The housing crisis delivers a one-two punch to millions of American families: first in the unaffordable rents and mortgages, then in the brutal commutes from the homes they’re forced to accept.
Housing and transportation together consume nearly half of the typical household budget, yet Washington continues to treat them as separate problems. This year’s surface transportation reauthorization offers Congress a rare chance to tackle both issues simultaneously.
Surface transportation infrastructure — our roads, bridges and rails — serves many purposes, from moving freight between regions, to enabling the classic American road trip. But its most critical function is connection to daily opportunities within metro areas — linking workers to opportunity, employers to talent, consumers to services, and friends and family to each other.
Expanding access to opportunity will require both building new transportation infrastructure and allowing people to live nearby. Growing regions need infrastructure capacity to absorb new residents, whether supporting new housing in existing neighborhoods or bringing new areas within reach of opportunity. Yet local governments frequently limit housing near transportation that federal taxpayers just funded.
Federal transportation dollars should reward the jurisdictions that allow property owners to build. They should not subsidize places that restrict growth with onerous regulations. Transportation policy cannot be separated from housing policy — the surface transportation bill must tackle both.
Congress can act on three fronts. First, reward housing growth with transportation money. The portion of federal transportation dollars that flow to urban areas are there to help the local governments deal with common growing pains. These dollars should flow to places that foster economic growth and opportunity for young families. For over a decade now, we’ve allocated tens of billions of dollars annually based on formulas that are now almost two decades out of date. Congress should update the formulas to benefit the states and urbanized areas that need the most help: those allowing new housing production and population growth.
States like Texas and Utah are leading the nation in housing production — the Dallas metropolitan area alone permitted more housing than all of California did in multiple months in 2024. These places are letting the housing market work, and it is helping families find housing. They should receive the transportation funding necessary to support that growth.
Another good step is the bipartisan “Build More Housing Near Transit” legislation, introduced in both chambers by Reps. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), and Blake Moore (R-Utah), Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.) as part of this year’s Surface Transportation Reauthorization package.
Federal investments in public transit capital projects represent billions in taxpayer dollars. When executed effectively, they create a supportive relationship between a community and new housing development. This legislation would boost the scoring for discretionary transit capital grants when local regulations allow more housing near transit, and streamline permitting procedures for multifamily housing to make it more efficient to build.
Transit investments are uniquely suited to both support and themselves benefit from increased infill housing growth. Transit systems lower travel times and increase access for more people as frequencies increase and additional ridership makes the service more financially sustainable. Local jurisdictions shouldn’t be rewarded with federal money for transit investments if they will undermine this dynamic by restricting the property rights of nearby would-be home builders.
Second, Congress can encourage data-driven project prioritization, requiring that states set up scoring systems for all transportation projects justified as promoting intra-regional transportation. Expanding on a technical assistance pilot, projects could be scored on a number of factors including how much they increase access to jobs and opportunities. Other factors could be left up to state discretion, as long as the final score is normalized by cost.
This transparency measure would give taxpayers clarity into whether projects deliver value for money, while not dictating outcomes. States would remain free to select lower-scoring projects, but those decisions would now be publicly visible and definable.