That leads to an interesting question: Is there a large enough zoning bump so that projects for 50% of the units needing to be affordable to people at 60% of the AMI pencil out without other subsidy?
Part of the problem with the approach I see in Wes Moore's governance is he suffers from the same issue that many blue state Democratic governors do - interest group resistance and the challenges of running a high-low coalition. I won't pretend that there is any easy answer for the state teachers union or for the machine politics in Baltimore or PG County but I think he has more clout than he is willing to use so far.
Housing shortages in Maryland are driven by a few major things - a tendency for people to move to Montgomery and Howard Counties to be able to access DC for work without having to live or deal with Prince George's County, as well as a legacy of single family suburban expansion from the 80s through the 2010s around the Central corridor of the state while Baltimore continued to atrophy.
What has grown the economy in Maryland is not complicated. It closely tracks the rise of federal expenditure and the federal workforce. Maryland is a state where Larry Hogan was able to do what Republicans want to do and have their cake and eat it too - he cut taxes and regulations that allowed for more inward fixed investment, and lowered the deficit, while making highway expenditure more regionally equitable. The latter is in my view good politics but bad policy (as congestion is worst in places where Democrats traditionally used state funds as patronage). But none of this was policy wizardry. Maryland has advantages that allow it's balance sheet to be more flush than most.
But if Moore wants to consider how to grow Maryland's economy exogenous to what the Feds are doing, he would be well served in considering how to actually fix a lot of the social pathologies of Baltimore which unlike most American cities is genuinely a net negative economic anchor, sometimes in real terms. There was never any real push to make it attractive for young workers, and the areas in which people can find things to do are very limited, so it's not like touristry is a huge driver. Post industrial blight is a problem and no fixes have been offered or attempted. Misgovernance is comically awful (look up the recent mayors) and the housing stock is a complete mess.
Now, the level of investment necessary to get moving on that is probably just massive and not something any gubernatorial administration can do on its own. What is more feasible is finding ways to try to make PG County more productive. That means sponsoring more development and jumping on board with the gentrification of the Route 1 Corridor. Here, the problems are much more fixable and the local political establishment is far more friendly to the state gvt pushing its weight around.
Increasingly it feels like the most effective way to break the YIMBY v. NIMBY log jam is going to be through massive expansion of ADUs. Just need to make sure states don't attach disincentives to them, like onerous taxes or regulations.
This is great. It reminds me of my favorite old man pontification - “Know the difference”.
Elected officials sometimes promote policies that they know are not that meaningful but will be well received, and there’s no harm to them, so why not?
But sometimes they promote policies that they think are very meaningful but are really not.
It would be nice to think that they know the difference between these two approaches. The first one means they are a little cynical but not hurting anything. The second means they just don’t know, which is more concerning.
I worry this is a problem about misaligned goals. If your goal is to maximize how much housing reform is done in the long run, making even big changes seem modest is for sure what you want to do. But if your actual goal is to have some wins to point to, you pass whatever you can, however small, as long as you pass something - and then you make it seem as big and impressive as you possibly can.
One nice feature about a policy that breaks the “single family only” stranglehold without doing a lot is that the *next* set of reforms is now a lot easier to do, because it no longer requires breaking those policies - it just loosens up the conditions.
I’ve tuned out Biden officials testimonies of Joe’s vigor. If that’s true then he should strut his stuff. If it’s not, that will be super clear by November.
Only just realized after reading today's column that there's permanent air quotes around the term "affordable" in my head, almost entirely due to housing. It's ascending into the Misnomer lexical category which includes such terms as "equity" and "socialism": those words that have a formal technical meaning somewhere, but in lay practice mosly don't mean that. It's especially frustrating for those of us low enough on the ladder that "affordable" units actually...cost significantly *more* than current rent. Stark reminder that increasing supply matters so much more than greasing demand. "Even with a government handout, you can't officially afford to live here!" ~SF motto
Still, to the extent that some +supply is better than no +supply, yay housing, even if it must be "affordable" or limited to students or whatever. But I think it gets even worse than just making Pareto-suboptimal choices wrt the mix of market-rate units, or how much political capital gets set on fire. We know from many other disciplines that areas of concentrated disadvantage tend to, well, compound problems for everyone, with significant blast radius. The higher the "affordable" % gets, the more that's a concern - not just within the development itself, but also because viable parcels that can afford a net loss of that size are likely geographically correlated too. So in addition to a, let's say, 5% ratio likely leading to more *total* housing, I'd also expect it to be better dispersed.
