Affordable living shouldn't be a luxury.
That shouldn't be a controversial statement. If you work hard, pay your bills, and do the right things, you should be able to build a stable life. You should be able to afford rent. You should be able to save for a home. You should be able to pay your electric bill without feeling like you're being punished for existing.
That's the American Dream I was brought up believing in.
But for too many people, especially our young people, that dream is dead.
This isn't just about housing. It's about rent, utilities, groceries, healthcare, taxes, wages, transportation, and the basic cost of staying alive. People are working full-time and still falling behind. Couples are making what used to be considered good money and still being priced out. Young people are looking at the future and wondering if home ownership is even realistic anymore.
Back in 2024, before AI took me out of my tech job and I returned to the restaurant life, my partner and I made about $140,000 together. I want to be clear: that is a lot of money, and we're fortunate to have earned it. We saved as much as we could. We did what people are told to do. We worked, budgeted, planned, and tried to make a responsible decision.
And even then, somehow, we were priced out of most of the state. That's insane.
There's absolutely no shame in living in Woonsocket, Pawtucket, Central Falls, or any other working-class community. I've lived in Woonsocket for seven years, and it's full of good people, families, workers, immigrants, small businesses, and real life. But if a responsible working couple can be priced out of most of Providence and many middle-class communities, something's deeply broken.
That's not a personal failure. That's a system failure.
Building More Housing
We need to build more housing. That part is simple. If demand keeps rising and supply doesn't keep up, prices go up. We need more homes, more apartments, more starter homes, more mixed-use development, and more realistic zoning that allows communities to grow.
But building alone isn't enough.
We also need to deal with the people and institutions who are treating housing like a casino chip instead of a place for human beings to live.
Major landlords with large numbers of vacant units should face penalties. If a large landlord is sitting on a high percentage of empty apartments while rents are crushing working families, that should come with a cost. We all know certain landowners in Rhode Island are sitting on empty units on purpose. Housing shouldn't be deliberately withheld from the market to protect higher prices.
We should also bar private companies owned by public companies, all the way up the ownership chain, from owning single-family homes. Regular people shouldn't have to compete with Wall Street-backed buyers for starter homes. A family trying to buy its first house shouldn't be bidding against a corporation using investor money, algorithms, and cash offers.
That doesn't mean every landlord is bad. Private companies and investors are still going to own apartment buildings. Some people are still going to own multiple homes. That's fine. That's how housing used to look in the 90s. There's a difference between normal property ownership and a financialized housing market where homes are treated like assets first and shelter second.
We need to bring that balance back.
Flipping Licenses and Building Conversions
I also support creating a flipping license with tax incentives for people who want to renovate and resell houses. Done properly, flipping can improve neglected homes and bring more usable housing onto the market. A licensed flipper could receive reduced taxes and other benefits if they renovate a home and sell it below a defined affordable price threshold. The goal should be simple: reward people who improve the housing supply while creating a real incentive to keep renovated homes within reach for working buyers.
Where it makes financial sense, we should also convert vacant commercial buildings into housing. But we should be honest about that too. Not every office building can easily become apartments. The plumbing, electrical systems, ventilation, kitchens, bathrooms, and layouts weren't built for hundreds of people living there. Some conversions make sense. Some don't. Policy should be practical, not just a slogan.
Utilities and Energy Costs
We also need to talk about utilities. State laws and regulations have allowed utility costs to become too high. People are already struggling to pay rent, only to open electric and gas bills that feel like a second rent payment. And while most politicians pretend foreign policy is separate from affordability, it isn't. Energy markets, oil prices, LNG production, sanctions, wars, and instability overseas all affect what Americans pay at home.
Affordability isn't just about the price of housing itself. It's about the total cost of living inside that home.
Protecting American Homebuyers
Washington has failed here too. Foreign buyers, foreign companies, global corporations, and Wall Street-backed investors shouldn't be allowed to buy up single-family homes while regular American families are struggling to find a place to live. Housing policy should put citizens and working families first. If that bothers investors, too bad.
We also need new tools to help regular people access home ownership. One idea worth revisiting is postal banking. The United States Postal Service used to offer banking services, and we should look at bringing that back in a modern way.
Postal banking could bring back basic savings accounts while also offering low-cost financial services, credit-building tools, and first-time homebuyer assistance through an institution that already exists in nearly every community. That doesn't mean turning the Postal Service into Wall Street. It means using a public institution to help working people save money, avoid predatory lenders, build credit, and eventually buy a home.
Tax Relief for Working People
Affordability also means tax relief. If someone is making $50,000 a year, the federal government shouldn't be treating them like a cash machine. We should seriously consider no federal income tax on the first $50,000 of income for working people. The amount of revenue collected from lower- and modest-income workers is small compared to the pressure those taxes put on their lives. Let people keep more of what they earn so they can survive, save, and build.
The point of an economy shouldn't be to keep people exhausted.
We should work to live, not live to work.
A decent life shouldn't require two jobs and a side hustle, constant stress, maxed-out credit cards, delayed healthcare, and the hope that nothing goes wrong. People should be able to afford a home, raise a family, pay their bills, take a vacation once in a while, and still have something left over.
That used to be the promise. Now, for too many Americans, it feels like a joke.
Creating affordable living means being honest about what broke. It means building more housing, stopping corporations from hoarding homes, punishing large-scale vacancy, lowering utility costs, helping first-time buyers, reducing taxes on working people, and treating housing as shelter first, not just an investment vehicle.
This country has enough money, land, talent, and resources to make life affordable again. What we lack is a government willing to put regular people ahead of corporations, investors, lobbyists, and excuses.
We should work to live, not live to work. That has to be the promise again.