A better way to help young Americans become homeowners | Opinion

Congress recently passed H.R. 6644, the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, an important step toward addressing America’s housing affordability crisis. That effort is welcome, but Congress should also consider a simpler, longer-term solution: helping young Americans begin saving for their first home from childhood.

Instead of focusing only on housing costs and debt, we should also focus on housing savings. Today we subsidize borrowing to buy a home. Why not also reward saving for one? We should encourage families to begin saving for a child’s first home years before they are ready to buy one. The earlier those dollars are invested, the larger that first down payment can become.

We already use powerful tools to encourage long-term saving — Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and education savings accounts, such as Coverdell ESAs. These accounts work because they reward responsibility, discipline and long-term planning.

Why not build on that success?

Years ago, I proposed what I call a FLEX-IRA: a simple, tax-advantaged savings account funded with after-tax dollars. Families, grandparents and friends could contribute each year for a child or young adult. Young people could even contribute earnings from their first jobs, learning the habit of saving while building wealth at the same time. The investments would grow tax-free and later be used for one of four important purposes: education, medical expenses, retirement, or a first-home down payment.

The strength of a FLEX-IRA is its flexibility. Life doesn’t always unfold according to plan.

The idea came from a personal experience. One of my own children had an education savings account but chose a different path than college. When it came time to buy a first home, those savings were available — but only after taxes and penalties because the account had been designed for a single purpose. That experience underscored a simple problem: our savings tools are often too rigid for real life.

A FLEX-IRA would change that. It would encourage families to save early, invest in America’s businesses through stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, and build wealth over time. It would help young Americans become owners twice over: first as investors in the American economy and later as homeowners in their own communities.

This is not a partisan idea. Encouraging saving, investment, and ownership has long been common ground across political lines. Parents, grandparents, and young people all want the same thing: a more secure path to opportunity and financial independence.

If Congress prefers a narrower step, it could simply create a First Home IRA. That would be meaningful progress. But a FLEX-IRA is broader and more practical because it reflects how life actually unfolds over decades, not how policy categories are written in Washington.

For generations, homeownership has been one of the cornerstones of the American Dream. A FLEX-IRA would help more young Americans reach that dream — not by encouraging more debt, but by encouraging more saving, more investing and more ownership.

That’s an idea worthy of bipartisan support.

Jon Mutchler is a former mayor of Ferndale. He currently serves on the Ferndale City Council.