One could object that it doesn't make sense to build "affordable" units that aren't near/in existing lower-end enclaves, but that seems...overly pessimistic? People do try and sometimes succeed in moving up into better places, and conversely those facing setbacks in life would probably prefer if they didn't have to move super far for cheaper housing. Which then frees up rental stock, and, well, you know the rest. Sometimes left-nimbyism/anti-"gentrification" feels effectively segregationist: not just that neighborhoods should stay historically poor, but that poors should stay in their historic neighborhoods too.
Speaking as somebody that is pro-YIMBY, but on the left, part of the reason the left is questions just turning on the money spigot to developers and eventually landlords without any oversight is the same as people on the left who don't believe in ACB or anything like that, but also think the police need far more oversight and training.
So, I think if you pushed a lot of YIMBY policies with no giveaways, but also set up rental registries, and actually had enough people to actually look into landlords that are breaking laws that are on the books that even conservatives and centrists agree should be limits on landlord's power.
In other words, Fund the Landlord Police.
The same way it would've been probably good for Obama politically to arrest a couple of Wall Street executives, who likely did criminal things, even if the charges didn't stick, it'd probably be good for some pro-YIMBY mayors to go after the worst of the landlords in their city.
Reading this article, I think what's going on here is the Liberal YIMBY version of the strategy the School Choice Right has used here in Florida for the past ~decade in the legislature:
Step 1: Initially do something that doesn't *actually* cause that much dramatic change in local school enrollment but breaks the conceptual link between zoned public schools / charters and public $ for private schools
-School Choice under very narrow circumstances. Public capital not allowed to build charters.
-Public scholarships for very restrictively in need kids for private schools, and they are funded by optional tax shifts by tax payers (instead of sales taxes on cars going to general fund of Florida, check a box on your purchase to divert to fund schooling for poor / in need children at private schools). Caps on number of scholarships / year.
-Those for it can argue how moderate the proposals #actually are, and the nay-sayers are being overly dramatic. But the point isn't dramatic change, but to break the taboos. Cite how few kids will actually be allowed to change schools / vouchers actually cost.
Step 2: Relax rules in Step 1. Since all the legislative text is already there, and the taboos already broken, the arguement is really around a few boring number strikeout / replacements in the legislative text.
-Relax school choice requirements.
-Increase regulations disparity between charter / public schools.
-Allow charter schools to use District funds for construction, not need to raise capital.
-Raise and then uncap vouchers. Expand elegibility to more and more students every year.
Step 3: Repeat and increment Step 2 every session with increasingly agressive but boring numbers changes that are harder to mobilize opposition to.
One of the things I don't hear a lot about is that a lot of new units coming online are all apartment rentals, in the name of "density." This doesn't help push people along to ownership, which is one of the main generators of past generations' wealth, because the supply of ownable units is still constrained. There may be more to rent but people are still basically trapped to renting in perpetuity.
I think a middle ground is more condos and townhomes, which can be built in greater density than single family houses and play the role as the new "starter home."
Except I think the primary goal of "Left YIMBYs" like Matt is to reduce homelessness or slum-like living conditions and people who are in those kinds of situations are most assisted by bringing more small apartments on line than creating opportunities to purchase a property since those people aren't going to have the creditworthiness/income/savings for many years to buy even a very modest dwelling in most markets.
In Massachusetts the MBTA Communities Act requiring cities and towns to zone for more housing only allows 10% affordable housing to try to avoid that deterring homebuilding. Some towns already had ordinances requiring more than that. For example Newton requires 17-20%. The city wants to include that in their new zoning to meet the MBTA Communities Act. The state is requiring a financial analysis to show that the higher percentage of affordable housing pencils out. The MAPC is analyzing data for a few towns and the data is due out soon. I'll be curious given other limits the new zoning has around number of stories allowed or commercial on the ground floor, if it will actually pencil out. In the last minute negotiations to get the zoning passed at all, the affordability requirements were made even higher if you wanted to add one more story. I'm sure those percentages won't pencil out unless you get some other sources of funding.
This issue is definitely one of those issues that has low political interest outside of a few urban centers and Florida. There is a lot of affordable housing where I live in Iowa.
That leads to an interesting question: Is there a large enough zoning bump so that projects for 50% of the units needing to be affordable to people at 60% of the AMI pencil out without other subsidy?
Part of the problem with the approach I see in Wes Moore's governance is he suffers from the same issue that many blue state Democratic governors do - interest group resistance and the challenges of running a high-low coalition. I won't pretend that there is any easy answer for the state teachers union or for the machine politics in Baltimore or PG County but I think he has more clout than he is willing to use so far.
