America’s housing affordability challenge has reached a point where it is increasingly being treated as more than a residential real estate issue. Housing costs affect workforce mobility, economic growth, employers’ ability to recruit talent, and the financial health of communities across the country. That reality is bringing new voices into the conversation about how, where, and how quickly the nation builds housing.
In August, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a new Housing Advisory Council focused on advancing market-driven policies intended to increase housing supply and improve affordability. According to reporting from Multifamily Dive, the initiative will concentrate on three persistent barriers to development: outdated zoning and permitting processes, access to capital, and shortages of skilled construction labor. The Chamber estimates that the United States currently faces a shortage of approximately 4.7 million homes.
The announcement comes at an important moment for multifamily development. Housing remains unaffordable for millions of households, yet developers face substantial obstacles to adding the supply needed to address that problem. At the same time, a changing construction pipeline and uneven market conditions mean every project that does move forward carries significant financial and operational stakes.
For multifamily developers and owners, the challenge ahead involves more than building additional units. It requires finding ways to deliver housing efficiently, control avoidable costs, protect projects during construction, and ultimately create communities where residents want to stay.
Housing Affordability Has Become an Economic Issue
The scale of America’s affordability problem helps explain why the business community is becoming more involved.
The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ State of the Nation’s Housing 2026 report found that the number of cost-burdened renters reached another record high in 2024. Among renters earning less than $30,000 annually, 83% spent more than 30% of their income on housing, while approximately two-thirds faced severe cost burdens, spending more than half of their income on housing and utilities.
Those pressures exist even as recent construction has added substantial apartment inventory. The national rental vacancy rate increased from a record-low 5.9% in 2022 to 7.3% during the first quarter of 2026, according to Harvard’s analysis. Conditions vary significantly by market, however. Cities that added large amounts of housing have experienced considerably different rent and vacancy trends from markets where construction has remained constrained.
Austin provides one particularly noteworthy example. Multifamily Dive reports that a recent construction boom helped push the city’s median rent down by more than 16% between 2021 and 2026. Policy changes that allowed greater density and reduced parking requirements helped support that additional development.
The lesson is increasingly difficult to ignore: adding supply can play an important role in addressing affordability, but getting housing from proposal to occupancy remains complicated.
The Obstacles Begin Before Construction
The Chamber’s new council is concentrating on some of the most persistent barriers developers encounter before construction begins.
Zoning restrictions can prevent multifamily development in areas where demand is strong. Lengthy approval processes introduce uncertainty and carrying costs. Financing conditions can determine whether a project pencils out at all, while labor shortages and material expenses continue to affect construction budgets and timelines.
The Chamber is also advocating for greater flexibility to build housing near employment centers, including converting or redeveloping some areas traditionally reserved for commercial uses, like shopping centers. These types of projects could bring apartments closer to jobs, retail, transportation, and existing infrastructure while creating new uses for underutilized properties.
There appears to be considerable recognition at the local level that additional housing is necessary. According to the latest Menino Survey of Mayors, 80% of surveyed mayors said their cities have too little multifamily housing, while 82% strongly supported adding apartments near business centers and transit. Support for specific zoning and permitting reforms, however, was considerably more mixed.
Even when projects clear those hurdles, developers enter a construction environment where margins and schedules remain under pressure.
Housing starts illustrate that volatility. Multifamily starts fell sharply in May 2026 before rebounding 76.2% in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 532,000 units. Meanwhile, multifamily permits declined 4.2% in June, and approximately 682,000 apartments remained under construction. According to reporting from the National Association of Home Builders, construction financing, building material prices, transportation expenses, and insurance costs are among the primary pressures affecting residential construction.
In this environment, preventing avoidable losses becomes increasingly important.
Protecting Housing Supply While It Is Being Built
When policymakers discuss lowering the cost of housing construction, security rarely receives much attention. Yet theft, vandalism, trespassing, and property damage can introduce exactly the types of unplanned expenses and delays developers are trying to eliminate. Economic downturns, tariffs, and other pressures can also lead to an increase in construction site materials theft as well- making security measures more critical than ever.
Multifamily construction sites can be particularly attractive targets because projects contain valuable assets throughout an extended development cycle. Heavy equipment and tools may be present early in construction, followed by copper wiring, electrical equipment, HVAC components, appliances, fixtures, and other easily resold materials as buildings approach completion.
As a result, a theft can cost considerably more than the replacement value of the stolen property. Contractors may need to reorder materials, work may be interrupted, subcontractor schedules can shift, and inspections may need to be postponed. When financing and construction costs are already elevated, preventable security incidents create another layer of pressure on project economics.
This makes proactive security an important part of protecting the investment being made in new housing.
Live video monitoring can provide oversight of construction sites during the hours when they are most vulnerable. AI-enabled video analytics can identify activity in designated areas, while trained monitoring professionals provide the necessary context to determine whether someone entering a site is an authorized worker or a potential intruder. When suspicious activity is verified, operators can issue onsite audible warnings or contact law enforcement while continuing to monitor the situation.
The objective is to intervene early enough that a suspicious event does not become a costly construction loss.
From Housing Production to Housing Operations
Increasing supply is only the first part of the housing equation. Eventually, every successful multifamily construction project has to become a functioning community.
That transition introduces an entirely different security environment.
During lease-up, construction crews and contractors may still be completing punch-list work while prospective residents tour the property, moving companies arrive, delivery drivers make frequent stops, and the first residents begin using parking areas and amenities. Vacant units may contain newly installed appliances and fixtures, while partially occupied buildings can create areas with relatively little regular activity.
As occupancy grows, security priorities shift toward the everyday concerns of residential communities, including vehicle crime, package theft, unauthorized access, trespassing, vandalism, disturbances, and resident safety in shared spaces.
Security also matters to the resident experience. Research has repeatedly found that security-related features ranked among renters’ most desired community amenities, with front desk or gated access and secure package receiving among the leading building preferences.
This creates an opportunity for developers to think about security as a continuous strategy rather than making an abrupt transition between construction security and residential security.
Cameras and monitoring infrastructure deployed to protect a development can become part of a broader operational strategy as the property progresses through completion, lease-up, and stabilized occupancy. The areas being monitored may change, as will the behaviors that require attention, but the underlying objective remains consistent: provide visibility into developing risks and enable an appropriate response.
Building More Housing While Protecting Long-Term Value
The creation of the U.S. Chamber’s Housing Advisory Council reflects how consequential America’s housing challenge has become. Addressing a shortage measured in millions of homes will require cooperation among government, developers, lenders, contractors, employers, and communities. It will also require addressing the costs and inefficiencies that make housing more difficult to build.
Security represents one piece of that larger equation.
Developers cannot control every interest-rate movement, material price increase, zoning decision, or labor constraint. They can, however, take steps to reduce preventable losses once a project moves forward.
A comprehensive security strategy can help protect valuable materials during construction, reduce exposure during the transition to occupancy, and ultimately support safer residential environments once communities are fully operational. Live video monitoring provides a particularly flexible approach because coverage can adapt as the physical property and its risks change.
As policymakers and business leaders search for ways to accelerate housing production, the multifamily industry has an opportunity to consider the entire lifecycle of the communities being created. Building more apartments is essential, but so is protecting the capital, materials, people, and properties that turn new supply into successful housing.
For developers and owners operating in an increasingly cost-conscious market, protecting those investments from groundbreaking through long-term occupancy can help ensure that urgently needed housing reaches residents as efficiently, reliably, and securely as possible.
