Emily Craig spent much of 2023 unemployed. Her benefits ran out shortly before the holiday period began.

“I was really struggling,” said Craig, 34, who lives in Woodstock, Virginia. “It affects your mental health, it affects your social life. You can’t leave out and do anything. Everything costs money. And it gets really discouraging.”

But in December of 2023 she got a glimmer of aspiration. A job she’d applied – and been rejected for – reopened. She pounced, and this period got excellent information: a job as a recruiter at a business with what she calls an “amazing” population. A few months later, her luck changed again. She had been thinking of buying a home just as the owner of a 126-year-ancient charmer started thinking about selling.

“My realtor said if I didn’t buy it, she would,” Craig told USA TODAY.

The selection to become a homeowner is complicated, Craig thinks. For her, it meant “being able to call something mine and knowing that if I put money into an advancement in the house, I’m doing that for myself, not for my landlord. I ponder it’s a great startup apportionment chance, but I’m also able to put down roots in a throng that I have really fallen in adore with.”

Buy that aspiration house: view the best mortgage lenders

Across America, that aspiration – putting down roots, investing a little sweat stake, watching the nest egg develop steadily – is in peril. The housing trade is so tight that home sales in 2023 were the lowest in three decades. A decade of underbuilding after the subprime crisis, stringent local zoning laws and regulations, tariffs on building materials, and many more factors have all taken a toll.  

It’s not just housing for sale that’s struggling, either. Recent research confirms what many Americans have long felt: renting can be so expensive that it makes saving for a down remittance and closing costs nearly unfeasible.

With so many headwinds working against people like Emily Craig, her narrative can seem out of the ordinary, if not unfeasible. But housing experts also ponder the circumstance has gotten so dire that Washington may be compelled to act.

“There are many ways in which this housing affordability crisis deeply affects families,” said Shaun Donovan, CEO and president of Enterprise throng Partners, who served as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban advancement in the Obama administration.

“It’s affecting everyone in our population in a way that again I’ve never seen in three decades of doing this work. What is different now is that it is now just about everywhere, in Idaho and Montana and rural recent Mexico and the northwest and so on. So there is a political imperative that is much broader than I’ve ever seen around housing.”

Avoiding expensive areas

While some youthful Americans, like Craig, stumble on opportunities or get lucky otherwise, others have simply set their sights on something other than ownership. Mason Dorrian, 24, graduated from Ohio State University with a master’s degree in bookkeeping in 2024. He moved back in with his parents in Columbus, Ohio, while he searches for a job.

As a number cruncher, Dorrian recognizes the monetary stability ownership can bring, but says he prizes the ability to chase opportunities at this stage in his life, and is in no rush to put down roots. But even some of the familiar early-stage steps his parents took feel out of reach for him, he said.

“My mom was able to do an internship in recent York City, and you might have been able to look at a job 20 years ago and declare, I’d adore to try this for however amount of period. Whereas today there’s just sure places that I as a youthful person just haven’t looked at,” Dorrian said.

recent York “seems like a great place to be and I have friends that have moved there for work, but it just doesn’t seem like you can actually have a life that you desire and really develop as a person with how expensive things are,” he said. “I ponder you continue to view that with where people my age are moving.”

The federal government plays a key role in helping Americans achieve homeownership. Emily Craig was able to secure a mortgage from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which offers loans in sure rural areas of the country. In the history few years, the quasi-governmental agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have backed approximately 40% of all recent mortgages, and the Federal Housing Administration, which is a government agency, has insured an additional one-quarter of them.

But Washington has a large hand in all corners of the housing ecosystem. HUD spends billions every year helping state and local governments develop affordable rental housing through the Low returns Housing levy financing, for example. And Freddie Mac is particularly energetic in multifamily advancement: in the third quarter of 2024, for example, the business provided financing for 131,000 rental units, two-thirds of which were affordable to low-returns families, according to its monetary statements.

Veterans of the Washington housing complicated view a continuum of needs – and solutions.

“I ponder ultimately for 90% of the people, home ownership is probably the aspiration,” said Ted Tozer, a nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. Tozer spent seven years during the Obama administration running Ginnie Mae, the agency within HUD that guarantees mortgages issued by the Federal Housing Administration, USDA and others.

