As Trump And Republicans Saddle Americans With Skyrocketing Costs And An Unstable Economy, Leader Schumer Unveils The First Cornerstone Of Senate Democrats’ Lower Costs[...]

President Trump Promised To Bring Down Costs On "Day One," Including Families' Biggest Expense Of Housing, And Trump Has Broken That Promise

Leader Schumer Unveils His "Opportunity Starts At Home" Agenda To Offer Solutions To Lowering Housing Costs For All Americans

Washington, D.C. - Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) today unveiled the "Opportunity Starts at Home" Agenda, a comprehensive plan to make housing more affordable, expand homeownership, and combat predatory practices that drive up costs. As the first cornerstone of Senate Democrats' "Lower Costs Initiative," the plan directs federal resources to build and preserve housing to reduce costs, support renters and homeowners, and ensure housing security for all communities. Below is a comprehensive summary of the policies and actions included in the plan:

In every corner of the country, from cities and suburbs to rural and Tribal communities, housing costs are crushing working Americans as one of the biggest drivers of today's high cost of living. The gap between housing costs and income growth keeps widening. Homeownership continues to become more a mirage than a real aspiration for many young people. As these conditions persist, people increasingly feel that they will never live the American Dream despite how hard they work Policymakers now confront a critical question: when Americans lose faith that their basic needs can be met, they also lose confidence in their government's capacity to address major challenges. The housing crisis offers a concrete opportunity to reverse this trend.

To deliver on that ambition, Schumer is releasing the "Opportunity Starts at Home" Agenda, a comprehensive set of policy priorities from across the Senate Democratic Caucus to lower rent, help more people buy a home, build more housing to lower costs, crack down on predatory actions that hurt renters and homeowners, and direct the full force of the federal government to addressing the nation's housing crisis. This agenda puts the needs of working Americans over powerful corporate interests that have robbed too many people of housing they can afford.

"The cornerstone of the American Dream has been owning a home, building wealth and a life for your family that is better than the generation before you. But now, for millions of Americans, that American Dream of homeownership feels completely unobtainable. Housing costs have skyrocketing. Rent is too high and eating away at the ability for people to save money to own a home. The average age of a first-time homebuyer just hit a record high of over 40 years old," said Leader Schumer. "Meanwhile, instead of lowering housing costs like he promised, Trump is spending all his time on military adventurism around the world, raising prices through his tariffs, and building a ballroom in the White House for parties with billionaire buddies. Enough is enough. Democrats are making housing affordability a national priority. Today, I am announcing the Opportunity Starts at Home Agenda to lower rents, restore the American Dream of homeownership, take on bad landlords and predatory corporations, and build more housing to lower costs across America."

For many families, housing constitutes the single largest driver of the cost of living. Regardless of where you live in the country, your background, or your political affiliation, housing affordability is a top concern. Americans feel financially stuck and struggling with high rent, mortgage, and insurance costs.

• About one-third of all American households-including roughly half of renters-are now considered housing cost burdened, spending more than 30 percent of income on housing. In 1980, around one third of renters were cost burdened.
• Home prices have surged roughly 55 percent since the start of the pandemic, while rents have risen more than 30 percent nationwide, with sharper increases in many markets.
• In the 1980s and 1990s, the median price of a home for sale was rarely more than four times the median household income. By 2022, the median home price had risen to nearly six times the median household income. Due to high prices, homebuying has fallen to its lowest levels since the mid-1990s.
• The median age of first-time homebuyers climbed to 40 in 2025, the highest on record and up from 31 in 2014. For millions of families, homeownership feels out of reach.
• Rural America is facing an even greater homeownership affordability crisis, with median listing prices in rural counties rising by more than 70 percent between November 2019 and November 2025, growing faster than prices in major urban counties.
• Nearly 800,000 Americans are homeless.

Since taking office, President Trump-abetted by Republicans in Congress-has only made housing more unaffordable.

