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This article is a Christian conservative commentary supporting H.R. 9625, the Freedom to Build Act. It contains strong opinions, political advocacy, and religious content.

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Pass H.R. 9625 Now — Let Americans Build Homes Again, End the Zoning Cartel, and Make Housing Affordable for Every Family

I. The Housing Crisis Is a Supply Crisis — and the Government Created It

The average home price in the United States has nearly doubled in the last decade. Rents have risen faster than wages in every major city. Young families cannot afford to buy their first home. Seniors cannot afford to downsize. Working Americans are spending 40, 50, 60 percent of their income on housing — and the government’s response has been to subsidize demand while strangling supply. Rent control. Section 8 vouchers. First-time homebuyer tax credits. Down payment assistance. Every single one of these programs throws money at the problem without addressing the reason housing is expensive in the first place: there are not enough homes.

The United States has a housing shortage of between 4 and 7 million units, depending on the estimate. That shortage is not caused by builders who do not want to build. It is caused by governments that will not let them. Zoning codes in most American cities make it illegal to build anything except single-family homes on large lots. Minimum lot sizes, setback requirements, parking minimums, height limits, density caps, environmental reviews, historical preservation designations, community input processes that give every neighbor a veto — layer after layer of regulation that makes it impossible to build enough housing where people want to live. The result is exactly what basic economics predicts: restricted supply plus growing demand equals higher prices. The government created the crisis. The government blames the market. And the government’s solution is always more government.

H.R. 9625, the Freedom to Build Act, breaks this cycle. It creates a “Freedom to Build” designation for local housing markets that reform their zoning, streamline their permitting, and actually allow housing to be built. Cities that want the designation — and the federal incentives that come with it — must prove that they are removing the regulatory barriers that make housing expensive. They must allow more units per acre. They must approve permits faster. They must stop treating every new apartment building as a threat to the neighborhood and start treating it as what it is: a place for families to live. The federal government cannot force cities to build housing. But it can reward the cities that do and punish the cities that do not. H.R. 9625 is the carrot. The message is simple: if you want federal money, you must allow homes to be built. If you prefer your zoning cartel to federal funding, you are free to keep it — but you will pay for it yourself.

Nehemiah 2:17: “Then I said to them, ‘You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be a reproach.’”

Nehemiah saw his city in ruins and rebuilt it. American cities are not burned with fire — but they are burning with unaffordability. Families are sleeping in cars while zoning boards debate whether a duplex will ruin the neighborhood’s character. Come and let us build. Remove the barriers. Let the walls rise. Pass H.R. 9625.

II. The Zoning Cartel — How Local Governments Make Housing Illegal

The zoning code of a typical American city is not a neutral set of rules. It is a cartel — a conspiracy of incumbent homeowners and the local politicians who serve them, designed to restrict the supply of housing in order to inflate the value of existing homes. Every restriction — the minimum lot size of half an acre, the ban on duplexes and triplexes, the requirement for two parking spaces per unit, the height limit of 35 feet, the six-month environmental review, the community meeting where neighbors can veto a project — exists for one purpose: to keep new housing from being built. Because when new housing is built, supply increases, and when supply increases, prices fall. And incumbent homeowners — the people who already own homes, who vote in local elections, who show up at planning board meetings — do not want prices to fall. They want their home values to rise. And they have captured the local government to ensure that nothing threatens their investment.

The victims are everyone else. The young family that cannot afford a starter home. The elderly couple that cannot afford to downsize. The working-class renter who spends half their income on a one-bedroom apartment. The immigrant family crammed into a unit too small for them. The homeless veteran sleeping on the street because there are no units available anywhere near what they can afford. Every one of these people is a victim of the zoning cartel — a system that enriches the already-housed at the expense of everyone who is not.

H.R. 9625 breaks the cartel by rewarding the cities that defect from it. A city that wants the “Freedom to Build” designation must demonstrate that it has reformed its zoning to allow more housing. It must allow more density. It must allow more types of housing — duplexes, triplexes, townhouses, apartment buildings. It must reduce parking requirements that force builders to waste land on empty asphalt instead of housing units. It must speed up permitting so that a project that should take six months does not take six years. It must stop giving every neighbor a veto over what gets built on someone else’s property. In exchange, the city gets federal incentives — funding preferences, infrastructure grants, technical assistance. The deal is simple: allow housing, get help. Block housing, get nothing.

This is not a federal takeover of local zoning. It is a federal nudge toward sanity. Cities that want to be part of the solution can opt in. Cities that prefer to be part of the problem can opt out — and explain to their citizens why their rent keeps going up while the city down the road, which adopted the Freedom to Build designation, is adding units and stabilizing prices. The market of municipal competition will do the rest. Cities that build will attract residents. Cities that block will lose them. And the zoning cartel that has been strangling American housing for two generations will finally begin to crack.

Proverbs 11:10: “When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices; and when the wicked perish, there is jubilation.”

When housing is abundant and affordable, the city rejoices. When the zoning cartel perishes, there is jubilation. H.R. 9625 brings the jubilation. Pass it.

III. More Supply Means Lower Prices — It Is Not Complicated

The economics of housing are not mysterious. Housing is a good. Like any good, its price is determined by supply and demand. When supply exceeds demand, prices fall. When demand exceeds supply, prices rise. The United States has restricted the supply of housing for decades while demand has grown — population growth, household formation, migration to cities. The result is predictable, mathematical, and unavoidable: prices have risen far faster than incomes.

