One under-discussed issue is housing. Yes, everyone realizes how important housing is, but many people don’t realize (a) how wide-ranging the housing shortage’s effects are, and (b) how to fix it.
If you care about poverty, inequality, racism, crime, improving the economy, innovation, climate change, or health, you can help on all these issues by fixing housing shortages. If you want people to have access to abortion, LGBTQ rights, or better jobs, you can help on all these issues by fixing the housing shortage. In fact, loosening housing regulations that currently choke supply would add more than 3 trillion dollars to the US economy per year. So whether you’re on the political left or right, chances are you’re underestimating how much damage the US housing shortage is causing. And I say “housing shortage” as opposed to “affordable housing shortage” because any kind of new housing, if supply is increased enough, benefits everyone who wants to rent or buy a home via “housing musical chairs”.
What’s causing the housing shortage? There is rare cross-ideological consensus - from liberal Paul Krugman to libertarian Ilya Somin - that zoning regulations make housing unaffordable and this is bad. But this goes beyond housing regulations. Some well-intentioned environmental laws like NEPA (national) or CEQA (California) make it easy for any Joe Schmo to block housing developments in their neighborhood. Ironically, laws like these have allowed people to block many environmental initiatives, including what would have been the largest solar project in the US. Basic economics: ability for anyone to block new developments limits supply, which raises prices on rents and houses.
To be sure, not all zoning regulation is bad. And sprawling suburbs have many benefits too. But, at least in cities, limiting housing supply leads to uniquely bad outcomes.
So let’s say you’re young and idealistic and want to devote yourself to a cause where you can make an impact. This is an area where there’s still so much to accomplish, and not as many people are working on it.
You can work on lobbying states (and the federal gov) to take more power from cities in deciding housing policy. (Yes, lobbying is a dirty word, but that’s how laws are made, and 501c4 nonprofits can lobby to their hearts’ content.) Right now, there is no law stopping states from deciding housing policy for all cities in that state. You can advocate for laws that incentivize increasing housing supply; for example, conditioning federal grants to heavily populated cities on increasing housing stock by 10% per year, or a law that gets rid of certain zoning restrictions (like “air rights”) but requires developers to pay everyone who lives within 500 square feet fair compensation - which makes it less likely that they’ll object to new developments. You can create tax incentives for businesses to set up shop in cities with “elastic housing supply.” You can literally pay people (or forgive their student loans) to move from the densest cities to less-populated areas, thus making more housing available in the densest cities (this is already happening, but payments are too low and it’s a hyper local thing). You can advocate for laws or regulations that require environmental reviews to be done within two years (right now, it can hold up projects for 10 years, which discourages most developers).
You can come up with a business that builds more housing for cheaper (like Cover, but for large housing complexes), or find ways (like Uber) of getting around regulations that limit housing supply. For example, here’s a business idea: you can start a business that starts new communities with large inexpensive houses where land is cheap - new technologies allow people to have great off-the-grid water and plumbing systems, amazing internet service, and reliable off-the-grid electricity. You can get nonprofits to become real estate developers. Just build more housing in big cities. There are many ways to get at this, via nonprofits, lobbying/trade groups, and industry/startups. It’s time to build.