• Under Trump, Americans can't afford to buy their own home: the age of the median first-time homebuyer has risen to 40 years old. Once families buy a home, it's harder to keep it when their costs across the board are through the roof: mortgage delinquency rates are now at a four-year high, and foreclosures are up 20% compared with a year ago.
• Trump has proposed eliminating tens of billions in critical federal housing investments aimed at helping with rental costs, building new housing, revitalizing communities, and reducing homelessness.
• Over 1 million evictions were filed last year.
• Trump has upended key homelessness programs that could force 170,000 people back onto the street.
• Trump has imposed tariffs that are driving construction costs of building a new home by $17,500.
• Trump wants to remove Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from conservatorship give a big payday to wealthy investors, while raising mortgage costs for American families.
• Trump has proposed a 50-year mortgage, an idea that has been widely panned by both sides of the aisle and across the housing industry given that it would leave borrowers paying significantly more interest and accumulating less wealth from homeownership than current mortgage options.
• Trump's Federal Housing Finance Agency has prioritized bogus investigations of Trump's political opponents, including of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, rather than focusing on reducing housing costs for Americans.
• Trump has gutted the team that helps the tens of thousands of Americans facing housing discrimination, undermining long-standing bipartisan fair housing protections.
• Trump is launching a criminal investigation against the Chair of the Federal Reserve, a brazen attempt to cannibalize the Fed's independence, which would cause chaos in the housing markets and increase interest rates.
• Trump is trying to illegally close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has actively protected renters and homebuyers against predatory corporate practices.

Leader Schumer is working with Senate Democrats to fight for existing legislation and to develop new legislation that can deliver on the Opportunity Starts at Home Agenda, shaped by five key priorities:

1. Reducing rent
2. Reviving the American Dream of homeownership
3. Stopping predatory corporate practices
4. Supercharging housing construction from coast to coast
5. Delivering housing security and opportunity for all communities

As an important start to advancing this agenda, Leader Schumer is calling for passage of the full, bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act, which already passed the Senate last year unanimously, but House Republicans have blocked. Through Senator Warren's leadership on this legislation, which includes many housing bills that Senate Democrats have pushed, this important package would help build more housing across the country. ROAD to Housing needs to be passed into law and adequately funded to lay the foundation of the major action required to address the nation's housing crisis.

Reducing Rent

To address high rent costs for working Americans, Democrats are prioritizing the needs of renters instead of powerful landlords. Renters deserve the same security and fairness as homeowners-and Democrats are fighting to deliver it.

The Opportunity Starts at Home Agenda:

• Expands rental relief to help reduce rent for millions of cost-burdened Americans, as well as invests in Housing Choice Vouchers and protects the Emergency Housing Voucher
• Protects renters from unfair evictions and uphold renters' rights to organize, participate in, and operate tenant associations without fear of retaliation or interference so renters can advocate for better and more affordable living conditions.

Reviving the American Dream of Homeownership

Rising home prices and mortgage rates have increasingly locked out working families and young people from homeownership, the foundation of America's middle class. Today, nationally, a family must earn on average almost $117,000 a year to be able to afford a home, and much higher in some parts of the country-nearly 50% more than just five years ago. Democrats believe everyone who works hard should have a fair shot at owning a home and building wealth and stability for their family as the foundation of the American Dream.

The Opportunity Starts at Home Agenda:

• Provides down-payment assistance so hardworking families, especially first-time and first-generation buyers, who pay rent but can't save enough for a down-payment will finally get a chance to buy a home.
• Lowers the cost of mortgage insurance for the hundreds of thousands of homeowners each year who put down less than 20%.
• Expands access to portable and assumable mortgages to address the "locking in" of homeowners who bought when interests rates were lower and now do not want to move and likely take on a higher cost mortgage.
• Makes targeted reforms to save homebuyers thousands of dollars in closing costs.
• Addresses the homeowner's insurance affordability crisis, especially in certain coastal and fire-prone regions of the country.

Stopping Predatory Corporate Practices that Increase Housing Costs

Too many corporate landlords are driving up rents and squeezing families. Big investors are also buying up homes and turning neighborhoods into pro?t machines. Democrats will put working people first and put a stop to Wall Street investors who are pricing people out of the housing market and corporate landlords who are driving up rents.

