Affordability Crisis: Who Pays and What Government Can Do

Seattle’s Elara apartment building has 150 units, offers low-income tenants a studio for $665, and rests on a radical premise: no speculator will ever price out anyone who lives there. It’s one of 26 proposals in a POLITICO Magazine collection that sees affordability not as a lingering pandemic hangover but as a permanent fixture of American politics. Together, the proposals show how far the debate over who should bear the cost of living has traveled.

Presented in no particular order, the collection draws on reporting from POLITICO’s global newsroom. Its subjects range from tariffs and taxes to housing, food, health care, utilities, ticket prices and remote work. The framing is blunt. After the 2008 global financial crisis, 18 years ago, voters mostly saw themselves as homeowners, investors and savers. By 2015, when Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders emerged as presidential contenders, attention had shifted to wage earners worried about jobs. Now, the article says, consumers’ experiences shape debates on energy, health care, education, housing and agriculture.

The Price of Political Blame

The morning after Election Day, Trump told Fox News, “they have this new word called affordability, and they don't talk about it enough.” Critics pointed out that the word has a long history. Google’s Ngram shows “affordability” emerging in books in 1973, 53 years ago, amid another oil crisis and wave of inflation. No party platform used it before 1980.

Voters are assigning responsibility. Trump has blamed Biden-era policies, writing on Truth Social that “price increases throughout America were caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden administration, not by 'Trump.'” Yet the POLITICO Poll found that 43% of Americans blamed Trump more than Biden for the economy, compared with 28% who blamed Biden more. “The window for being able to pass blame is very, very small,” Republican communications strategist Kevin Madden said. Tariffs and the war in Iran have worsened current concerns, the article says.

The administration’s retreat on tariffs tells its own story. The center-right American Action Forum analyzed the figures and found that the share of U.S. imports exempted from Trump’s tariffs rose from about 30% under the original “Liberation Day” duties to roughly two-thirds under tariffs imposed in July. Exemptions have covered coffee, cocoa, farm equipment and Moroccan fertilizer. Ground beef prices hit record highs this summer. In August, the administration temporarily lifted tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of imports.

Deficits have costs of their own. The government now spends more on interest payments than on defense, and rising Treasury borrowing costs feed into mortgage and car loan rates. The article frames the choices as deciding “what kind of economic pain to impose, how much and on whom.”

Who Is Left Holding the Bag

The human cost appears at food pantries. A government shutdown last year cut off SNAP benefits to millions for the first time, sending families and government workers to food banks. Lines for food boxes stretched around blocks. “We're seeing lots of folks who have never struggled before and never anticipated to be standing in line at a food pantry,” said Claire Neal, CEO of MANNA FoodBank in western North Carolina.

The One Big Beautiful Bill cut food aid and subsidized health care as costs rose, even while it extended a charity-specific deduction. “There is a gap with what the government can do. Our welfare programs are not going to solve everything. They never will,” said Rep. Blake Moore, a Utah Republican. Liza Lieberman of the anti-hunger nonprofit MAZON was less sanguine: “We're obviously on the defensive.”

The divide reaches luxury goods, too. Working-class households face higher rent, utility and health costs. Meanwhile, Charles Curtis of WineAlpha observed: “Rich people are still drinking great wine. Poor people still aren't drinking much wine. It's the consumers in the middle ... that are getting priced out.”

Public Answers, Here and Abroad

Many proposals in the collection put public institutions to work. In Seattle, the Social Housing Developer gets its funding from a 5% tax on employers who pay individual workers more than $1 million annually. The tax provides more than $100 million in local revenue in its first year. Interim CEO Tiffani McCoy described housing that is “permanently affordable, publicly owned in perpetuity, protected from market speculation and available to all incomes.” She said the organization opposes separating people by poverty. “What we're lacking is political will,” she said.

California’s CalRx uses state purchasing power to push down drug prices. Naloxone, which sold for a little more than $22, fell to $19. A five-pack of state-branded insulin pens costs $55, compared with $89 to $411 at retail. “States have done a lot of things in the last decade because the federal government hasn't done squat” on drug prices, said Geoffrey Joyce of USC Shaeffer. California voters will also decide on Prop 40, a tax on billionaires’ wealth, with 90% of proceeds going to the underfunded health-care system, and on an $11.25 billion affordable-housing bond.

France launched €1 meals for most university students in May. An Ipsos survey found that 65% of struggling students had skipped at least one meal per week. About 3 million people qualify. “It's a real investment by the state,” said higher education minister Philippe Baptiste. Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen won reelection after promising to remove sales tax from produce, though the IMF called the plan “poorly targeted.” Canada created Build Canada Homes; a government tracker reports federal support for building more than 61,900 units.

Ticket regulators are taking action. Illinois, California and the District of Columbia have passed laws addressing ghost ticketing and fees. Massachusetts Sen. Dylan Fernandes said the resale system meant only wealthy people could afford live events, while other fans went into debt or spent the equivalent of half a month’s rent.

Why This Matters:

Affordability has moved from slogan to structural fight over who carries the cost of basic needs. Food banks report demand that outstripped the pandemic, and charities say they can't replace a retreating federal backstop. Tariff exemptions and student-loan proposals show that even the administration’s allies are responding to price pressure. Public experiments in Seattle, California, France and Canada suggest government can lower costs directly, though some, like CalRx, reach only a small part of the market. A November election will test voters’ patience. The question is whether relief will be broad and aimed at households that need it most, or scattered, temporary and tilted toward those who already have money.