Washington already has the actual law on the books that guidance would be modeled on. This platform's position: take what Washington already pioneered and make single-stair and scissor-stair reform, along with the elevator-size reform Washington also passed in 2026, the federal floor everywhere else, not a suggestion for states to maybe get around to.

Bank Capital Rules for Housing Investment

The new federal housing law raises the Public Welfare Investment cap for banks from 15% to 20%, unlocking more bank capital for affordable housing without additional regulatory scrutiny. This platform supports that change and connects it to a mechanism already built elsewhere in this platform: ARSA's Domestic Capital Anchor already requires Individual Investment Account funds to stay in US-listed equities, creating an estimated $700-900 billion in captive domestic investment. Raising the PWI cap gives banks more room to direct exactly that kind of domestically-anchored capital toward housing specifically, rather than leaving it to find its own way there. The two policies reinforce each other by design, not by coincidence.