Culture, housing policy form a double whammy against the American family

OPINION:

Real estate business leaders are sounding the alarm: As home prices surge, America’s birth rate continues to plummet. Census Bureau data confirms fertility is collapsing, with young Americans delaying or forgoing families under the weight of unaffordable housing. Voices across the political right, from The Heritage Foundation to Elon Musk, agree that family formation is critical to America’s future.

The picture among young Americans is complicated. The cultural wreckage of the sexual revolution and third-wave feminism means fewer women want children, even as more young men say they do. The liberal “scientific management” of the economy has turned housing into a rigged market where young families can’t get a start. Together, culture and policy form a double whammy against family formation in America.

While conservatives have spent a lot of time talking about the challenge of persuading women that the most meaningful thing they will do in their lives is have children, the origins of our housing crisis have had a severe lack of clarity. It, too, is a consequence of leftist norms.

For more than a century, liberal ideology has dominated American housing policy. It is a philosophy that elevates the authority of government experts to manage the private market. Liberal planners subordinate individual property rights to government planners, assuming bureaucrats know better than citizens how neighborhoods should grow; after all, they have degrees in city planning! In practice, this means local commissions blocking new homes, piling on parking mandates, and/or dictating minimum lot sizes that make starter homes impossible to build.

The result is a market that looks rigged: young people locked out, housing scarce and the dream of family life pushed further and further away. These rules, taxes, impact fees and endless permitting delays may sound like something out of blue states, but thanks to President Johnson’s Great Society, they are everywhere in America, including red states like mine. Their effect is the same: Families are priced out, businesses are pushed off Main Street, and property owners are stripped of the right to use their land according to their values.

Conservatives have the answer. In Montana, our leaders took decisive action to roll back zoning and permitting barriers. The result was so dramatic that national media referred to it as the “Montana Miracle.” Families can once again build the kinds of homes they need instead of being told “no” by bureaucrats. All we did was restore property rights and let people use their own land to meet their needs.

This is what a truly pro-family housing policy looks like. Conservatives should not be afraid to say it: The housing crisis is not “market failure”; it is government failure. High housing costs are not an act of nature; they result from a liberal ideology of “social scientific management.”

Children are more than tax dependents. They are a miracle: living proof that life is greater than ourselves, that God’s design and the human story continue beyond our brief time on earth. The American dream has always been about them: family, roots and hope. It is the birthright of every young American who works hard, obeys the law and lives by a moral code to build a family of their own. Conservatives must act to restore liberty and, chief among our principles, property rights so that every American who longs for a family has the freedom to build a home and a future for the next generation.

• David Rand is a political strategist, podcaster and key player in the 2023 and 2025 “Montana Miracle” housing reform legislation. He is preparing to launch the Land Liberty Movement, a national initiative rooted in conservative principles to restore property rights and housing opportunities for everyone.