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The 50-Year Mortgage Was Always Coming.
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash.
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The Trump administration just announced support for a 50-year mortgage, an idea I predicted in Escaping the Housing Trap.
This isn’t innovation. It’s a symptom. When homes are priced beyond what local incomes can sustain, the system stretches the debt instead of fixing the root problem. First 20-year mortgages, then 30-year loans. Now 50. Each one buys time, not stability.
→ You may want to read: The 30-Year Mortgage Was Bad. The 40-year Mortgage Will Be Even Worse.
At Strong Towns, we’ve been warning about this for years:
- You can't paper over fragility with longer loans.
- You can’t make homes affordable by making debt cheaper.
- You can’t solve a local housing crisis with national financial engineering.
Our members understand this. They see how federal finance, local zoning, and neighborhood design all connect, and they’re working to build cities that don’t depend on fragile systems to function.
That’s what being part of this movement means: We don’t just react to policy headlines. We anticipate them, and we build stronger responses from the bottom up.
This is Member Week at Strong Towns. If you believe our cities deserve better than a 50-year mortgage, join the thousands of us working to build real solutions.
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Charles Marohn (known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) is the founder and president of Strong Towns and the bestselling author of “Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.