America's twin scarcities: The 4-million-unit shortage in both housing and childcare is breaking families | Fortune

American families are being wrecked by two parallel shortages: housing and childcare. And increasingly, experts say these two crises are feeding each other. The U.S. is short roughly 4 million homes, according to an analysis published by Realtor.com in early March. That’s led to “sustained home price growth and pushing homeownership further out of reach, particularly for younger households,” Realtor.com economists Hannah Jones and Danielle Hale wrote. At the same time, the country is missing an estimated 4.2 million childcare slots, a September 2025 study by the Bipartisan Policy Center shows. That massive shortage is the result of years of underfunding compounded by the pandemic, which shuttered roughly 16,000 providers. Both the housing crisis and childcare crisis are dire on their own. But many U.S. parents are experiencing both simultaneously. The costs of renting or owning, along with childcare, come due at the same time, on the same paycheck. Those who study these problems most closely say these problems no longer exist separately. “Families with young kids are facing this double whammy,” Yuliya Panfil, director of the Future of Land and Housing Program at New America, told Realtor.com. “If they don’t pay for child care, then they can’t work, and