Young Americans are being priced out of the basic promise of owning a home, and the numbers prove it: first-time buyers have collapsed to historic lows as housing costs, interest rates, and years of bad policy stack up against them. This isn’t a natural disaster; it’s the predictable outcome of a market distorted by misguided incentives, regulatory chokeholds, and leaders who refuse to build. Conservatives have been warning that when you restrict supply and inflate costs you get fewer homeowners and more renters—exactly what we’re seeing today.
Ben Shapiro’s blunt assessment on the point landed for a reason: you can’t promise people a home in every zip code if the economic fundamentals don’t support it. He pushed back on the entitlement narrative and reminded viewers that mobility and opportunity—not demand for immobility—built this country’s prosperity. That line stings liberals because it exposes the uncomfortable truth: if your town has no jobs and no housing growth, the answer is to create opportunity, not demand a bailout from taxpayers.
The finger should be pointed squarely at policy choices that made this worse. As Vice President J.D. Vance argued, massive influxes of people combined with chronic underbuilding have tightened markets and raised prices, while local zoning and permitting rules strangle new construction. Throw in inflation, punitive regulations, and years of interest-rate volatility, and you get a housing ladder with most rungs missing for young families.
Meanwhile, reality checks arrive in the data: far more young adults are back in their childhood homes and many are abandoning starter-home dreams for stock trading or long-term renting because ownership is simply out of reach. That trend is not a lifestyle choice so much as a forced retreat from a system that no longer rewards saving and work the way it used to. Conservatives see this as both an economic failure and a cultural one—our institutions should be lifting families into independence, not keeping them dependent.
If we want Gen Z to own homes again, we need real reforms: loosen destructive zoning, speed permitting, unleash private builders, and consider pragmatic financing reforms that expand options without nationalizing markets. Ideas like making mortgages more portable or offering longer-term fixed options deserve discussion, but the central move must be to let builders build and markets clear—something conservatives have championed for decades. The young people who still believe in the American dream deserve honest solutions, not finger-pointing or more government experiments.
This isn’t a time for hand-wringing or hollow sympathy; it’s a time for policy courage and common-sense reform. Conservatives should double down on freeing supply, restoring fiscal sanity, and protecting the institutions that encourage saving and family formation. If we restore the incentives that made homeownership possible for earlier generations, Gen Z can still inherit the American dream—if we have the backbone to fight for it.
