The federal government spent more than $460 billion on 18 housing affordability programs administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development between 2015 and 2024, yet the gap between home prices and household incomes narrowed by a statistically insignificant 2.75% over that decade, according to a new analysis from government-spending watchdog Open The Books.
The report, titled “Extreme Makeover: American Dream Edition”, compared state-by-state median household income growth against the federal government’s House Price Index and HUD program spending over the decade. It found that median home prices outpaced median household wages in all 50 states from 2015 to 2024, with a double-digit percentage-point gap between income growth and price growth in all but two states.
Idaho posted the widest affordability gap in the country, with a score of 83.3 as its median home price grew 151% against just 68% income growth over the period, the report found. Florida ranked second at 77.2, followed by Utah, Tennessee, Arizona, New Hampshire, Nevada, Maine, Rhode Island and Washington rounding out the ten worst-gap states. Louisiana posted the smallest gap in the nation at 6.6, followed by West Virginia, North Dakota, Mississippi, Alaska, Illinois, Maryland, Iowa, California and Hawaii.
The report also examined down-payment burdens directly: across every state except Alaska, a 20% down payment on a median-priced home now exceeds 100% of the median household’s annual income. Maine residents face the longest savings timeline in the report’s analysis, needing an estimated 25 years to accumulate a 20% down payment while saving 10% of income annually.
Despite California receiving $81.4 billion in HUD funding from 2015 to 2024 β among the largest state allocations in the report β the state remains one of the least affordable in the country, according to Open The Books’ analysis, illustrating how federal dollars have not tracked closely with affordability outcomes on a state-by-state basis.
Christopher Neefus, Open The Books’ vice president of communications, tied the findings to generational tension over homeownership. “When you spend from the top down, it’s very difficult for dollars to end up where they’re needed most,” Neefus said, according to reporting from The Center Square, arguing for more localized approaches over broad federal spending programs.
Open The Books, formally known as American Transparency, is a nonprofit that publishes government spending data and analysis, including a widely cited online database of federal, state and local spending records. The organization has published a series of reports scrutinizing federal housing and social-spending programs, framing its work around the argument that spending transparency should inform whether programs are achieving their stated goals rather than simply how much money is appropriated to them.
What it means: Verified facts: HUD spent over $460 billion across 18 programs over a decade while the report’s measured national affordability gap moved less than 3 percentage points, and every state saw home prices outpace incomes. Open The Books’ attributed interpretation, delivered through a vice president with a stated institutional view favoring decentralized spending, is that top-down federal spending structurally struggles to reach the households who need it most. RealtyWire’s analysis: the report doesn’t isolate how much worse the affordability gap might have grown absent any federal spending, so it demonstrates a correlation between heavy spending and persistent unaffordability rather than proving the programs had no effect β a distinction relevant to ongoing congressional debates over HUD funding levels.
The findings arrive as HUD’s funding priorities face scrutiny on multiple fronts, including a lawsuit from fair housing groups over a funding overhaul that would zero out local enforcement grants, and as affordability pressure shows up in other recent data, including Redfin’s finding that the income needed to afford a typical U.S. home has held near a record $110,000.
