An aerial view of residential housing under construction at a planned community in Fontana, California, on Sept. 17, 2025. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats began detailing their affordability agenda Thursday ahead of the November midterm elections, starting with a focus on housing. 

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said during an event at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, that if Democrats regain control of the House and Senate they would pass legislation to expand rental assistance, reduce barriers to home ownership, build more housing and address predatory practices. 

Schumer listed several statistics he finds concerning, including that the median price of a home has gone up by 55% since the coronavirus pandemic, that rent has risen by one-third and that the average age for a first-time home buyer is 40. 

“That’s a record high,” he said. “That’s a devastating statistic that should shake up everyone in a position of power at the federal, state or local levels.”

Schumer said the outline for housing is just the first of several cost-of-living policy proposals Democrats will detail this year as they seek to sway voters in key districts and states to vote for their candidates over Republicans.

Democrats, he said, will also focus on how to curb the rising cost of groceries, electricity, child care and health care as part of the midterms messaging. 

On housing, Schumer said Democrats will focus on legislation that would 

• incentivize construction companies to build more housing to address shortages throughout the country;
• expand rental assistance, including Section 8 vouchers for low-income families;
• reduce barriers to home ownership;
• expand the low-income housing tax credit;
• allow the Department of Housing and Urban Development to use the Defense Production Act to purchase “housing materials in short supply”;
• create an agency focused on advanced research into housing issues, similar to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; and
• block “predatory companies” from being “allowed to gobble up entire neighborhoods so easily and turn them into profit machines.”

Democratic bills would provide down payment assistance, lower the cost of mortgage insurance, expand access to portable mortgages and “reform homeowners insurance which is now at a crisis level and so important for people who can’t afford that down payment,” Schumer said.  

Democrats have relatively good odds of winning back control of the House during the November midterm elections, especially since the president’s party tends to lose that chamber two years after taking power. 

Campaigns to regain control of the Senate will be much more difficult for Democrats, who face challenges keeping seats in Georgia and Michigan, while trying to flip Republican seats in Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio. 

Even if voters were to give Democrats control of Congress, leaders in the party would still need some Republican buy-in to move legislation past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster and need President Donald Trump to sign legislation into law, unless they had the two-thirds needed in each chamber to override a veto. 

A ‘family conversation’

Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said during a panel discussion with Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth that was moderated by CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden that he’s been “radicalized on housing” and pressed for members of the party to talk realistically about issues with supply and affordability. 

“And the reason is that our shortage nationwide, but especially in Hawaii, is so acute that people can’t make the math work anymore,” Schatz said. “In Hawaii, people are paying more than 50%, all-in, of their income for housing, either rental housing or paying a mortgage. And what I have come to realize is that we are the problem.”

Schatz argued that the government “is the primary impediment to alleviating the shortage” and said that realization has led him to have some “very difficult conversations.” 

In Hawaii, he said, there are environmental and cultural protections intended to safeguard “special places” but that have ended up applied more broadly, impeding housing development. 

“They were not originally conceived to prevent a walk-up apartment building on the corner of Eisenberg and King to house Native Hawaiian families,” Schatz said. “And yet those same laws are being weaponized against people in Hawaii even being able to live in the state of Hawaii.”

Schatz said Democrats must be honest with voters about what their housing policies would mean for communities throughout the country, contending the party needs to “solve the politics” around expanded housing before it can tackle the policy debate. 

“I actually think we have to have this family conversation around the politics of housing and realize that some of our base voters in the suburbs, who are otherwise good all the way down the line on all the progressive issues, also want to prevent a nurse or a firefighter or the disabled or the elderly or the student from living anywhere near them,” Schatz said. “And we have to have that conversation in the progressive coalition.”

Rethinking inspections, other processes

Duckworth said some solutions to housing could come through rethinking the processes in place now, similar to how the Department of Veterans Affairs changed its approach to homeless veterans. 

“VA used to say, ‘You have to get clean and sober, and then we’ll give you a voucher to get into an apartment.’ And so it made no sense, right?” Duckworth said. 

“So we had to change the thinking to what the homelessness community had been working on, which is reduction of harm — get them into the housing and then work on getting them clean and sober,” she continued. “And by changing that thought, we were able to immediately start pulling veterans off the streets, put them into housing units where they immediately were also getting counseling, getting treatment.”

Duckworth compared the sometimes slow process of housing inspections that can stop construction with the way the government approaches vehicle safety as one possible way to get things moving faster. 

“With automobiles, we say, ‘This car that you’re manufacturing must be able to withstand a crash at 35 miles an hour into a brick wall.’ And then when they meet and get that car approved, when we go buy that car, we don’t have to take that car to get it inspected from top to bottom, like we do with homes,” Duckworth said. 

She added: “So why would we not say to homebuilders, especially (prefabricated) homes, if you come to VA and you are willing to get two models of your home, pre-inspected, pre-approved, then when a veteran builds a new home and they say, ‘Hey, I’m going to choose one of these models that already has a VA good housekeeping seal of approval,’ they can shortcut that inspection process.”

