President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would move to ban Wall Street from buying up loads of single-family homes. For Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., it’s not enough.
Slotkin is calling on Trump to address the housing affordability crisis in America by declaring a national housing emergency, according to legislation exclusively shared with MS NOW that she plans to introduce on Thursday.
In an effort to incentivize and accelerate residential housing production, the National Housing Emergency Act of 2026 would require Trump to invoke and amend the Defense Production Act of 1950 to direct domestic industries to produce essential materials and services.
The bill also would freeze all local, state and federal regulations, which account for roughly 25% of the cost to build a new single-family home, and create a “Pro-Growth Requirement” for communities that ties receiving federal funds to building more housing.
The Michigan senator — and potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate — said the president’s focus abroad spurred her action on housing.
“All the events going on, especially abroad, with military action, only firm up for me why we need to be doing something on housing,” Slotkin told MS NOW. “So, for all the president’s bluster about declaring emergencies abroad and on Canada, to me, we have a housing emergency in the United States of America. We need to treat it as such, we need to declare it, and we need to do some pretty sweeping changes to our system until we can come out of this emergency when we build another 4 million units of housing. That’s how far behind we are.”
The bill, in the works since this summer, comes on the heels of Trump’s effort to revive an American Dream, which he said on social media is “increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans.”
“I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “People live in homes, not corporations.”
Trump teased further housing affordability proposals in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — using the two-week deadline he’s often given for deals and policies.
Slotkin views Trump’s announcement as a positive but said he needs to go further.
“It’s just frankly throwing something out there so that he can say he’s done something on housing,” she said. “I feel like it’s kind of like a throwaway, and I think the fact that it has been a part of other plans in the past means that he’s just looking for something to fill that void.”
Slotkin’s bill, which currently does not have bipartisan support, notes that 75% of U.S. households are unable to afford a median-priced home and that there is a shortage of at least 4 million housing units due to a lack of residential construction and overregulation.
Last year, the share of first-time homebuyers hit a record low of 21% of the market, while their median age hit an all-time high of 40 years old. Additionally, the median price of a new home is more than $413,000. Slotkin said that while there’s a bipartisan consensus that buying a home is out of reach for most Americans, there’s a lack of bold action on both sides of the aisle. “My Republican colleagues have been pushing on the president to do something domestically, not just become a foreign policy president and not just focus on wars abroad, but actually focus here, so that, to me, should be a very bipartisan issue,” she said. Trump has invoked emergency powers more times in the first year of his second term than any other modern president has in that period, declaring national emergencies at the southern border, on energy and on the economy to justify his actions on immigration enforcement, fossil fuel production and tariffs. The White House would not comment on whether Trump would consider declaring an emergency to address America’s housing crisis. Slotkin said she doesn’t have a problem with the president declaring a national emergency — if it’s for things that are “actually really attacking the American people.” “It’s right up his alley,” she told MS NOW. “The guy has not been scared of declaring an emergency. So, look, if it helped people and it actually dealt with this problem, which is so fundamental to our dignity as Americans, being able to provide shelter for your family — if he wants to do it together, let’s do it together.” “But don’t sort of nibble at the margins out there and say this is your housing plan. Do something serious that’s going to affect real people,” she said.
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C. Recommended
