Emerson Claus has been building houses for 45 years. But he has never faced delays like he is now trying to get basic building materials. “I had a client ask me to add a door,” he says at a

job site outside Boston. “We just waited six months to get it.” “That’s a door in a frame,” Claus says, exasperated. “That’s kind of crazy.” He says appliances can be even worse. “A

dishwasher, if you can find the model you want right now, you might wait a year for it.” By one estimate, the U.S. is more than 3 million homes short of the demand from would-be homebuyers.

Pandemic-related supply chain problems aren’t helping. They’re adding tens of thousands of dollars in cost to the typical house. But the roots of the problem go back much further — to the