It's Friday, February 13, 2026.

I'm Albert Moller, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

As you're looking at the landscape of American political issues, one of the hottest growing, actually, in intensity, are controversies about real estate prices and in particular, homeownership.

And this ratches down to the issue of rent because as housing costs go up, they go up not only in terms of the sale of private homes.

They also go up in terms of rent. And so it's a calculus that just comes back to the fact that the bottom line is right

now, the United States has a housing shortage.

Even the federal government believes that there is a shortage of 3.8 million homes in the

United States.

Now, that doesn't just mean 3.8 million houses, but 3.8 million homes.

Okay, a couple of things to think about here.

You know, in worldview terms, one of the most interesting questions is who needs a home?

And the most immediate answer is everybody needs a home. But no, specifically, as you're looking at society, who needs a home?

And the most obvious answer is families. Families need a home. And so that has been the bedrock understanding of most of Western civilization. That's the way housing markets have developed just about everywhere. And the United States is the perfect example of that. If you want to see the classic example of how housing turns into a middle class family-centered reality, all you have to do is look at the American frontier and see how it was developed.

All you have to do is look at the concentric zone theory of American metropolitan areas.

You see housing moving further out, out, out, out, out, and out.

And that is because entry-level real estate tends to move

out into suburbs. You see especially the vast explosion of suburban housing that took place. More

importantly, after World War II than at any other point, you had all of these young couples.

They were having babies. They wanted to own homes. And so you had all these

enormous suburbs begin to expand outside metropolitan areas. And you also had even many suburbs

develop in non-urban territories. So even in places like Kansas, you know, you could have a

suburb of sorts, which is a housing development of houses and a certain style and price point, entry level, most importantly, for families, newlywed couples and families of small children to buy houses.

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