Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) is preaching the conservative answer to New York City democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s policies on one of Americans’ biggest concerns, the soaring cost of housing.
“I agree with Zohran Mamdani on one thing,” Scott told The Daily Wire. “Homeownership has become nearly impossible and too many young families are struggling.”
But unlike the New York mayor, Scott told The Daily Wire that socialism isn’t the answer.
Scott said that while Mamdani has the diagnosis correct, the mayor’s cure is wrong, arguing that socialism will only expand the government policies that caused the housing crisis in the first place.
“The cost of housing today isn’t the free market failing, but the government failing the people and the free market,” Scott said. “His [Mamdani’s] socialist agenda will only create more of the failed big government spending and regulation that made it that way.”
For roughly a century, the federal government has encouraged Americans to view homeownership as the foundation of financial security and a primary means of building wealth.
Federal policymakers began promoting homeownership as early as the 1920s, when the Commerce Department published guidance on zoning and building codes. Zoning was presented as a way to preserve property values by preventing industrial development near residential neighborhoods, according to a history published by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Washington’s involvement in housing expanded during the Great Depression with the creation of the Federal Housing Administration, federal mortgage refinancing programs, and eventually, Fannie Mae. Those programs helped replace short, expensive mortgages with the long-term, fixed-rate loans now familiar to American buyers. The G.I. Bill later opened homeownership to millions of returning veterans, helping expand the middle class after World War II.
The strategy rewarded Americans who bought early. The national homeownership rate jumped from 43.6% in 1940 to 61.9% in 1960 as government-backed financing and postwar construction transformed homeownership into a cornerstone of middle-class life.
Washington continued subsidizing mortgage debt, exempting much of the profit from home sales from taxation, backing most of the mortgage market, and intervening during downturns to prevent foreclosures and stabilize the housing system.
But making homeownership central to household wealth also gave policymakers a powerful incentive to protect property values. Policies that preserve the wealth of existing homeowners can simultaneously raise the price younger Americans must pay to enter the market.
That conflict has become increasingly visible. Census Bureau data shows that rising home equity was the primary driver of the $40,000 increase in median household net worth between 2019 and 2022. Among homeowners, median home equity climbed by $47,900 during the same period.
Washington, therefore, faces a problem partly of its own making as millions of older Americans depend on high home values for their financial security, while millions of younger Americans need homes to become more affordable before they can begin accumulating that same wealth.
Scott says, “President Trump has been using every tool he has on this problem, but it’s time for Congress to get government the heck out of people’s lives so hard-working Americans’ money can go a lot further. That’s the best way to make sure young families can own an affordable home and have a shot at the American Dream.”
.png)
.png)
