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Back in May, I argued that the growing crisis of housing unaffordability was the most potent threat to the American Dream. Now, major voices on the political right are recognizing that fact as well, also highlighting how making homeownership more attainable for more people is a crucial step in preserving the vitality and longevity of the conservative movement.
Independent commentator and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson thrust the issue into the mainstream during remarks at a Turning Point USA conference last month. Carlson’s comments about Jeffrey Epstein garnered the most headlines, but by far the most important part of his speech concerned housing unaffordability and how that crisis is driving a generational collapse of confidence in our entire economic system.
This section of Carlson’s speech is worth quoting at length:
“Basic economics really matter. They matter because, not that it’s bad that rich people are getting richer. It’s bad that everyone else is getting poorer. And it’s especially bad that young people can’t afford homes.
Let me just put a very precise point on this. If you want a measure of how your economy is doing, I personally favor eliminating GDP as a measure. I don’t even know what that is. It’s clearly not relevant.
They tell me Japan has a stagnant GDP. Have you been to Tokyo? It’s the single most radicalizing experience you’ll ever have. Because it’s just so nice. You lost the war, really? Can we lose the war and wind up like this?
GDP. No. I don’t know what even that is. Total economic activity, no, no. My measure’s really simple. I got a bunch of kids. Can they afford houses with full-time jobs at like 27, 28? The answer is, no way.”
Even many avowed Carlson critics on the left begrudgingly acknowledged how accurate his diagnosis of the problem is. For all the obscure economic data that leaders in both parties are so eager to shove in the faces of the public, they can’t solve the riddle of why a young person who goes to college, gets a good job, and shows up to work every day can’t afford to purchase a home to raise his or her family in – and they have shown no real indication that they are able to reverse that trend.
Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk put an even finer point on what this means for the conservative movement in a post on X:
“The next generation is primed for a permanent CONSERVATIVE political realignment – the most dramatic realignment we’ve seen since Woodstock. But it’s not guaranteed.
We have to address the honest economic anxieties of our youngest voters. We need to ensure they become a generation of owners, not renters. If we don’t, there will be more Zohran Mandanis, Omar Fatehs, and Abdul El-Sayeds.
The populist energy in America will either flow into MAGA populist conservatism that restores the American Dream, or racial grievance-driven, free-stuff socialism that destroys it.
It’s a race against the clock. We have 3.5 years to deliver, and if we do, we will change the course of American history for the better. We must deliver.”
Kirk is spot on here – the “economic anxieties” he mentions are a latent radicalizing force that will upend our politics, economy, and culture. The political movement that best channels and addresses those concerns stands to become the ascendant political power in the United States.
America stands at a crossroads. If conservatives present the clearest answer to young people for how they can have a stable, prosperous, and independent future – a dream defined by homeownership – then the conservative movement is primed for a revival that will usher in a return of the traditional values that first made this country an economic powerhouse. Alternatively, if the Marxist vision advanced by the likes of Zohran Mamdani wins out, the country may be doomed to repeat the failures of every other socialist state throughout history.
Seemingly with each passing month, the statistics on homeownership become more disheartening. The median home sale price reached a new all-time high of $435,300 in June even as sales slumped, indicating that some buyers may be giving up on the dream of homeownership altogether. The median age of a first-time homebuyer was 38 in 2024, up from 29 as recently as the 1980s.
Perhaps most astonishingly, the average income required to afford a single-family home has risen by 60 percent since just 2021. As I wrote earlier this year, in 1985 the median household income in the United States was about $22,400, while the median home price was $78,200 – a price-to-income ratio of 3.5. By 2022, the price-to-income ratio for a new home had skyrocketed to 5.8.
Wall Street Journal opinion columnist William Galston offered some potential solutions in a thoughtful column earlier this month. Some of them hold promise, such as regulatory reforms to reduce closing costs and “a sustained program of fiscal restraint” to bring down interest rates.
But other supposed solutions Galston offers only underscore how the housing unaffordability crisis became so bad in the first place – and why the conventional wisdom from the political establishment isn’t going to solve it. Most egregiously, Galston argues that the United States should “change its immigration policy to ensure the adequate supply of labor for the construction industry.”
Really? That sort of “amnesty lite” talk should enrage every American who understands that allowing in millions of migrants was a major reason why houses became so unaffordable. In addition to undercutting American wages and destroying the domestic construction industry, flooding the country with low-wage workers created a supply crunch that sent prices soaring.
Galston also fails to mention a major problem that lawmakers have an obligation to address: big banks buying up millions of homes and outbidding everyday Americans. In 2022, investment banks bought one of every four homes sold, many of them purchased with cash and over asking price. In the first three months of 2025, nearly 27 percent of homes sold were bought by investors. That’s 265,000 homes that could have gone to American families.
Free-market purists will cry that government intervention in the housing market smacks of a socialist command economy. But the reality is that big banks are using anti-competitive practices to drive the dream of homeownership out of reach for everyday families, intentionally turning America into a nation of permanent renters. Republicans today should adopt the trust-busting conservative mentality of Teddy Roosevelt a century ago to address this threat.
Promoting homeownership is essential to the future of the conservative movement – and the country. More than just financial security, homeownership fosters stability, responsibility, and long-term thinking. When people own homes, start families, and put down roots, they develop a stake in preserving what they have built. They have something to conserve.
A nation of homeowners is a nation invested in the future. Property owners are more likely to vote, to care about schools and public safety, and to resist the pull of radical ideologies that promise destruction rather than renewal. This is the cultural backbone of a healthy society built on ownership, not dependence.
If conservatives lead on this issue, they can win over a generation desperate for stability and direction. But if nothing changes, the movement risks surrendering to a vision of dependency and decline.
Shane Harris is the Editor in Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
