In its widely read annual report, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies made one thing perfectly clear: the government – federal, state, and local – must build more affordable housing. Things are so bad that as of 2024, 11 million extremely low-income renters were competing for just 3.8 million affordable units. A key way for governments to help produce millions of moderate- and lower-income housing is to streamline the approval and permitting process for the construction of affordable development.
Every year, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies releases a report called “The State of the Nation’s Housing.” For 2026, Harvard researchers found that “persistent affordability challenges and rising economic security are squeezing housing conditions.”
The report tackles numerous issues, but one that stands out is the shockingly small, even dwindling, supply of affordable housing for the poor and middle and working class.
“The most serious and intractable housing shortage involves units affordable to households with low and moderate incomes,” Harvard researchers note.
Housing Is A Human Right and other housing justice groups have been saying that for years. Even Zillow’s chief economist, Dr. Svenja Gudell, said, in 2016, that there weren’t enough lower-income apartments and that building them needed to be ramped up immediately.
But the real estate industry and YIMBY groups still insist on building, first and foremost, more luxury housing, saying lower-income renters will, at some point, benefit from a trickle-down effect with more affordable rents.
Housing justice groups have long criticized that trickle-down approach, which does nothing to help hard-working people who are getting slammed by sky-high rents right now.
The Harvard report also points out that “new market-rate units are too expensive for the lowest-income households facing the greatest shortages.”
Researchers further note that “rather than being replenished by units filtering down to lower rents, the existing stock of low-rent units is shrinking.” Read that again. They’re saying that trickle-down isn’t working, and, in the process, the United States is losing affordable apartments.
So the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies comes up with a sensible solution: since the private sector is not building enough low-cost housing, governments at all levels need to “aggressively intervene” to produce moderate- and lower-income housing.
Researchers note that many states and cities are “loosening zoning and land-use rules to enable denser, more cost-efficient projects,” but “significant public subsidies are essential for generating the deeply affordable units in shortest supply.” That means Congress, state legislatures, and local governments need to pony up the money to produce millions of moderate- and lower-income apartments.
Just as crucially, politicians, at all levels, must also streamline the approval and permitting process to get affordable housing built. That can’t be emphasized enough. Right now, California and other states have a serious problem with bureaucratic red tape holding up the construction of affordable housing – oftentimes for years.
In California, the Department of Housing and Community Development noted that “processing and permit procedures can post a considerable constraint to the production and improvement of housing. Common constraints include lengthy processing time, unclear permitting procedures, layered reviews, multiple discretionary review requirements, and costly conditions of approval. These constraints increase the final cost of housing, uncertainty in the development of the project, and overall financial risk assumed by the developer.”
A report by the Southern California Association of Governments also found that “speeding up approvals and permit processing… can expedite the production of housing in a community, and can incentivize infill development and affordable housing.”
So while public subsidies are very much needed to build millions of affordable apartments, elected officials must also create a streamlined approval and permit process so moderate- and lower-income housing actually gets built using those subsidies. It’s the old cart-before-the-horse thing.
In California, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which builds lower-income housing and has dealt with long delays to get approvals and permits, has sponsored a bill called AB 1997. Introduced by Assemblymember Alex Lee, the legislation dramatically decreases the time period that local governments must give permits to lower-income-housing developers. Instead of taking years, municipalities have 30 days to give permits for the construction of very-low-income and extremely-low-income units.
AB 1997 can be replicated in other states to help ensure that government subsidies are urgently building the millions of affordable apartments needed in the United States. Poor and moderate- and lower-income residents, many of whom are paying excessive, unfair rents and don’t have enough money for food and medicines, can’t wait any longer.
Patrick Range McDonald is a veteran investigative reporter and the award-winning advocacy journalist for Housing Is A Human Right.