The American Dream isn't dead. It's blocked. Build the Dream is fighting to unblock it.
Bozeman, Montana
Joined March 2026
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Half of Americans are struggling to pay rent or their mortgage. Two-thirds of Gen Z can't afford a place to live. Since 1960, the share of income crushed by housing costs has doubled.
Here's what actually happened.
Build The Dream retweeted
The conservative case for statewide minimum lot size reform from Montana Governor Greg Gianforte (R).
🚨Breaking Housing News 🚨
The price of houses is the main issue. We are in an affordability crisis because we are in an affordable home shortage.
And your town's mayor probably knows it too.
96% of mayors surveyed say housing costs are driving the affordability crisis.
Their answer, in the conference’s own words, is that it “requires strong federal partnership to fix.”
But mayors write the zoning code. They decide what gets built, where, and how big.
If housing is the problem, why are we waiting on Washington?
Link in the replies.
If you missed the 🚨Breaking News from the @WhiteHouse : President Trump’s new housing executive order helps you pay for a home. It does very little to get more homes built.
Here’s the good, the risky, and what’s missing.
The good: a pilot to cancel mortgage insurance once you have enough equity. Cheaper alternatives to title insurance on refinances. The order also directs USDA and VA to lower interest rates on their home loans. And there’s a new federal task force on factory-built homes, which could add real supply because modern manufacturing can build a quality home for a lot less.
The risky: cheaper financing with the same number of homes just bids up prices. And canceling mortgage insurance sooner leaves buyers with thin equity exposed if prices fall.
What’s missing: we’re millions of homes short because it’s illegal to build them, especially in the sizes people can afford. The real bottleneck is local. Zoning, minimum lot sizes, and permitting delays.
Easy money doesn’t fix a shortage. More homes do.
If we want prices to fall, we have to make it legal to build again, starting in your town.
President Trump just signed an executive order to make homes more affordable.
The good, the bad, and whether it will actually work.
Think you actually own your property?
Manvel, Texas has grown nearly 5x. Then rejected building 1,200 more homes.
Your city is probably doing this too. Here’s what happened.
Manvel, Texas grew from about 5,000 people to 23,000. City council members recently rejected 1,200 more homes to keep the area rural. The land is zoned for one home per acre.
The mayor says taxpayers have been paying incentives for a lot of Manvel’s development over the last 20 years, and that has to stop.
End the subsidies. End the bans. End the BS.
Link in the replies.
Market rents have stalled. About 2,200 subsidized apartments are sitting empty. And that’s just in Portland. The Wall Street Journal calls it a mess. Here’s what it actually shows.
Think housing costs too much?
Whitefish, Montana just voted down a zone that would have allowed townhomes, cottages, and tiny homes on lots as small as 2,400 square feet.
The city’s own planning director called it small, affordable housing.
Last week the city council voted it down, 3 to 1.
Why? Because someone might build too big of a house on one of those lots.
Your right to build a modest home on your own land shouldn’t depend on what a neighbor might build on theirs.
Rent too high? Starter homes out of reach? This is one of the votes behind it.
And most people never hear about it.
100 years of the same fix. Every new problem gets the same answer: bigger government.
So what if we tried the Calvin Coolidge thing? Roll back the size, scope, and power of the federal government for a little while and see how it works.
Would you try it?
From our Open Mind Open Mic with @sfliberty .
Build The Dream retweeted
The fact that fire code is mostly based on vibes and for convenience/preference of fire fighters is endlessly frustrating.
Everyone is prone to bias and personal convenience. It’s why policy should be planned transparently, with a holistic perspective, and regularly revisited.
In the case of fire and building codes (so NFPA and ICC) the process is none of these and it’s created a self-serving feedback loop amongst a tiny group with no public accountability. Outsourcing our codes to private monopolies was a terrible choice.
If you’re not familiar with check int the ICC voting structure. It’s like the senate on steroids.
There’s a way to make homes affordable again.
And it’s already in front of us. But a lot of cities make it hard to do.
Builders started about 943,000 single-family homes last year.
What if there was the option for a
second unit? A separate entrance and its own kitchen.
A place for a parent, a grown kid, or a
renter who helps cover the mortgage.
It could add up to nearly a million homes a year.
The city shouldn’t be able to say no.
Op-ed from Eric Osth at CNU in the replies.
Our newest episode with Larry Sharpe is out now.
New York used to be the place you went to become somebody. Now a lot of people leave to do it.
We sat down with @LarrySharpe to talk about why rent is so high in New York and what a rent freeze really does.
