According to HousingWire, a broad coalition of real estate companies, homebuilders, nonprofits and industry groups has launched a campaign called Let America Build to push for local zoning and permitting reforms. The group includes major players like Zillow, Realtor.com, the National Association of Home Builders, and various equity-focused real estate organizations. Their timing coincides with communities beginning to implement the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which is bipartisan legislation designed to give states and local governments new tools and flexibility for increasing housing supply.
The coalition is focused on a core message: we need to build significantly more homes to address the nation's housing shortage. Research cited in the campaign points to a supply gap of over 4 million homes, a deficit that has helped drive up both home prices and rents substantially. The campaign plans to highlight examples of successful local policy changes and educate communities about how zoning decisions, permitting processes, housing types and construction choices directly affect how many homes can actually get built.
The cost of regulations is another major focus for the campaign. According to estimates from the National Association of Home Builders, government regulations, taxes and fees add more than a quarter of the price onto new single-family homes. This regulatory burden represents a real barrier to affordability and feasibility for builders. Additionally, research from Zillow suggests that if developers could build on the more than 300,000 small vacant lots currently listed for sale, it could meaningfully reduce the national housing shortage, pointing to infill development and zoning flexibility as practical near-term opportunities.
What stands out is that this campaign represents something unusual in housing policy: genuine cross-industry unity on production-oriented solutions. Historically, zoning and local land use have been politically sensitive topics handled at the community level, but housing professionals are increasingly recognizing that permitting timelines, zoning codes and density rules are central to market health and affordability. The campaign emphasizes education and community awareness rather than electoral politics, positioning itself as the implementation phase following the ROAD to Housing Act's passage.
What I am seeing locally in the Bay Area and East Bay is that this message about regulatory costs and zoning barriers resonates deeply with what our sellers and buyers experience every day. Our region has some of the most restrictive zoning codes in the country, and that constraint is fundamental to why housing remains so expensive even when market conditions shift. If local communities here can embrace some of the reforms this coalition is advocating for, we could see real change in inventory availability and, eventually, greater opportunity for people trying to build lives in communities they care about.
