Housing in America: Property Is Theft.
Unf*cking The Republic
UNFTR Media
4.8 • 758 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The United States is in a full-blown housing crisis — and Congress just passed the most significant bipartisan housing legislation in a generation: The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act cleared the Senate 89-10, co-sponsored by Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott. So why won’t it fix the problem? In this episode, we break down exactly what the bill does, what it deliberately leaves out, and why the structural forces driving housing unaffordability in America—rising mortgage rates, institutional investors, zoning failures, generational wealth inequality, and decades of racial exclusion—are largely untouched by any legislation currently on the table. From the redlining of Levittown and Stuyvesant Town to the 2008 financial crisis and the asset inflation chasm it created, we trace how homeownership became both the engine of the American Dream and the mechanism of its denial. We also look at what actually works, like how Vienna’s social housing model has kept half a city affordably housed for over a century, and ask the question no one in Washington wants to answer: short of a depression, what does it actually take to make housing affordable again?
Resources
National Mortgage Professional: What’s The Rookie Home Buying Age? Not 40, New Analysis Shows
HUD: The 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress
National Low Income Housing Coalition
Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies: The State of the Nation's Housing 2025
Congress: H.R.6644 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act
The White House: Stopping Wall Street from Competing with Main Street Homebuyers
U.S. Census Bureau: Housing Vacancies and Homeownership (HVS) Q4 2025
Enterprise Community Partners: Four Key Findings from the 2025 State of the Nation's Housing Report
National Low Income Housing Coalition: The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes 2025
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: FHA Loan Production Report June 2025
Bipartisan Policy Center: What's in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act
NPR: Senate Passes Bipartisan Housing Bill Targeting Large Investors
National Mortgage Professional: What's the Rookie Home Buying Age? Not 40, New Analysis Shows
National Association of Realtors: 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers
Gravel Institute: How Socialists Solved the Housing Crisis
Book Love
Richard Rothstein: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Mehrsa Baradaran: The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap
UNFTR Resources
Episode: The Economics of Racism.
Video: The Economics of Racism.
Episode: Housing in America.
Video: Congress Just Passed a Housing Bill That Changes Nothing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Depending upon your preferred source, the average age of the first-time home buyer in the United States is between the age of 33 and 40 years old. |
| 0:08.5 | The last available point in time count of unhoused Americans from 2024 showed that 771,000 people slept without a roof over their heads. |
| 0:17.6 | According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, as of 2025, there are 35 affordable |
| 0:23.5 | homes available for every 100 families in need of one. The Harvard State of Housing Report in 2025 |
| 0:30.2 | said the number of apartments renting for less than $1,000 a month has dropped by $7 million in the last decade alone. And that three and |
| 0:39.4 | four American households cannot afford the median priced new home. It's why the word housing |
| 0:45.1 | is usually followed by the word crisis. It's both a supply and a demand issue. It's a matter |
| 0:51.6 | of affordability and distribution. It's a topic so complex |
| 0:55.6 | and so intertwined with other economic factors that it's induced a state of policy paralysis. |
| 1:01.7 | And yet, this month, there was a miracle performed in Congress. And we'll talk about that in a second. |
| 1:07.9 | But first, let's talk about the concept of housing and property as a function of the economy, but also natural rights. |
| 1:16.6 | U.N.F.T.R. |
| 1:20.0 | Pierre Joseph Proudon, the celebrated and controversial French theorist, known above all for one axiom. |
| 1:30.4 | Property is theft. In fact, he called it the, quote, grand cause of privilege and despotism. Now, Prudan was an anarchist, a proper one at that. |
| 1:37.1 | He didn't want any followers. He didn't want credit for founding a governing system. He wanted to |
| 1:41.6 | dismantle the mechanism by which property becomes power. |
| 1:46.4 | Now, Perdone, like many of his contemporaries, was wrestling with property as the means of |
| 1:51.1 | production. So think a farmer's land or a carpenter's tools. Control the property and you control |
| 1:57.7 | the person. Now, in modern times, I think it's okay to extend this notion to the American dream. |
| 2:03.7 | Housing is a loaded issue in the United States, because depending on who you ask, we either have |
| 2:08.5 | an oversupply or an under supply. |
| 2:10.9 | We have endless debates about the quantity and the availability of affordable housing. |
... |
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