Michael Bloomberg: To ease the housing shortage, empower mayors

The U.S. housing market remains plagued by fixable problems. Mortgage rates have hit 7%, thanks partly to inflationary pressures Washington has failed to tame. Tariffs are adding about $10,000 to the cost of building a new home. The construction industry needs about 500,000 more workers. Together, these factors have helped drive up home prices for 38 straight months and are keeping available inventory below pre-pandemic levels. The dream of homeownership is increasingly out-of-reach, especially for young people, while rising rents are outpacing wages. Unfortunately, Washington is unlikely to act on those challenges any time soon, but that doesn’t mean progress isn’t possible. It just needs to come from outside the Beltway. As is so often the case with the nation’s biggest challenges, mayors in both parties are eager to provide pragmatic leadership – and when it comes to housing affordability, they possess unique powers to do so. City halls control a variety of levers that determine what housing can be built, where it can be built, and how quickly it can be built. Too often, local zoning restrictions and Not-In-My-Backyard politics block developments from getting off the drawing boa...