America has a housing crisis, and we can’t begin to address it by just focusing on increasing supply and loosening red tape. We have to look at how housing gets financed, and we might be failing to utilize one of our best tools: a nearly 100-year-old bank that could do just that. The Federal Home Loan Bank System (FHLB), created in 1932, is a New Deal-era network of 11 regional banks with 6,500 member institutions intended to provide financing to American families at preferred rates (typically at 2-3% below commercial banks). But the FHLB is no longer fulfilling its original promise to prospective homeowners; instead, it primarily services big banks and insurers who wisely recognized they could get cheaper rates. Today, only 13 cents of every dollar the FHLB earns goes toward affordable housing, and more than 40% of its member institutions don’t even give out mortgages. This leaves a funding gap for medium-sized multifamily buildings, or the "missing middle" as housing experts call it. These are housing units too small for big developers and too large for conventional mortgages. But cheaper loans could finally make these projects viable, opening up a whole new stream of housing supply. In a new @nytimes op-ed, ESP co-founder @chrishughes breaks down how we can redirect FHLB lending towards multifamily construction, produce 200K new units a year, and get more Americans into homes – without any cost to taxpayers. He argues we can make the FHLB serve the American people again and, with it, chip away at the country’s housing crisis. nytimes.com/2026/04/08/opini…