A bipartisan group of mayors and business leaders are teaming up to tackle housing issues nationwide.

Mayors and CEOs for U.S. housing investment is a public-private partnership that aims to find solutions for a lack of affordable housing in many U.S. cities and towns.

This year, their meeting as the Trump administration looks to slash rental assistance programs

and homelessness hits a record high nationwide.

Joining me now to discuss the effort are two mayors leading the effort.

That's Long Beach, California, Mayor Rex Richardson, Democrat, and Clearfield, Utah Mayor Mark

Shepard, a Republican.

Gentlemen, welcome to you both.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you for being here. Mayor Shepard, so this is Gentlemen, welcome to you both. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Mayor Shepard, so this is a first of its kind, bipartisan effort to come up with housing solutions.

What can you accomplish through this model that you couldn't do previously?

I think really when you're bringing mayors and CEOs together, you're bringing the business community as well as municipal leaders together to give a message that it can be done. None of this gets solved

Easily. This is not an easy problem to tackle, but it's a crucial problem to tackle and as you look across the country, you see the desperate need for housing that we have both on

on the the small scale in our smaller cities and again in our bigger cities,

it's everywhere. We're short about four million homes. This allows us to take a message

in and solutions and really be able to say, how do we come together to make things happen?

So Mayor Richardson, you're here because you're meeting with federal lawmakers.

Absolutely.

Is this the kind of issue that's best handled through Washington or at the level you work at or at the state level?

Well, we're implementers on the ground.

We build housing in communities and cities, but we can't do it alone.

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