News
Can Harris Really Build 3 Million New Housing Units?
Luke Muir and his wife moved to Phoenix from Louisiana two years ago for a better-paying job. They prepared for higher temperatures and low housing costs. The weather has lived up to their expectations; housing prices have not.
Pretty much since they arrived, Mr. Muir and his family have been trying and failing to find a single-family house for no more than $500,000. The options have been too small, too remote or too much of a fixer-upper.
“I’m like, ‘Wow, I thought this would be a more affordable place to live,’” said Mr. Muir, who is 44 and works in financial services. “It’s not like it’s San Diego or L.A. or some other place that is just known for astronomical prices.”
Across the country, rising prices and rents have become a crisis — eroding family budgets and leading to doubled-up households and multiplying homeless camps. The root of this pain is a decades-old housing shortage.
The remedy proposed by Vice President Kamala Harris is contained in a housing plan that, among other things, calls for the construction of three million new housing units over the next four years — a 50 percent increase over the current pace of building.
Vastly expanding the supply of housing is the only thing economists believe will make a meaningful difference in an affordability crunch. They disagree, however, about whether Ms. Harris’s plan would actually do that. (Economists also agree that former President Donald J. Trump’s housing plan, which aims to free up housing by deporting immigrants, would probably make the housing crisis worse by devastating the construction work force).
Reduced to its essence, Ms. Harris’s plan aims to flood the system with money for builders and buyers in the hope that it will jolt the construction market. It calls on Congress to expand a federal tax credit for subsidized rental housing while creating a new tax credit for developers to build starter homes, and another credit for families looking to rehabilitate their own worn-down housing stock. It also creates a $25,000 credit for first-time home buyers.
Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, who has advised the Harris campaign, called it the most aggressive plan to increase the nation’s housing supply since modern suburbs were built after World War II. And if the numbers were to pencil out as neatly as they do in Ms. Harris’s 82-page economic plan, Mr. Zandi’s superlative would be accurate.
But that “if” creates pause.
Developers in Phoenix and elsewhere are naturally amenable to a federal plan that would reduce their taxes. Many developers said the idea of giving first-time home buyers money, which buyers would then give to them, sounded nice, too.
The question, as ever, is where and how they will build. This is why other economists, such as Ed Pinto at the market-oriented American Enterprise Institute, have said Ms. Harris’s plan would make shortages worse by inflating housing demand (because the home buyer credit would give families more to spend) without doing enough to increase supply.
Over the past half-century, Phoenix grew into one of America’s largest cities by building low-slung neighborhoods further and further outward. That playbook kept housing affordable for a long time, but no longer.
The average price of a home in Maricopa County, which surrounds Phoenix, is now $470,000, up about 50 percent since the pandemic. And that pattern of expansion is resulting in the same problems — congestion, smog, water shortages, sprawl — that many residents moved there from California to escape.
The Arizona Legislature recently passed several laws designed to speed construction and make neighborhoods denser — to build more housing per lot — but it will take more than a few years for that to translate into ramped-up building.
“We can turn 40 acres of cotton field into a subdivision in the blink of an eye,” said Jason Morris, a land use attorney at Withey Morris Baugh in Phoenix. “But that is much easier than trying to do 75 apartments in the middle of a neighborhood.”
Ms. Harris’s plan includes a $40 billion “Local Innovation Fund” that would, among other things, encourage cities to make building faster and easier by cutting the regulations that consume local zoning meetings. But for that to work, cities in Arizona and elsewhere have to want to change how they grow, which so far many are reluctant to do.
Even Mr. Muir, the frustrated home buyer, is leery of neighborhoods becoming too compact. Many of the new developments he sees when he is house-hunting are town-home projects or ones built so closely together that they might as well be apartments, he said.
“It’s baffling that people can reach out their window and touch the neighbor’s wall,” Mr. Muir said.
Would this housing, smaller and tighter, fulfill the American dream of people like Mr. Muir?
The solution to the country’s housing shortage will almost certainly require some sort of federal program — one that may be tough to get through Congress. But for a rush of money to work, cities and states also have to want it.
Ms. Harris’s main challenge will be convincing them to build. And then persuading Americans to be happy with it.
new video loaded: What Trump Told Us About the ICE Shooting
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, Nikolay Nikolov and Coleman Lowndes
January 8, 2026
Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.
Today’s top stories
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis woman, yesterday. Multiple observers captured the shooting on video, and community members demanded accountability. Minnesota law enforcement officials and the FBI are investigating the fatal shooting, which the Trump administration says was an act of self-defense. Meanwhile, the mayor has accused the officer of reckless use of power and demanded that ICE get out of Minneapolis.
People demonstrate during a vigil at the site where a woman was shot and killed by an immigration officer earlier in the day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Jan. 7, 2026. An immigration officer in Minneapolis shot dead a woman on Wednesday, triggering outrage from local leaders even as President Trump claimed the officer acted in self-defense. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey deemed the government’s allegation that the woman was attacking federal agents “bullshit,” and called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducting a second day of mass raids to leave Minneapolis.
Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images
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Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images
- 🎧 Caitlin Callenson recorded the shooting and says officers gave Good multiple conflicting instructions while she was in her vehicle. Callenson says Good was already unresponsive when officers pulled her from the car. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claims the officer was struck by the vehicle and acted in self-defense. In the video NPR reviewed, the officer doesn’t seem to be hit and was seen walking after he fired the shots, NPR’s Meg Anderson tells Up First. Anderson says it has been mostly peaceful in Minneapolis, but there is a lot of anger and tension because protesters want ICE out of the city.
U.S. forces yesterday seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the north Atlantic between Iceland and Britain after a two-week chase. The tanker was originally headed to Venezuela, but it changed course to avoid the U.S. ships. This action comes as the Trump administration begins releasing new information about its plans for Venezuela’s oil industry.
- 🎧 It has been a dramatic week for U.S. operations in Venezuela, NPR’s Greg Myre says, prompting critics to ask if a real plan for the road ahead exists. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded that the U.S. does have a strategy to stabilize Venezuela, and much of it seems to involve oil. Rubio said the U.S. would take control of up to 50 million barrels of oil from the country. Myre says the Trump administration appears to have a multipronged strategy that involves taking over the country’s oil, selling it on the world market and pressuring U.S. oil companies to enter Venezuela.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released new dietary guidelines for Americans yesterday that focus on promoting whole foods, proteins and healthy fats. The guidance, which he says aims to “revolutionize our food culture,” comes with a new food pyramid, which replaces the current MyPlate symbol.
- 🎧 “I’m very disappointed in the new pyramid,” Christopher Gardner, a nutrition expert who was on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, tells NPR’s Allison Aubrey. Gardner says the new food structure, which features red meat and saturated fats at the top, contradicts decades of evidence and research. Poor eating habits and the standard American diet are widely considered to cause chronic disease. Aubrey says the new guidelines alone won’t change people’s eating habits, but they will be highly influential. This guidance will shape the offerings in school meals and on military bases, and determine what’s allowed in federal nutrition programs.
Special series
Trump has tried to bury the truth of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. NPR built a visual archive of the attack on the Capitol, showing exactly what happened through the lenses of the people who were there. “Chapter 4: The investigation” shows how federal investigators found the rioters and built the largest criminal case in U.S. history.
Political leaders, including Trump, called for rioters to face justice for their actions on Jan. 6. This request came because so few people were arrested during the attack. The extremists who led the riot remained free, and some threatened further violence. The government launched the largest federal investigation in American history, resulting in the arrest of over 1,500 individuals from all 50 states. The most serious cases were made by prosecutors against leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. For their roles in planning the attack against the U.S., some extremists were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Take a look at the Jan. 6 prosecutions by the numbers, including the highest sentence received.
To learn more, explore NPR’s database of federal criminal cases from Jan. 6. You can also see more of NPR’s reporting on the topic.
Deep dive
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Trump takes 325 milligrams of daily aspirin, which is four times the recommended 81 milligrams of low-dose aspirin used for cardiovascular disease prevention. The president revealed this detail in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published last week. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that anyone over 60 not start a daily dose of aspirin to prevent cardiovascular disease if they don’t already have an underlying problem. The group said it’s reasonable to stop preventive aspirin in people already taking it around age 75 years. Trump is 79. This is what you should know about aspirin and cardiac health:
- 💊 Doctors often prescribe the low dose of aspirin because there’s no benefit to taking a higher dose, according to a large study published in 2021.
- 💊 Some people, including adults who have undergone heart bypass surgery and those who have had a heart attack, should take the advised dose of the drug for their entire life.
- 💊 While safer than other blood thinners, the drug — even at low doses — raises the risk of bleeding in the stomach and brain. But these adverse events are unlikely to cause death.
3 things to know before you go
When an ant pupa has a deadly, incurable infection, it sends out a signal that tells worker ants to unpack it from its cocoon and disinfect it, a process that results in its death.
Christopher D. Pull/ISTA
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Christopher D. Pull/ISTA
- Young, terminally ill ants will send out an altruistic “kill me” signal to worker ants, according to a study in the journal Nature Communications. With this strategy, the sick ants sacrifice themselves for the good of their colony.
- In this week’s Far-Flung Postcards series, you can spot a real, lone California sequoia tree in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris. Napoleon III transformed the park from a former landfill into one of the French capital’s greenest escapes.
- The ACLU and several authors have sued Utah over its “sensitive materials” book law, which has now banned 22 books in K-12 schools. Among the books on the ban list are The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. (via KUER)
This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.
new video loaded: Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting
transcript
transcript
Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting
Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota slammed the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent. President Trump said that the agents had acted in self-defense.
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This morning, we learned that an ICE officer shot and killed someone in Minneapolis. We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday, I said exactly that. What we’re seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines and conflict. It’s governing by reality TV. And today, that recklessness cost someone their life.
By Jiawei Wang
January 8, 2026
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Video: Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting
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