National Housing Crisis Task Force
Addressing America’s Housing Crisis
The National Housing Crisis Task Force was founded in 2024 to meet this generational moment. Co-chaired by Governor Spencer Cox, Mayor Justin Bibb, Mayor Andre Dickens, and Susan Thomas, the Task Force brings together leaders across parties, sectors, and places to drive solutions to America’s housing crisis from the ground up. The Task Force has a broad membership of 31 leading researchers and practitioners from across America. Together they represent innovative public agencies, financial institutions, investors, developers, philanthropies, research centers, and nonprofits. The Task Force is supported by some of the most respected philanthropies and corporations in the country and staffed by subject matter experts with deep housing experience in the public, private, and philanthropic sectors.
In its first 18 months, the Task Force has produced two nation-leading agendas: a Federal Policy Agenda, which contains dozens of practical policies that have advanced in the ROAD to Housing Act, the 21st Century Housing Act, and the Build HUBS Act; and a State and Local Housing Action Plan, which profiled 15 best-in-class innovations from around the country, which has a cohort of energetic mayors, governors, and practitioners we are working with to replicate them.
Why
Breaking Through This Crisis Requires Doing Things Differently
America’s housing crisis has reached an inflection point. The nation faces its most severe housing challenge since the 1950s: with a shortage of 4-8 million homes, nearly half of all renters paying more than 1/3 of their income on rent, and the price of houses relative to incomes setting records. These problems are not isolated. They are the result of a national housing system that has broken in multiple ways over the past 50 years, becoming more federated, financialized, and fossilized. As the public increasingly demands solutions to the housing crisis, the nation has a generational opportunity to modernize the way it approaches housing across sectors, places, and levels of government.
As of 2025, an American household needs an income of $120,000+ to afford a median-priced home
Renter cost burdens hit a record high in 2024, with 22.7 million households spending more than 30% of income on rent and utilities
In 2024, homelessness reached 771,480 people on a single night in January, an 18% year-over-year increase
How
Our Approach to Change
Our theory of change holds that housing innovation spreads when:
- We harness the problem-solving abilities of state, local, civic, and private practitioners. The current housing system is overly oriented towards existing federal programs and proposed federal solutions, minimizing the power, capital, and agency that localities possess to address the crisis.
- We make it easier to spread good ideas fast. We identify, elevate, and scale good ideas that work.
- We reduce the risk of trying new housing solutions. Many housing problems we face today require new, un-tested, approaches; we help first-movers design and pilot them, while providing staff support and reputational cover to break through institutional and political inertia.
- We cultivate trusted messengers across siloed sectors, places, and political parties. America’s current housing system is fragmented with few trusted voices who can speak across its component parts; we convene our members and generate shared buy-in on marquee policy documents and replicable workstreams that translate across divides.
Partners and Funders
Our Work is Made Possible By