Housing shortages in Maryland are driven by a few major things - a tendency for people to move to Montgomery and Howard Counties to be able to access DC for work without having to live or deal with Prince George's County, as well as a legacy of single family suburban expansion from the 80s through the 2010s around the Central corridor of the state while Baltimore continued to atrophy.
What has grown the economy in Maryland is not complicated. It closely tracks the rise of federal expenditure and the federal workforce. Maryland is a state where Larry Hogan was able to do what Republicans want to do and have their cake and eat it too - he cut taxes and regulations that allowed for more inward fixed investment, and lowered the deficit, while making highway expenditure more regionally equitable. The latter is in my view good politics but bad policy (as congestion is worst in places where Democrats traditionally used state funds as patronage). But none of this was policy wizardry. Maryland has advantages that allow it's balance sheet to be more flush than most.
But if Moore wants to consider how to grow Maryland's economy exogenous to what the Feds are doing, he would be well served in considering how to actually fix a lot of the social pathologies of Baltimore which unlike most American cities is genuinely a net negative economic anchor, sometimes in real terms. There was never any real push to make it attractive for young workers, and the areas in which people can find things to do are very limited, so it's not like touristry is a huge driver. Post industrial blight is a problem and no fixes have been offered or attempted. Misgovernance is comically awful (look up the recent mayors) and the housing stock is a complete mess.
Now, the level of investment necessary to get moving on that is probably just massive and not something any gubernatorial administration can do on its own. What is more feasible is finding ways to try to make PG County more productive. That means sponsoring more development and jumping on board with the gentrification of the Route 1 Corridor. Here, the problems are much more fixable and the local political establishment is far more friendly to the state gvt pushing its weight around.
Increasingly it feels like the most effective way to break the YIMBY v. NIMBY log jam is going to be through massive expansion of ADUs. Just need to make sure states don't attach disincentives to them, like onerous taxes or regulations.
Here is specific evidence based research on this topic!
Upzoning with Strings Attached: Evidence from Seattle’s Affordable Housing Mandate https://furmancenter.org/files/publications/Upzoning_with_Strings_Attached_508.pdf
This is great. It reminds me of my favorite old man pontification - “Know the difference”.
Elected officials sometimes promote policies that they know are not that meaningful but will be well received, and there’s no harm to them, so why not?
But sometimes they promote policies that they think are very meaningful but are really not.
It would be nice to think that they know the difference between these two approaches. The first one means they are a little cynical but not hurting anything. The second means they just don’t know, which is more concerning.
I just hope that they know!
Why does Maryland need to grow if it has the highest median income?
I worry this is a problem about misaligned goals. If your goal is to maximize how much housing reform is done in the long run, making even big changes seem modest is for sure what you want to do. But if your actual goal is to have some wins to point to, you pass whatever you can, however small, as long as you pass something - and then you make it seem as big and impressive as you possibly can.
One nice feature about a policy that breaks the “single family only” stranglehold without doing a lot is that the *next* set of reforms is now a lot easier to do, because it no longer requires breaking those policies - it just loosens up the conditions.
I’ve tuned out Biden officials testimonies of Joe’s vigor. If that’s true then he should strut his stuff. If it’s not, that will be super clear by November.
Only just realized after reading today's column that there's permanent air quotes around the term "affordable" in my head, almost entirely due to housing. It's ascending into the Misnomer lexical category which includes such terms as "equity" and "socialism": those words that have a formal technical meaning somewhere, but in lay practice mosly don't mean that. It's especially frustrating for those of us low enough on the ladder that "affordable" units actually...cost significantly *more* than current rent. Stark reminder that increasing supply matters so much more than greasing demand. "Even with a government handout, you can't officially afford to live here!" ~SF motto
Still, to the extent that some +supply is better than no +supply, yay housing, even if it must be "affordable" or limited to students or whatever. But I think it gets even worse than just making Pareto-suboptimal choices wrt the mix of market-rate units, or how much political capital gets set on fire. We know from many other disciplines that areas of concentrated disadvantage tend to, well, compound problems for everyone, with significant blast radius. The higher the "affordable" % gets, the more that's a concern - not just within the development itself, but also because viable parcels that can afford a net loss of that size are likely geographically correlated too. So in addition to a, let's say, 5% ratio likely leading to more *total* housing, I'd also expect it to be better dispersed.
