Newly elected Federal Housing Administration (FHA) commissioner Julia Gordon is on a mission to help people access and retain affordable housing. But record-high home prices, extremely low inventory, high demand and rising mortgage rates have created a Herculean task.

“We want to provide alternatives to plain, vanilla single-family housing,” says Gordon, in an exclusive interview with Forbes Advisor after being sworn in as FHA Commissioner and Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) last month. “Right now, single-family housing is upward of $400,000, which is well out of reach for most households.”

The median home sales price in the U.S. jumped nearly 16% to $428,700 in the first quarter, or $58,900 more than just a year ago, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve. And with 30-year mortgage rates rising to 5.81% in mid-June from 3.22% at the start of the year, even the middle class is getting priced out of the market.