The Biden administration on Monday announced a plan aimed at increasing housing availability and lowering costs for renters and homeowners.

The White House released the “Housing Supply Action Plan,” which would include legislative and administrative actions that the administration said would help close America’s housing supply shortfall in 5 years.

The plan will start by creating and preserving hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units in the next three years, the release added.

“When aligned with other policies to reduce housing costs and ensure affordability, such as rental assistance and downpayment assistance, closing the gap will mean more affordable rents and more attainable homeownership for Americans in every community,” the release said.

“This is the most comprehensive all of government effort to close the housing supply shortfall in history.”

The announcement said the administration would:

  • Reward jurisdictions that have reformed zoning and land-use policies with higher scores in certain federal grant processes.
  • Deploy new financing mechanisms to build and preserve more housing where financing gaps currently exist.
  • Expand and improve existing forms of federal financing, including for affordable multifamily development and preservation.
  • Ensure that more government-owned supply of homes and other housing goes to owners who will live in them – or non-profits who will rehab them – not large institutional investors.
  • Work with the private sector to address supply chain challenges and improve building techniques to finish construction in 2022 on the most new homes in any year since 2006.

“As his Action Plan reflects, President Biden believes the best thing we can do to ease the burden of housing costs is to boost the supply of quality housing,” the release said. “This means building more new homes and preserving existing federally-supported and market-rate affordable housing, ensuring that total new units do not merely replace converted or dilapidated units that get demolished.”

The announcement said Biden continued to urge Congress to pass investments in housing production and preservation.

The White House urged lawmakers to pass Biden’s “Unlocking Possibilities Program,” which was passed last year by the House and would establish a new $1.75 billion grant program through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Congress also was encouraged to pass Biden’s 2023 budget, which includes a proposal for $10 billion in HUD grants to increase accessibility to affordable housing.