Episode 890: America’s Housing Affordability Crisis
Newt's World
Gingrich 360
4.7 • 6.3K Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Newt talks with Salim Furth, Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Urbanity project at the Mercatus Center about America’s housing affordability crisis. Their discussion centers on the pressing issue of housing affordability in the United States. With high home prices and rents, state legislators are increasingly pursuing housing reform, setting records for new laws aimed at unlocking home building. Furth highlights the challenges and potential solutions in housing policy. They discuss the declining optimism among young Americans regarding their standard of living, with home ownership being a significant barrier. They explore the impact of housing costs on the American dream, the role of state legislation in addressing these issues, and the potential for market-driven solutions.
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:08.8 | Well, in this episode of NUCH World, with no relief from high home prices and rents, |
| 0:14.0 | more and more state legislators are interested in pursuing housing reform. |
| 0:18.2 | As a result, state legislature set new records for the number and strength |
| 0:21.8 | of new laws intended to unlock home building. In his new policy brief for the Mercatus Center, |
| 0:29.4 | framing futures pro-housing legislation goes vertical in 2025. Salim Firth describes how |
| 0:37.0 | states pass record-breaking housing reforms in 2025, |
| 0:41.4 | easing parking rules and zoning across the interstate. I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, |
| 0:48.1 | Salim Firth. He is a senior research fellow and director of the Urbanity Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. |
| 0:57.1 | His research focuses on housing, production, and land use regulation. |
| 1:01.5 | He frequently advises local governments and testifies before state and federal legislatures. |
| 1:07.7 | He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester. |
| 1:23.3 | Salaam, welcome, and thank you for joining me on Newts World. |
| 1:26.9 | Thank you so much, Speaker Gingach. |
| 1:29.0 | Can you describe briefly, what is the urbanity project? |
| 1:33.0 | Yeah, we are a small group of researchers within this research center at George Mason University. |
| 1:39.9 | It's a public university in Virginia, but we are kind of independently funded. |
| 1:45.7 | We are liberty-minded, |
| 1:50.2 | oriented towards markets. Somebody once described us as where the people in Washington who say that markets are the problem and markets are the solution. Another way we describe |
| 1:54.0 | ourselves is bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. |
| 1:58.2 | A new Wall Street Journal poll found that only 25% of Americans |
| 2:03.1 | believe they have a good chance of improving their standard of living. That's a record low |
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