The Long Council

Who was selected, and why

How to solve the housing crisis in the US?

The panel · 17 June 2026 · 1 voices

The central tension

Whether the housing shortage is best solved by removing regulatory barriers so markets can build freely (supply liberalization pole), or whether market mechanisms alone will not produce affordable, well-located, or equitably distributed housing and therefore require active state coordination of supply, finance, and tenant protection (state-directed/social good pole). --- **Framing note on the live tension:** The debate has moved past the old binary of "markets vs. rent control." The live disagreement among serious analysts in 2026 is between those who argue that zoning deregulation and density liberalization (as attempted in AB 2011 and Texas reforms) is sufficient to close the deficit if pursued aggressively, and those who argue that deregulation alone cannot produce affordable units at scale because land markets, credit conditions (7%+ mortgage rates), and developer incentives make market-rate construction insufficient without public subsidy, land value capture, or social housing. Both poles are represented at this table.

Selected members

1. Milton Friedman

Free MarketsIndividual LibertyLimited Government

Will argue: Zoning and land-use regulation are the primary causes of the housing shortage; the state and local regulatory apparatus functions as a cartel protecting existing property owners; deregulation of density, permitting, and land use — as California's AB 2011 attempts — is the core solution, and any demand-side subsidies without supply liberalization will simply inflate prices further. **2. Friedrich Hayek**

The housing deficit is in large part a supply problem produced by regulatory barriers to construction — zoning, permitting, density restrictions — and Friedman's framework for how government intervention creates the distortions it claims to solve is the most disciplined available articulation of the deregulatory case. · *Capitalism and Freedom* (1962) on licensing and regulation; consistent documented positions on how zoning ordinances function as government-backed cartels protecting existing homeowners at the expense of potential residents; documented positions on how price ceilings (rent control) reduce supply.

Considered but not selected

*Elinor Ostrom** — Housing is not a common-pool resource in the technical sense; it is a private good whose undersupply is driven by regulatory and financing failures, not by the tragedy-of-the-commons collective action problem her framework addresses. Urban commons (parks, shared infrastructure) are adjacent but not the central question here. Her framework would be highly relevant if the question were neighborhood land trusts, community land ownership, or shared water/green infrastructure as complements to housing, but for the core question of closing a 4–7 million unit deficit, her specialist framework adds less than the five selected members.

*Margaret Thatcher** — Her Right to Buy program (Housing Act 1980) is directly relevant precedent — the most consequential housing policy decision by any council member — and her framework on supply, property ownership, and the welfare state is applicable. She was not selected because Friedman and Hayek provide the supply-liberalization and anti-regulatory arguments with more theoretical depth, and adding Thatcher would create a three-voice pile-up on the market pole without adding a distinct analytical register.

*Franklin D. Roosevelt** — His New Deal housing programs (HOLC, FHA, public housing) are historically foundational to the American housing system (and to its racial segregation — the redlining connection is a documented T5 failure). He was not selected because Keynes provides the counter-cyclical investment argument more rigorously, and the FDR profile's most relevant housing contribution is the discriminatory infrastructure of the FHA, which is a complication rather than a solution framework for this question.