What’s Driving America’s Affordability Crisis—and What to Do About It

City Journal’s Affordability Agenda offers clear explanations of what’s driving America’s cost-of-living crisis—along with concrete, implementable reforms. Accessible and rigorous, it’s the fastest way to understand the cost problem and the solutions that could make America affordable again.

Policy areas covered include:

Crime: Wrongdoing isn’t cheap—its total costs are estimated at $290 billion annually. Until crime is brought under control, affordability is just a word.

Energy: Residential electricity rates have jumped up 27% nationally from 2019 to 2024. Environmental mandates at the state and federal levels drive much of the increase.

Health care: Health insurance is more expensive because Americans are consuming more, and costlier, medical services—a trend that will be hard to reverse. But policymakers should focus on reducing costs, not usage, through smart reforms.

Education: Student debt totals $1.7 trillion. Making higher education less expensive includes expanding alternatives to it.

Taxes: We should cut sales taxes, or at least draw public attention to their role as a stealth driver of price increases.

Housing: State and local land-use restrictions have constrained supply and driven up prices. Rolling back these barriers is essential to restoring affordability.

Business: New York City needs to stop wielding regulations, delays, fines, fees, wage mandates, and hiring restrictions as weapons against private enterprise.

Groceries: We could reduce grocery prices by ending the Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires refiners to blend plant-based biofuels into nearly every gallon of gasoline and diesel sold in the U.S. The policy inflates the prices of wholesale corn and soybeans, major food ingredients whose cost affects grocery bills.

Dining: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani should preserve the tipped-wage credit system and refrain from imposing additional requirements on restaurants and food-delivery services.

Cities: Instead of suppressing the market, city governments should make room for abundant job opportunities and new housing options.

You can also listen to the authors discuss these ideas on our City Journal podcast.

City Journal Affordability Roundtable (Part 1): The Hidden Impact of Sales Tax

Affordability Roundtable (Part 2): The Hidden Costs of College and Food Delivery