In its recent annual report, the National Low Income Housing Coalition laid out some shocking facts. First, no state or major metropolitan area in America has an adequate supply of affordable housing for extremely-low-income renters. Second, there is a national shortage of 7.2 million affordable units for 11 million extremely-low-income households. As much as those numbers seem daunting, something can be done about it.
For years, researchers and activists have been calling on federal, state, and local politicians to address the lack of affordable apartments for poor and moderate- and lower-income tenants.
In 2016, for example, Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Svenja Gudell sounded the alarm that there’s not enough affordable housing for moderate- and lower-income renters being built, fueling the housing affordability crisis. She warned that “apartment construction at the low end needs to start ramping up, and soon, in order to see real improvement.”
Obviously, that didn’t happen, with the National Low Income Housing Coalition finding ten years later the shortage of 7.2 million affordable homes for extremely-low income renters.
In addition, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, in its 2026 “The State of the Nation’s Housing” report, found that the “most serious and intractable housing shortage involves units affordable to households with low and moderate incomes.”
Both the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies call for interventions by federal, state, and local governments to help build more affordable housing, including major public subsidies to pay for moderate- and lower-income units. Such investment is needed, but it’s also vitally important to create a streamlined approval and permitting process to quickly construct millions of affordable apartments.
While housing think tanks often push for loosening zoning and land-use rules to trigger more construction, just as important, and maybe even more important, is the need to fix the bureaucratic red tape that stalls approvals and permits. Right now, across the United States, that problem with red tape routinely delays the construction of affordable units for months and often 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.”
One approach to speed up the approval and permitting process is to decrease the time period that local governments must give permits to lower-income-housing developers – municipalities are notorious for drawn-out approvals and permits.
To that end, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the parent organization of Housing Is A Human Right, introduced a bill this year, in California, that sets a timeline of 30 days for local governments to give permits for the construction of very-low-income and extremely-low-income units. The bill is working its way through the legislative process, and it can be replicated in other states.
Other ways to streamline the approval and permitting process for affordable housing must also be considered and urgently passed by state and local elected officials. Especially since every day lower- and moderate-income housing isn’t built, it’s another day that poor and middle- and working-class residents may face the prospect of homelessness if they can’t pay the month’s rent. Politicians need to act now.
Patrick Range McDonald is a veteran investigative reporter and the award-winning advocacy journalist for Housing Is A Human Right.