It’s a prime example of what we’ve been losing — a home that’s inherently affordable, because it’s a small house on a small lot.

T he local government of the small and far-from-wealthy hometown of Pope Leo XIV has voted to acquire the former Robert Prevost’s childhood home as a future museum. As well it should. In recognizing its most famous son, Dolton, Ill., (poverty rate: 20 percent) is surely looking for the revenue potentially associated with future pilgrims. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” says Dolton Mayor Jason House. He’s right.

At the same time, this predominantly African-American village of 20,000, 20 miles south of Chicago, is paying tribute to a quintessentially American story — the possibility for someone from a modest background, armed with a religious education (at St. Mary of the Assumption Parish on Chicago’s South Side) to rise to a great height.

There is still another reason, though, to preserve and recognize the house. The structure is an exemplar of American housing policy. As the U.S. struggles to build enough new housing within the means of families, the single-family brick structure at 212 E. 141st Street has lessons to teach. It’s a prime example of what we’ve been losing — a home that’s inherently affordable, because it’s a small house on a small lot.

The pope’s parents bought the house new in 1949. They incurred a $42 monthly mortgage, or $567 today, or less than a quarter of today’s $2,800-plus median mortgage payment.

It was affordable, first, because it was small: just 1146 square feet, per Zillow. Not only was the house small. So, too was the lot. Just under 4,948 square feet, or .11 acres. It was the modest size that helped make it possible for his parents — his father Louis, a local school employee, and his mother Mildred, a librarian — to own a three-bedroom house in which they could raise three boys. That would also mean two would have to share a bedroom — the sort of once-common sacrifice that also leads to home affordability.

To say that the size of the Prevosts’ home and lot are no longer typical of newly constructed U.S. homes is an understatement. Per the National Association of Home Builders, the median new U.S. single-family home is 2,191 square feet, roughly twice the size of the home where the pope grew up. That figure has risen since mid-2023. The median new lot size in Illinois today is 9,025 square feet, or .2 acres — twice as big as the Prevosts’.

And their home was not terribly small for its day. The 17,000 new houses on Long Island’s Levittown were just 750 square feet. They sold in 1949 for $7,900, or $106,700 in today’s dollars. The new community provided housing for more than 80,000 residents. William Levitt, the visionary behind the housing, is in the National Home Builders Hall of Fame. Maybe the local contractor who built the Prevosts’ home should now be inducted.

The trends in house and lot size have everything to do with receding affordability. The Wall Street Journal reports: “There were 1.1 million first-time buyers last year — 380,000 fewer than in 2023 and almost half the historical norm.” The median monthly mortgage payment hit a record high in March of $2,807, more than five times the equivalent cost of the Prevosts’ mortgage payment ($553 in today’s dollars). Interest rates were lower, especially for those with government-insured FHA mortgages, which helped fuel the post–World War II suburban housing boom.

But size matters. Today’s Chicago-area contemporary equivalent of postwar Dolton would be fast-growing Naperville. There, one of the least expensive new homes (per Zillow) is a 3,372 square-foot single-family on 6,720 square-foot lot — available for $690,000. That’s big enough to build three homes equivalent to that which housed a future pope.

Recognizing Pope Leo XIV’s childhood home would encourage a modest movement toward smaller new homes. Per the National Association of Home Builders, the median new home size has been falling, from 2,200 square feet in 2023 to 2,150 square feet in 2024. That has been powered, in part, by a willingness of communities to accept attached “town homes,” as well as single-family homes on their own lots.

That underscores the fact that housing affordability in federalist America, where local control is essential to democracy, can also constrain home construction. Increasing natural affordability, like that of Dolton, Ill., circa 1949, will require planning and zoning boards across the country to decide to make it possible.

The house where a future pope came of age can serve as a latter-day model home.