Kennedy in the Wall Street Journal: Building our way out of our housing crisis

MADISONVILLE, La. - Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) penned this letter in the Wall Street Journal, urging Congress to pass the Build Now Act so that the Department of Housing and Urban Development can use Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to incentivize cities to build more housing.

Key excerpts are below:

"Mr. [Zohran] Mamdani is duly elected, and it's his prerogative to destroy the Big Apple's housing supply as he sees fit. But it would be stupid for the federal government to continue sending housing development grants to the city while Mr. Mamdani and Ms. [Cea] Weaver are steering the ship.

"Many federal housing programs today, however, fail to hold cities accountable for bad policies."

. . .

"Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and I introduced the Build Now Act to incentivize new home construction by tying each city's CDBG funding to their rate of homebuilding. If a city fails to build more new housing units than the median rate of home construction nationwide, it will lose 10% of its CDBG funding. HUD would then reallocate those funds to cities that exceeded the national median rate of home building. It's a carrot and a stick."

. . .

"The Build Now Act has received bipartisan support in the Senate, but it has yet to receive a vote in the House. President Trump has made the housing crisis a priority. Congress must make it a priority, too.

"Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, and it will fail in New York, too. Mr. Mamdani should face financial consequences when his particular recipe of warm collectivism inevitably results in fewer homes for New Yorkers. The Build Now Act's reduction in CDBG funding may be the push New York needs to embrace the cold, hard truth about socialism and clear the way for more housing."

Read Kennedy's full letter here.