DOI: https://doi.org/10.36347/sjebm.2026.v13i03.007

Pages: 142-156

Low-cost housing shortage in the United States has become a national policy issue that is of serious concern to the economic stability, mobility of the workforce and urban development. Although several federal housing programs are implemented by agencies such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the results of their implementation are not evenly distributed among the states and metropolitan areas. This research paper will look at the impact of institutional arrangements and policy framework on the creation of affordable housing effectiveness in the United States. Particularly, the study examines how the fragmentation of governance, at the federal, state and local levels, contributes towards determining the housing policy outcomes. The research will utilise a qualitative policy analysis method that is backed by the institutional theory of governance and descriptive research of housing affordability measures. The sources of data are federal reports on housing policy, the scholarly literature, and statistical data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the U.S. Census Bureau. The analysis presents the Institutional Coordination Failure Framework (ICFF), which is a conceptual framework describing the interaction among regulatory fragmentation, fiscal misalignment, zoning restraint, and the constraints of the administrative capacity to promote the efficacy of housing policy implementation. The evidence indicates institutional coordination failures play a major role in the low effectiveness of affordable housing programs that have led to chronic housing crunches and augmented housing cost liabilities among low- and moderate-income households. The study essentially ends by giving policy recommendations to enhance intergovernmental coordination, regulatory reform, and policy alignment at the levels of governance. These results underscore the relevance of the design of institutions in overcoming the national affordable housing crisis and enhan