U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) spending appears to have no effect on lowing housing prices, according to a recent report by government spending watchdog OpenTheBooks.com, which analyzed data released by the U.S. Census Bureau and Federal Housing Finance Agency from 2015 to 2024. Additionally, the data suggests it that homeownership has become harder to attain in nearly every state regardless of partisan lean.
“Americans are rightly focused on affordability issues on the heels of years of historic inflation and new pressure on energy prices. Those macroeconomic factors have put homebuying out of reach for many Americans,” a spokesperson for OpenTheBooks.com told the DCNF.
The report defines the disparity between the change in house prices and the change in household income as the “affordability gap.”
The average affordability gap across all 50 states was 42.67%, whereas the 2024 Presidential Election’s seven battleground states averaged 54.77% — with Pennsylvania being the outlier at 34.79%.
However, housing affordability is not affected by whether one lives in a “red” or “blue” state, the data suggests.
The ten states with the widest gap were: Idaho (83.33%), Florida (77.19%), Utah (69.06%), Tennessee (66.15%), Arizona (65.47%), New Hampshire (65.36%), Nevada (65.25%), Maine (62.26%), Rhode Island (61.73%), and Washington (60.51%).
Meanwhile, the ten with the narrowest were: Louisiana (6.62%), West Virginia (9.93%), North Dakota (13.15%), Mississippi (16.11%), Alaska (18.75%), Illinois (20.51%), Maryland (23.48%), Iowa (25.89%), California (27.22%), Hawaii (29.16%), and Delaware (29.46%).
The HUD did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
HUD spending did not appear to affect it affordability either, per the report.