As millions struggle with home prices, housing becomes a top issue for voters

Melissa Williams says she did everything right. She has a college degree, a decent income working in accounting and no debt.

Williams, who’s 38, expected to be a homeownerby now. But when she started looking at houses in 2022, she found she just couldn’t compete with the sudden influx of people moving to her part of rural North Carolina to work remotely.

“I would call the day it went on the market, she says, “and the real estate agent would tell me, ‘Yeah, I can show you that property. But just so you know, it's already got two cash offers on it.’ ”

That same year is also when mortgage interest rates shot up — and they remain around 7%, adding hundreds of dollars to a typical monthly house payment. So Williams gave up buying and resorted to renting, only to find that those costs had also skyrocketed. “Now, you can't even get, like, a rundown trailer in a not very good area for less than $1,000 a month,” she says.

Williams says something has to change, and she’s frustrated that she doesn’t hear more solutions from either President Biden or former President Trump as the November election looms.

Housing policy and funding is largely a local issue. But across the U.S., including in swing states, persistent record high costs have bumped it to a front-burnerissue for many voters, in a presidential campaign where affordability in general is a major theme. Last month, housing was second only to inflation in a Gallup survey of Americans’ financial worries. In a Harvard poll of 18- to 29 year olds this spring, housing ranked as the third-most important issue overall, after inflation and health care.

“This crisis is big,” says Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project. And while there’s no silver bullet,