McManus makes the point builders feel every day. The single largest line item is not zoning approval or impact fees, it is a decade of building code change at $40,288 per home, and code is administered locally. Federal leverage is real where federal authority is real: NEPA categorical exclusions for infill and rehabilitation, manufactured housing standards, and FHA financing terms.
On zoning, the tools are incentives rather than mandates. CDBG dollars get redirected toward jurisdictions that hit housing production thresholds, phased in over three years. A $200 million annual competitive fund rewards density bonuses, streamlined permitting, and by-right multifamily. Grants fund pre-reviewed pattern books that let ADUs, duplexes, and townhouses skip design review. HUD is directed to set guidelines for single-stair point-access buildings and to publish a zoning best-practices framework.
Our read: every one of those mechanisms is a measurement problem before it is a policy problem. If federal money moves on housing performance, someone has to prove what a jurisdiction’s code actually permits, ordinance by ordinance, with a citation. The phase-in also guarantees a multi-year wave of local text amendments, and each amendment is a version of the code that someone will later need to reconstruct.