I'm not sure exactly what the "this" is in your comment. The government has largely accomplished their inflation goal as that has been roughly what inflation was for 30+ years, but they aren't all powerful and can fail that goal like they have in the past year.

The government could put the same energy to keeping housing costs in pace with inflation. They don't. Instead, the government tries to keep housing costs rising faster than inflation because housing is viewed as an investment. They have been successful in that goal as housing is greatly outpacing inflation.

In order to get inflation up to 2% the extreme measures of the last 15 years which drove up the cost of housing to such extreme heights in the first place were taken.

> The government could put the same energy to keeping housing costs in pace with inflation. They don't

That's exactly what they did. Not just housing, but also food, cars, ... It's just that housing costs respond a lot better to credit availability than most other things. And yes, generally it's things that are seen as an investment that respond to credit availability.

The government has no direct control over any kind of pricing except the price of money. Also known as credit availability. They raise house prices 5% per year, so that when food and fuel refuse to adjust to inflation, it averages out to 2% per year. This caused larger price rises on everything that is seen as an investment (houses, education, cars, ...) than on things that are not.

>In order to get inflation up to 2% the extreme measures of the last 15 years which drove up the cost of housing to such extreme heights in the first place were taken.

Housing costs greatly outpacing inflation is not a recent phenomena of the last 15 years. In fact, home prices increased faster in the prior 15 years than the last 15 years.

>The government has no direct control over any kind of pricing except the price of money.

I'm not interested in debating the meaning of "direct control", but one rather direct control they have is the federal government could repeal the mortgage interest deduction. That would immediately decrease the financial incentive to buy a home therefore decrease demand and lower prices.

> ... home prices increased faster in the prior 15 years ...

Only because the averages get pulled down in places where people don't want to live. Plus effective inflation going up (you know, the inflation including housing and education, not the made up government inflation number)

> I'm not interested in debating the meaning of "direct control", but one rather direct control they have is the federal government could repeal the mortgage interest deduction. That would immediately decrease the financial incentive to buy a home therefore decrease demand and lower prices.

Repealing it would create a big advantage for investing in homes rather than buying them to live in them. This sounds to me like the opposite of what you want. But maybe I'm an idiot.

Reality: for any resource there is supply X and demand Y, in specific markets.

X > Y: it matters a lot less what the exact policy is.

Y > X: someone will be very, very unhappy.

Rent prices, what we really care about, are not determined by who owns a house. They are determined by the amount of houses.