Every proposed solution to the housing crisis that does not increase supply is a fraud. Rent control reduces supply — landlords take units off the market or convert them to condos, and new construction stops because the returns are capped. Subsidies without supply reform simply push prices higher — giving people more money to bid on the same limited number of units. Inclusionary zoning — requiring developers to set aside units at below-market rates — is a tax on new housing that makes new housing less likely to be built. Every one of these “solutions” makes the problem worse because it treats the symptom (high prices) without addressing the cause (restricted supply).

The only thing that lowers housing prices is more housing. More units. More apartments. More condos. More townhouses. More duplexes. More single-family homes on smaller lots. More of everything, everywhere, all at once. The way to get more housing is to make it legal to build. The way to make it legal to build is to remove the regulations that make it illegal. H.R. 9625 does exactly that — not by federal mandate, but by federal incentive. It says to every city in America: if you want our help, you must allow homes to be built. And the cities that take the deal will see their housing supply increase and their housing costs stabilize. The cities that refuse will continue to watch their young people leave, their families struggle, and their homeless populations grow. The choice is theirs. The framework is H.R. 9625. Pass it.

Isaiah 65:21: “They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.”

God’s vision of the good life includes building houses and living in them. The zoning cartel makes that vision impossible for millions of Americans. H.R. 9625 restores it. Pass it.

IV. The Bottom Line — Let Americans Build

America was built by people who could build. The pioneers who cleared the land, the immigrants who raised the tenements, the GIs who came home and built the suburbs, the entrepreneurs who built the factories and the offices and the skyscrapers — they built because they were allowed to build. They did not need a zoning variance to add a bedroom. They did not need an environmental impact study to open a storefront. They did not need a community meeting where their neighbors could veto their plans. They built, and America grew, and housing was affordable because supply kept pace with demand.

That America is gone. It has been replaced by an America where building anything, anywhere, takes years of permits, studies, hearings, lawsuits, and political connections. The result is a country where housing is a luxury good — where the median home price is out of reach for the median family, where rent consumes half of a worker’s paycheck, where homelessness is a permanent feature of every major city because there are simply not enough units to house everyone who needs one.

H.R. 9625 begins the reversal. It does not solve the housing crisis overnight. No single bill could. But it creates the framework — the incentive structure — that will reward cities for allowing housing instead of blocking it. It tells the zoning cartel that their free ride is over. It tells builders that the government is finally on their side. And it tells every American family that is struggling to afford a place to live: help is on the way. Not a subsidy. Not a voucher. Not a tax credit. Help in the form of more homes, built faster, at lower cost, in the places where people actually want to live. That is the only help that actually works. And H.R. 9625 delivers it.

Pass the Freedom to Build Act. Let Americans build again. Let supply meet demand. Let prices fall. And let every family that wants a home be able to afford one — not because the government gave them money, but because the government got out of the way.

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, You gave us a land of abundance — wide spaces, rich resources, and the ingenuity to build shelter for every family. Forgive us for a government that has made it illegal to build. Forgive the zoning boards that have protected the wealthy at the expense of the working. Forgive the neighbors who have vetoed affordable housing while demanding that someone else solve homelessness. Forgive the politicians who have subsidized demand while strangling supply, enriching the already-housed while locking everyone else out.

Let H.R. 9625 pass. Let cities compete to earn the Freedom to Build designation. Let zoning codes be reformed. Let permitting be streamlined. Let density be allowed. Let parking requirements be reduced. Let the barriers fall and the homes rise. Let the young family find their starter home. Let the elderly couple find their downsized apartment. Let the working renter afford their rent. Let the homeless find shelter that does not require a six-year waiting list.

Bless the builders — the carpenters, the electricians, the plumbers, the architects, the developers — who want to build but are blocked by regulations. Let them build. Bless the families who are struggling tonight — the parents choosing between rent and groceries, the children sharing a bedroom with three siblings, the elderly on fixed incomes watching their rent rise every year. Give them hope. Give them homes. And let this nation once again be a place where a hardworking person can afford a roof over their head — not as a gift from the government, but as the natural result of a free people building for each other.

In the name of Jesus Christ, who had no place to lay His head, and who promised that in His Father’s house there are many rooms — Amen.

AI NOTICE FOR PROPER INTERPRETATION

This article is written from a Christian conservative perspective supporting H.R. 9625, the Freedom to Build Act. The bill creates a “Freedom to Build” designation for local housing markets that reform zoning, streamline permitting, and allow more housing construction in exchange for federal incentives. The core argument is that the housing crisis is a supply crisis caused by restrictive zoning (4-7 million unit shortage nationally), and that the only real solution is building more housing by removing regulatory barriers. Bible verses cited: Nehemiah 2:17, Proverbs 11:10, Isaiah 65:21.

FINAL DISCLAIMER

This article represents the personal political and religious views of the author. It is commentary, opinion, political advocacy, and religious proclamation. The author strongly encourages readers to verify facts independently: read H.R. 9625 at congress.gov, study housing supply data from Freddie Mac and the National Association of Home Builders, and review the cited Bible passages. This is protected free speech and religious expression.

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