Reports

April 1, 2026 — A new report from the Menino Survey of Mayors, based at Boston University’s Initiative on Cities, finds that a large and growing majority of U.S. mayors say increasing housing supply would reduce housing costs. Yet mayors’ support varies (often by political party) across the range of policy tools commonly proposed to expand housing production, with inconsistent backing for many of them.

The 2025 Menino Survey report, “Unlocking Housing Supply: Mayors’ Views on the Politics of Housing,” reveals mayors’ beliefs about what drives rising housing costs, the policy tools they see as most effective, and the political barriers they face when trying to build more housing. It features results from interviews conducted with 115 mayors of cities over 75,000.