U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) attacked efforts by his colleagues to address the housing crisis, saying that the government has failed young homebuyers despite Congress passing a bipartisan housing law just three months ago — a bill that Paul voted against.
[NOTE: Paul was one of just five senators to oppose the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which passed the Senate 85–5 and the House 358–32 before becoming law on July 11 without President Donald Trump’s signature.]
“Gen Z is facing a housing crisis, economic uncertainty, and a government that keeps promising to fix both,” Paul wrote Tuesday on X, sharing an article about how the “principles and optimism” of President Ronald Reagan should appeal to young Americans who are looking for the government to solve their challenges.
“Reagan’s lesson still stands: Washington isn’t the solution. It’s usually the problem,” Paul said, using one of the 40th president’s favorite jabs about the government.
The recent legislation drawing Paul’s ridicule is meant to encourage construction, expand access to mortgages and restrict large institutional investors from purchasing existing single-family houses. The latter piece purportedly protects potential home buyers from being outbid by private equity and Wall Street firms that can make cash offers.
Paul’s problem with the legislation, in part, is that by limiting buyers it limits sellers’ options.
Gen Z is facing a housing crisis, economic uncertainty, and a government that keeps promising to fix both.
Reagan’s lesson still stands: Washington isn’t the solution. It’s usually the problem.
https://t.co/ezzA6bTGrI
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 13, 2026
“The prohibition to buy is also a prohibition to sell,” Paul wrote in an essay opposing the legislation.
In ridiculing the legislation, Paul called the proposal the “Path Toward the Destruction of Property Rights Act.”
His argument also involves renters, saying prohibiting investors from purchasing houses they would rent out diminishes available rental stock.
“Since many of the houses owned by institutional investors are rented, banning this class of investors may decrease the number of rental houses thus raising rents,” he wrote.
The Kentucky Republican cited research from the American Enterprise Institute finding that large institutional investors own about 1 percent of the nation’s single-family rental homes, a percentage he characterized as too low to justify the prohibition.
[NOTE: Rand’s rental concern isn’t new, and Congress did create exceptions for projects in which investors build houses specifically to rent.]
House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill (R-AR), who helped develop the bipartisan package, spoke for the majority of lawmakers in July, saying: “Homeownership should be within reach for more Americans, and this law moves us closer to that goal.”
Hill argued that the bill helps “families – not institutional investors – have a fair shot at buying a home.”
Paul asserts that the legislation was a cosmetic solution for a deeper problem, and that the “obvious solution to housing affordability is to increase supply through local zoning reforms or tax incentives.”
[NOTE: A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 66 percent of American adults were very concerned about housing costs.]