Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks with construction workers in midtown Manhattan on April 25, 2024, in New York City. Photo by Yuki Iwamura | Associated Press / File
Can Trump make housing great again?
I haven’t the foggiest idea. But wouldn’t it be better to see our mad emperor channel some of that maniacal energy into spurring the construction of millions of new homes and apartments?
It certainly beats having him launch some hare-brained foreign adventure like invading Greenland or dropping Delta Force on the North Pole to shake down Santa.
In quest of ratings at call costs, Trump is the first reality TV president, having learned all the tricks of the trade with his hit show, “The Apprentice.”
So it is easy to forget Trump is also the first developer to serve as president.
His first Trump Tower in the 1980s launched a global luxury housing brand, while catapulting Trump from builder to a marketeer and aspiring celebrity.
Yet Trump’s father amassed a fortune building the kind of housing we so sorely lack today, not just in hard-to-build in blue-metro markets like Greater Boston, but across the country – albeit while attracting allegations of racial discrimination.
Our First Developer President
Fred C. Trump, was a “master builder” who, during the decades after World War II, “helped change the face of Brooklyn and Queens,” noted a New York Times obituary when the current president’s father died in 1999.
The elder Trump built “thousands of homes for the middle class in plain but sturdy brick rental towers, clustered together in immaculately groomed parks,” the Times wrote.
His son, Donald, got his start in the megadevelopment world in large part through the more than $400 million he received from his father and the family business, the Times later reported.
From his father and his own career, Trump also learned how to get plans and projects approved and built in one of the toughest construction and real estate markets in the country.
Trump’s bulldozing of any rule, regulation or institution that gets in the way of his particular fancy or goal of the moment likely stems in no small part from tactics and lessons learned in the rough-and-tumble world of New York development.
All of which brings us to one of the strangest facets of Trump’s very strange presidency.
Trump’s Current Housing Ideas Don’t Work
Despite his well-earned reputation as a hard-nosed developer, Trump failed to deliver on grand promises during his first term that he’d engage in massive rebuilding of our nation’s ailing infrastructure.
Now, in his second go at the presidency, Trump has belatedly begun to talk of plans for tackling an increasingly dire housing crisis that has driven up prices and rents across the country.
Yet he’s embraced it with all the enthusiasm of someone facing a root canal.
It seems pretty clear that it is meant to be a countermove, likely forced on Trump by advisors, to the emerging Democratic “affordability agenda” that led to big victories in races last fall in New York City, New Jersey, and Virginia.
Trump’s plan to make housing great again? So far, that consists of attempting to ban investors from buying single-family homes and having the federal government buy $200 billion in mortgage securities in hopes that it will push down mortgage rates this spring, at a time when he’s facing some of his lowest approval numbers ever.
It would seem like Trump could have stolen the first idea from New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, with whom he has an odd, hate/love relationship.
The second proposal, even if it were to work, would stimulate more demand for housing, which isn’t what is lacking right now, economists say.
One Idea He Should Embrace
What’s lacking is supply, with the country in need of 4 million new homes – above and beyond the housing currently being built – to address a shortage that has been building over two decades, CBS News reported last week, citing an October 2025 estimate from Goldman Sachs.
One thing Trump could do is throw his support behind a bipartisan effort in Congress aimed at slashing red tape and providing incentives to unshackle housing production
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has teamed up with Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, on a bill to boost housing construction.
The Build Now Act would tie federal funding to cities and towns to the rate of housing development.
Scott Van Voorhis
She’s also backing another bipartisan bill that would provide incentives to encourage local officials around the country to streamline onerous zoning rules that so often restrict or block efforts to build new housing.
Warren took a call from Trump last week. The outreach came after Warren, a leader of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, blasted the president in a speech that blamed him for rising costs.
In a press release, Warren noted she had mentioned the bill to the president, along with proposals aimed at reducing other costs for families as well.
The release did not mention Trump’s reaction – whether he expressed any interest or any support. The Hill, a newspaper for Congressional insiders, said “a Whtie House official” described the call as “productive.”
Trump surely understands how local zoning and other regulations block projects and drive up costs.
It’s too bad he seems so hesitant, even reluctant, to take on the issue, which he likely senses is not a winner when it comes to his quirky and volatile MAGA base.
Still, if Trump is going to run roughshod over all manner of laws, rules and traditions, it would be much better to have him attempting to bulldoze local zoning rules.
I’d take that any day over having to wake up some morning to find out we just invaded Canada.
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist and publisher of the Contrarian Boston newsletter; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
