The crisis of housing affordability for young people is a deep problem, with broad ramifications on things ranging from birth rates to political radicalization. Let's just put some numbers out there. Since 1970, homeownership rates among young adults under 35 have plummeted from about 50% to around 30%. Meanwhile, the cost of housing relative to income has skyrocketed. In 1969, a median home cost about 5 years of a young adult's income. Today? Nearly 9 years.

Which is why we were very happy to see this new report from the great guys at the Institute for Family Studies (specifically Wendell Cox and Lyman Stone) on pro-family housing.

It's not just a report with a list of proposal, they have done a very interesting survey of 8,000 Americans aged 18-54. Here's the bottomline: people want single-family homes in safe neighborhoods. They want them so bad that they are willing to accept longer commutes or smaller yards and other tradeoffs. Meanwhile, as the authors point out, "pro-development “Yes-In-My-Back-Yard” (YIMBY)-style policies focus almost exclusively on small housing units in large buildings, a housing type Americans almost uniformly dislike for their family in our representative survey."

Here's some more on their findings: Across all demographics and political persuasions, Americans overwhelmingly prefer single-family homes. While 59% currently live in detached houses, 79% identify them as their ideal housing type. Current apartment dwellers aren't there by choice—61% would prefer a single-family home.

What matters most to families? Safety dominates all other considerations. Americans rank neighborhood safety as their top priority, followed by good schools for those with children, then walkability. Considerations like neighborhood diversity, public transit access, or proximity to restaurants rank quite low. Tough-on-crime policies are pro-family policies!

The survey reveals that housing costs are among the most common reasons young Americans cite for delaying or reducing their family size. For women under 35 who report housing cost concerns, there's a gap of 0.6 children between desired and intended family size. For men, it's a full child. Importantly, housing costs explain more "missing children" across the entire sample than any other factor—more than singleness, preference for leisure, schooling, childcare costs, or student debt.

The report identifies two primary culprits for unaffordable housing: restrictive local zoning and urban growth boundaries that prevent expansion.

If you have read this letter for a long time, you will know that your correspondent is skeptical of YIMBYism. What YIMBYs seem to fail to understand is that paying more to have a house in a neighborhood with a certain character and whose character you have a reasonable expectation will endure for decades to come (as you raise kids), and wanting to defend that, is a profoundly human and respectable drive. YIMBYs attribute to greed something which is more easily attributable to a desire for security (in the broad sense) and community. This is not just a normative point: in a democracy, going after the legitimate aspirations of most people is not a recipe for success.

With all that being said, the housing picture in the US is so dismal, particularly for young people, that your correspondent accepts that Something Must Be Done. The report is correct to note both the overregulation of housing in America and the misguided focus by YIMBYs on putting people in apartments.

The report has a lot of recommendations, of which we will only highlight a few.

One of the most promising ones, to our mind, is reducing lot sizes, which allows for the building of more "starter homes." Because lot sizes are too high, developers must build either mansions or apartment buildings to make money.

The report recommends tough-on-crime policies.

A significant proposal in the request is to make more land available to development, repeal urban growth boundaries, and make federal land available for housing development. As noted, people are willing to make the tradeoff of longer commutes if it means they can own a single family home in a safe neighborhood.

The essence of this report is that America has regulated its way out of affordable family formation. As the authors put it: "Policymakers may not be able to restore the widespread affordability of the 1950s and 1960s, but they can nonetheless take meaningful actions to improve affordability and empower young people to start families."

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