The Opportunity Starts at Home Agenda:

• Curbs big institutional investors who buy homes in bulk.
  • In some parts of the country, families are being crowded from the housing market with corporate investors paying far above market rate and in cash.
  • This includes addressing rent increases and neglected living conditions after institutional investors buy up manufactured housing communities, where an estimated 22 million Americans live, especially in rural areas.
  • Despite President Trump recently embracing this push, Republicans blocked Senate Democrats effort to get this done last year.
• Cracks down on companies that help landlords increase rents by colluding with each other to set prices via price-?xing algorithms.
• Protects renters and homebuyers from the use of artificial intelligence and other technology that manipulates the housing market.
• Ends rental junk fees that can add hundreds of dollars in cost to just search for an apartment to rent.

Supercharging Housing Construction from Coast to Coast

Every American deserves a safe, affordable place to live. Democrats want to lower housing costs by cutting red tape that drives prices up and building and revitalizing millions of more homes. To truly reduce housing costs, for both renters and homeowners, millions of housing units of all types-from single-family houses and multifamily rental buildings to accessory dwelling units, micro-apartments, and co-living spaces, as well as modular and manufactured homes-need to be built or rehabilitated. The nation's housing supply crisis demands the efforts of every level of government, industry and labor, the faith community, and service providers.

The Opportunity Starts at Home Agenda:

• Invests tens of billions of dollars of federal funds to build 3 million new homes to bring down rent and make it more affordable to own a home for working Americans.
• Includes investment through the Housing Trust Fund, a new Middle-Class Housing Emergency Fund, the Capital Magnet Fund, and public housing.
• Provides tax incentives to build and preserve more than 500,000 single-family homes for homeownership, as well as expand the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) and increase the number of attainable homes built.
• Creates new flexible funding for local communities to build new housing and the necessary community infrastructure like water and sewer lines.
• Incentivizes local governments to eliminate unnecessary land use restrictions to build more housing.
• Directs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide a national secondary market for construction loans to housing.
• Expands HUD's construction loan programs like the 221(d)(4) program, along with expanding lending to local homebuilders and increasing scrutiny of mergers and acquisitions in the homebuilding industry to prioritize boosting housing supply.
• Authorizes HUD to use the Defense Production Act to guarantee purchase of housing materials and scale modular and manufactured housing.
• Creates a new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Home (ARPA-Home) and Industrial Strategy Program to fund, incubate, and scale innovations that can expand housing production.
• Trains a new generation of trades workers to build America, including housing, while rejecting the false choice of upholding good wages, safety, and labor standards or building housing.

Delivering Housing Security and Opportunity for All Communities

Housing is central to the financial security, wealth, and economic opportunity of people. Fair and affordable housing for all Americans is foundational to the quality of life of a broader community, including the prosperity of local economies and the safety and strength of neighborhoods. Housing allows people to move to communities where jobs are being created, but currently, the high cost of living, specifically the cost of housing, in areas that are growing is the biggest threat to people building a future in those places. At the same time, many communities around the country that have been left behind, from cities to rural and Tribal communities, struggle with attracting new jobs and building a new future because of inadequate access to quality, fair housing at a lower cost. Additionally, as the richest country in the world, it is simply unacceptable that hundreds of thousands of Americans, including veterans, seniors, and the disabled, live on the streets without a roof over their heads.

The Opportunity Starts at Home Agenda:

• Builds more housing near public transportation to reduce the costs and challenges of people commuting to and from home to jobs.
• Supporting conversions of vacant or underutilized commercial properties into new housing, which helps bolster neighborhoods.
• Revitalizes housing in communities that have been left behind as a central effort to bring good jobs to all corners of the country
  • This includes expanding the Community Development Financial Institutions program, investing in land banks and community land trusts, and partnering with the faith community to repurpose land owned by faith-based organizations for new housing.
• Invests in state and local efforts to launch local financing and development programs to build mixed-income housing, a model adopted by New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montgomery County, Maryland, and other parts of the country.
• Strengthens enforcement of fair housing laws and stops discrimination in lending to ensure everyone has access to fair and affordable housing.
• Guarantees housing for all veterans and ensures all military families have access to quality, affordable housing, so all who have sacri?ced for our country have a safe place to call home.
• Ends homelessness by funding shelters and permanent supportive housing, protecting emergency housing vouchers, expanding mental health and addiction services, tackling root causes, and providing real support to addressing the national tragedy of homelessness, making our communities safer and healthier for everyone.
• Expands senior housing, support home repairs, and fund community services that help older Americans stay in place and age with dignity in homes they can afford.

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