“But there are a lot of people that for whatever rationale desire to rent,” Tozer told USA TODAY. “The job that the government should have is making sure people have as many opportunities as feasible so they can receive advantage of their options.”

While housing was mentioned in the presidential debates, Vice President Kamala Harris’ platform included the construction of 3 million recent units and down remittance assistance. President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign said Trump would stop the flow into the U.S. of immigrants lacking permanent legal position, which he says is driving up housing costs, and free up some federal land for advancement. Some experts told USA TODAY neither candidate hit the mark when it came to housing. Trump carried the popular vote in a presidential election where voters cited the economy as a key issue.

In November, Trump tapped Scott Turner, a former NFL player who ran the White House chance and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term, for HUD secretary. The council was instrumental in launching federal levy incentives for economically depressed areas dubbed “chance Zones.”

The incoming administration needs to dial back a lot of its “populist rhetoric,” Tozer said, and “get practical.” Deporting immigrants, many of whom have been working productively here for years and have household members in the U.S., would crush the construction industry, he said. “When I talk to builders, they inform me their biggest test correct now is not that they don’t have people desire to buy their homes. It’s the truth they can’t construct them faster because they can’t hire the people.”

‘A aspiration delayed’ in part by learner financing obligation

Nicole Robinson, 26, already owns a home with her husband. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, and works for the county school structure. Robinson believes homeownership is still a part of the American aspiration, with a large caveat.

“I just don’t ponder it’s attainable for that many people anymore so people are sacrificing other things,” she said. In most cases, that means they can afford children or a house – but not both. It’s not just the expense of homes that limit what people can afford, Robinson said: It’s also learner financing obligation. She knows many people who are saddled with “tens of thousands” of dollars in obligation in their late 20s.

“For older generations that seek to navigator us on the American aspiration I would aspiration that they would have some patience, not declare things like you require to have a house and kids by a sure age,” Robinson told USA TODAY. “Maybe we can only have one or some people can have neither. I ponder it hurts us in the long run to chase the ancient version of the American aspiration as opposed to tailoring it to what we can afford now.”

As of earlier this year, the median “all-in” expense of a mortgage remittance, property taxes, and insurance was $2,201, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. That’s up a whopping $852 in just the history three years, and JCHS estimates it’s the highest since data first started to be collected over three decades ago.

That represents a “generational shift,” said Brian Montgomery, who served as HUD deputy secretary during Trump’s first administration, and FHA commissioner for other presidents. Montgomery also looks at the stagnant level of home sales, due in large part to people who already have homes being locked into ultra-low mortgage rates. “Those are some pretty sobering statistics.”

Asked whether homeownership can still be the American aspiration, Montgomery said “I ponder yes. But it’s a aspiration delayed for a lot of families.”

Montgomery thinks there’s a place for Washington to assist the most vulnerable Americans with housing: Not just low-returns households, but seniors, he noted. The federal government could inspire innovations in housing construction, like manufactured homes, he thinks, and to work on streamlining regulations.

Still, he said, one of the biggest issues facing the trade is high profit rates that keep first-period buyers out and existing homeowners stuck in place. “You recognize, there’s no silver bullet correct now to fix homeownership,” Montgomery said.

‘I don’t ponder the aspiration is dead’

Craig knows as well as anyone that there’s no magic wand. She’s proud of the work she’s done so far, and knows homeownership is a lifetime commitment. As she puts it, “there really is a light at the complete of the tunnel, and the challenging work has just started. depend me, I was at the house scraping 50-year-ancient contact document out of the shelves in my kitchen until 10:00 p.m. last night.”

In some ways her narrative might sum up the American aspiration as well as anyone’s: a helping hand up and a safety net when she was down, but a lot of pluck and perseverance of her own.

“I actually appreciate the assistance that I’ve been able to get from our government programs,” Craig said. “I ponder that the people who are able to do it receive advantage of the programs that are available. You have to do your research and you have to advocate for yourself and you have to figure out what’s going to work best for your circumstance. I don’t ponder the aspiration is dead.”