One could object that it doesn't make sense to build "affordable" units that aren't near/in existing lower-end enclaves, but that seems...overly pessimistic? People do try and sometimes succeed in moving up into better places, and conversely those facing setbacks in life would probably prefer if they didn't have to move super far for cheaper housing. Which then frees up rental stock, and, well, you know the rest. Sometimes left-nimbyism/anti-"gentrification" feels effectively segregationist: not just that neighborhoods should stay historically poor, but that poors should stay in their historic neighborhoods too.
Speaking as somebody that is pro-YIMBY, but on the left, part of the reason the left is questions just turning on the money spigot to developers and eventually landlords without any oversight is the same as people on the left who don't believe in ACB or anything like that, but also think the police need far more oversight and training.
So, I think if you pushed a lot of YIMBY policies with no giveaways, but also set up rental registries, and actually had enough people to actually look into landlords that are breaking laws that are on the books that even conservatives and centrists agree should be limits on landlord's power.
In other words, Fund the Landlord Police.
The same way it would've been probably good for Obama politically to arrest a couple of Wall Street executives, who likely did criminal things, even if the charges didn't stick, it'd probably be good for some pro-YIMBY mayors to go after the worst of the landlords in their city.
Reading this article, I think what's going on here is the Liberal YIMBY version of the strategy the School Choice Right has used here in Florida for the past ~decade in the legislature:
Step 1: Initially do something that doesn't *actually* cause that much dramatic change in local school enrollment but breaks the conceptual link between zoned public schools / charters and public $ for private schools
-School Choice under very narrow circumstances. Public capital not allowed to build charters.
-Public scholarships for very restrictively in need kids for private schools, and they are funded by optional tax shifts by tax payers (instead of sales taxes on cars going to general fund of Florida, check a box on your purchase to divert to fund schooling for poor / in need children at private schools). Caps on number of scholarships / year.
-Those for it can argue how moderate the proposals #actually are, and the nay-sayers are being overly dramatic. But the point isn't dramatic change, but to break the taboos. Cite how few kids will actually be allowed to change schools / vouchers actually cost.
Step 2: Relax rules in Step 1. Since all the legislative text is already there, and the taboos already broken, the arguement is really around a few boring number strikeout / replacements in the legislative text.
-Relax school choice requirements.
-Increase regulations disparity between charter / public schools.
-Allow charter schools to use District funds for construction, not need to raise capital.
-Raise and then uncap vouchers. Expand elegibility to more and more students every year.
Step 3: Repeat and increment Step 2 every session with increasingly agressive but boring numbers changes that are harder to mobilize opposition to.
Use boring numbers to slowly boil the frog.
Yes, this is what I was going to say. It can be a nose of the camel strategy.
One of the things I don't hear a lot about is that a lot of new units coming online are all apartment rentals, in the name of "density." This doesn't help push people along to ownership, which is one of the main generators of past generations' wealth, because the supply of ownable units is still constrained. There may be more to rent but people are still basically trapped to renting in perpetuity.
I think a middle ground is more condos and townhomes, which can be built in greater density than single family houses and play the role as the new "starter home."
They allow young people to rent apartments instead of splitting a house, opening up more houses for owners.
Except I think the primary goal of "Left YIMBYs" like Matt is to reduce homelessness or slum-like living conditions and people who are in those kinds of situations are most assisted by bringing more small apartments on line than creating opportunities to purchase a property since those people aren't going to have the creditworthiness/income/savings for many years to buy even a very modest dwelling in most markets.
That’s not true because the cost of rent impacts the cost to buy. It’s called the price to rent ratio.
In some cities I hear the complaint that new buildings are all condos and don’t help renters.
Excellent article. It's for stuff like this u subscribe
In Massachusetts the MBTA Communities Act requiring cities and towns to zone for more housing only allows 10% affordable housing to try to avoid that deterring homebuilding. Some towns already had ordinances requiring more than that. For example Newton requires 17-20%. The city wants to include that in their new zoning to meet the MBTA Communities Act. The state is requiring a financial analysis to show that the higher percentage of affordable housing pencils out. The MAPC is analyzing data for a few towns and the data is due out soon. I'll be curious given other limits the new zoning has around number of stories allowed or commercial on the ground floor, if it will actually pencil out. In the last minute negotiations to get the zoning passed at all, the affordability requirements were made even higher if you wanted to add one more story. I'm sure those percentages won't pencil out unless you get some other sources of funding.
This issue is definitely one of those issues that has low political interest outside of a few urban centers and Florida. There is a lot of affordable housing where I live in Iowa.
Outside of a few urban centers, and the entire West Coast, and mountain states like Montana.