On September 19, a diverse array of governmental and nonprofit leaders along with activists, scholars, real estate developers, and design professionals convened in the Great Hall of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C, for the Future Cities: Affordable Housing Summit. A nationwide dearth of attainable housing has only heightened since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, with median national rents for one- and two-bedroom units increasing by 24 percent from 2021 to 2022 alone. According to the latest State of the Nation’s Housing report released by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS), the number of rent-burdened households—those whose monthly expenditure on housing exceeds 30 percent of their income—has reached an astonishing 21.6 million—49 percent of all U.S. households. Of this total, more than 11 million households spent more than 50 percent of their income on housing, with the highest rates of cost burdens most common for households of color.