Newsom's housing chart draws backlash after showing affordability crisis peaked under Biden

California Governor Gavin Newsom stepped into a political backlash Tuesday after posting a chart aimed at President Donald Trump's housing record. The chart tracked the income required to qualify for a median-priced home from 2005 through 2026 and showed its steepest climb between 2021 and 2024, the Biden years.

Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, shared the post on X alongside a report describing U.S. homes as "now the most unaffordable in history" and addressed the data to Trump directly. The response on the platform was sharp. Meteorologist Chris Martz wrote that housing prices had skyrocketed under Biden's presidency and that Newsom appeared not to know how to read graphs. Libs of TikTok asked who was president during the biggest uptick in home unaffordability. Actor Doug Davidson noted the chart's biggest spike predated Trump's second term. Author Jens Heycke argued the misread demonstrated a level of numeric and economic illiteracy he called disqualifying for an aspiring presidential candidate.

Several users drew a parallel to a since-deleted post from the official Democratic Party account featuring a grocery-price graph. That post had claimed U.S. grocery prices reached record highs in 2025, yet the same chart showed prices spiking in 2021 and only leveling off at the end of 2024 as Trump was re-elected.

The state-level record on supply complicates the framing. OutKick writer Ian Miller noted California is the most unaffordable state in the country for home purchases and has grown worse since Newsom took office. California Post opinion editor Joel Pollak said the picture would look worse broken down by state. Newsom has signed two rounds of housing legislation in 2025: a package that exempted certain projects from the California Environmental Quality Act and a second set of reforms in July targeting affordable-housing financing and project reviews. Fox News Digital reached out to Newsom's office and had not received a response by publication time.

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Fox News Digital that Trump signed an executive order barring large Wall Street firms from buying single-family homes, directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase $200 billion in mortgage bonds that the White House said drove rates to four-year lows, and cut regulatory requirements to speed construction and boost supply. Watch whether Newsom's office addresses the chart read directly, and whether that $200 billion mortgage-bond figure draws legislative scrutiny as the 2028 positioning sharpens.