An aerial view of apartment buildings under construction in a planned community in Fontana, California, on September 17, 2025. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats began detailing their affordability agenda Thursday ahead of the November midterm elections, starting with a focus on housing.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told an event at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, that if Democrats regain control of the House and Senate, they would pass legislation to increase rental assistance, lower barriers to homeownership, build more housing and address predatory practices.
Schumer cited several statistics he found disturbing, including that the average home price has increased by 55% since the coronavirus pandemic, rent has increased by a third and that the average age of first-time homebuyers is 40.
“This is a record result,” he said. “This is a devastating statistic that should shock all those in power at the federal, state and local levels.”
Schumer said the housing outline is just the first of several cost-of-living policy proposals that Democrats will detail this year as they try to persuade voters in key districts and states to vote for their candidates over Republicans.
Democrats, he said, will also focus on how to curb rising costs of groceries, electricity, child care and health care as part of midterm announcements.
On housing, Schumer said Democrats would focus on legislation that would address it
- encourage construction companies to build more housing to address shortages across the country;
- expand rental assistance, including Section 8 vouchers for low-income families;
- reduce barriers to home ownership;
- expand the low-income housing tax credit;
- allow the Department of Housing and Urban Development to employ the Defense Production Act to purchase “shortage housing materials”;
- create an advanced housing research agency similar to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; AND
- prevent “predatory companies” from “so easily devouring entire neighborhoods and turning them into profit-making machines.”
The Democratic bills would provide down payment assistance, lower mortgage insurance costs, expand access to portable mortgages and “reform homeowners insurance, which is currently at crisis levels and is so important for people who can’t afford that down payment,” Schumer said.
Democrats have a relatively good chance of regaining control of the House in November’s midterm elections, especially since the president’s party tends to lose the chamber two years after taking office.
Campaigns to regain control of the Senate will be much more challenging for Democrats, who face challenges retaining seats in Georgia and Michigan while trying to flip Republican seats in Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio.
Even if voters gave Democrats control of Congress, party leaders would still need Republican support to move the legislation past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, and they would need President Donald Trump to sign the legislation unless they had the two-thirds needed in each chamber to override a veto.
“Family Talk”
Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said during a panel discussion with Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, moderated by CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden, that he had been “radicalized on the issue of housing” and pushed for party members to speak realistically about supply and affordability issues.
“And the reason is that our shortage across the country, and especially in Hawaii, is so acute that people can no longer make the math work,” Schatz said. “In Hawaii, people pay more than 50% of their income collectively for housing, either renting or paying off a mortgage. And I realized we were the problem.”
Schatz argued that the government “is the main obstacle to mitigating the shortage” and said that realization led him to have “very difficult conversations.”
He said there are environmental and cultural protections in Hawaii designed to protect “special places,” but they ended up being applied more broadly, hindering residential development.
“They were not originally intended to prevent an apartment building from being built on the corner of Eisenberg and King to house Native Hawaiian families,” Schatz said. “Yet these same laws are being used against people in Hawaii who may even live in the state.”
Schatz said Democrats need to be sincere with voters about what their housing policies will mean for communities across the country, arguing that the party needs to “resolve the politics” of housing expansion before it can engage in policy debate.
“I actually think we need to have this family conversation about housing policy and realize that some of our core suburban voters who are otherwise good on all progressive issues also want to prevent a nurse, firefighter, disabled person, elderly person or student from living near them,” Schatz said. “And we need to have this conversation in a progressive coalition.”
A recent approach to inspections and other processes
Duckworth said some housing solutions could come from rethinking the processes that currently exist, just as the Department of Veterans Affairs has changed its approach to homeless veterans.
“The VA said, ‘You need to get clean and sober and then we’ll give you a voucher for housing.’ So that didn’t make sense, right?” Duckworth said.
“So we had to shift our mindset to what the homeless community was working on, which was harm reduction – getting them into housing and then working to get them clean and sober,” she continued. “By changing that thought, we could immediately start getting veterans off the streets and into housing where they immediately received counseling and treatment.”
Duckworth compared the sometimes ponderous housing inspection process, which can hold up construction, to the government’s approach to vehicle safety as one possible way to speed up work.
“With cars, we say, ‘This car you’re making has to be able to withstand hitting a brick wall at 55 miles an hour.’ And then when they come together and get approved for the car, when we buy that car, we don’t have to take it and inspect it from top to bottom like we do with houses,” Duckworth said.
She added, “So why wouldn’t we tell companies that build homes, especially (prefabricated) homes, if you come to Virginia and want to get two models of your home, pre-inspected and approved, and when a veteran builds a new home and says, ‘Hey, I’ll go with one of these models that already has the VA Good Housekeeping Approval,’ they can shorten the inspection process.”