Child care provider Heather Murray, right, gives Mandela Barnes, left, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin governor, a tour of her facility, Art House Preschool in Waunakee. Joining them were, second from left, Paula Drew and Kayla Gardner, both from the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin should make child care universally available, just as public education is, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said Thursday during a child care center visit that was part of the rollout for his campaign for governor.

“I support having full, comprehensive, universal childcare,” Barnes told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview that followed a round table session with providers, parents and child care policy analysts. “I, for sure, hope others understand the urgency of this issue, understand the complexity of it as well, and we’ll be ready to fight tooth and nail to do everything we can to improve the system for our providers, for our parents and most importantly, for the young people, for the students, for our children.”

The round table took place at the Art House Preschool, a Waunakee child care center.

Barnes is not the first Democratic hopeful in the 2026 race for governor to visit the Art House. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley held a round table on child care issues in November at the same location. And virtually every other active Democratic primary candidate in the governor’s race mentions affordable child care on their website as a priority of their campaigns.

During his event Thursday, Barnes coupled state funding for child care with his support for better public education funding.

“If we aren’t invested in children, what are we doing as a state? What are we doing as a country?” he asked at the start of the nearly hour-long discussion. “We need to ensure, one, that our schools, K-12, are fully funded, but also that our children are ready to enter K-12. And that means that early childhood education has support.”

During most of the session, Barnes refrained from lengthy policy prescriptions and focused instead on questions for the round table participants — asking for both their biggest challenges and their “biggest ideas” for addressing Wisconsin’s child care needs.

“Direct investment to providers, I believe, would be the best to keep people from closing their doors,” said Heather Murray, the owner of Art House, who has been a child care provider for nearly two decades. “I like to call it a public good, because I don’t believe it can exist without government funding.”

Stephanie Frontz is an IT specialist and the mother of four, one of them at Art House. She recently gave birth to infant twins who are slated to be enrolled there.

“We need the help there so the state can help pay fair wages,” Frontz said. That will  ensure child care workers stay, which in turn makes it possible for more parents to work, she added. “It impacts my family and the economy if I can’t work.”

Child care providers who have a shortage of teachers reduce the hours that they’re open, said Carly Eaton, a parent whose day job is with an organized labor environmental group.

She understands why, but jobs in construction, manufacturing and especially health care often “don’t fit in the 7 a.m. to 6 a.m. hours that you may be able to find child care,” Eaton said. “To hear legislators on a certain side of the aisle talk about the worker shortage and then not do anything about child care just breaks my brain.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal relief funds included money designated for child care. In Wisconsin that money went to the Child Care Counts program, which originally distributed $20 million a month to the state’s child care providers.

The monthly support was later cut in half and extended through mid-2025 after the GOP majority in the Wisconsin Legislature rejected the proposal Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, made in the 2023-25 state budget to continue the subsidy with state funds.

Evers again proposed ongoing state funding in the 2025-27 budget. “I heard a lot of people say during the last budget cycle, ‘We can’t just keep writing checks …. It didn’t work,’” said Kayla Gardner, engagement specialist at the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. “It actually did — it very much did work.”

“When the payments were the highest, we had very few closures,” said Paula Drew, director of early childhood education policy and research at WECA. “It stabilized the field.”

When the current budget finally passed in late June, it for the first time included some direct state funding for centers, but just for one year and at a smaller amount than Evers or child care advocates originally sought.

That money helped, said Jenn Bilderback, administrative director of Big Oak Child Care in Madison. But it also came with restrictions that made it less accessible for some providers and it will go away in June 2026.

“We have to do something that’s much more universal and that allows the flexibility for a provider,” Bilderback told Barnes.

She said her center’s board of directors, most of whom are parents, have supported providing benefits — a rarity for many child care providers — and paying a living wage. “We need to do this, but the cost of living in Madison and outside Madison is increasing too high to be able to keep up with that.”

Barnes — who along with most Democrats running for elected office in the 2026 cycle has seized on affordability as a campaign theme — responded that “the cost of living is top of mind for everybody.” But then he turned back to her earlier comments.

“You mentioned ‘something more universal,’ Barnes said. “I want you to say the thing out loud. Somebody can say it — universal child care, right?”

“We do dream big, and we do think of all these things,” said Gardner. “But what we see in return is almost nothing.”

Drew said that with turnover among child care teachers, programs are often operating at less than capacity, even as parents have trouble finding care.

“We don’t necessarily, right now, need new buildings, because we’ve got 33,000 open spots . . . across the state. We need teachers that can be working in programs to open up those 33,000 spots,” Drew said. “We’ve got the demand, but we also need the supply available in early education.”

Katie Licitis, an Art House Preschool teacher, said she first took the job four years ago after she and her husband moved to Wisconsin from Georgia. For the first time, she said, she needed child care after having been a stay-at-home mom until then. But with the turnover that providers are seeing, she asked Barnes, “Do you have a plan to retain teachers?”

“You shouldn’t have to choose between a job you love and Kwik Trip, as an example, because they’re paying more money, right?” Barnes replied. “Like, that’s an indictment on the way that things have been going. And I think that’s a big part of the broader universal child care package. And I don’t think people should be shy about wanting universal child care in this state. I think that this is exactly one of those areas that Wisconsin should be a leader in the nation.”