Like Richard Nixon going to China, sometimes a change in policy is sold best by an unlikely proponent. Vice President Kamala Harris leading the charge for more housing supply in the United States shows just how far her party has come. Democrats have long been skeptical about overhauling supply and regulation to make housing more affordable. Harris’ $40 billion housing agenda, released last week, is a welcome recognition that drastic changes are needed to close a national shortage of 4.5 million homes.
Harris, who hails from California, the western epicenter of the national housing crisis, wants three million new homes in four years, on top of what homebuilders were already planning. That’s a punchy target: developers completed just 1.5 million units in 2023. Her campaign aims to encourage what it calls “innovative” approaches to affordable housing, like providing grants and loans to local developers and non-profit organizations. The plan leans heavily on zoning reforms and employs language about cutting red tape usually used by Republicans. Former President Barack Obama endorsed the shift in his speech to the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, saying his party needed to "clear away the ideas of the past" and slash outdated rules.
Nevertheless, a nationwide housing drive risks stoking homeowners’ ire in a country where the middle class derives most of its wealth from real estate and two-thirds of dwellings are occupied by their owners. Residents seek to defend property, opens new tab values at planning board meetings, for example by delaying projects so they become uneconomical. Harris’ plan would not remove local control but would use federal power to support more building.
I live in a rural area and I'm sort of a NIMBY. I live in my area because there are forests and fields and nature. I didn't build a house, I bought one built in the 1970s. I don't think everything needs to be growing all the time, new houses are being built on every road around here and what was a nice rural area is gradually becoming the same Walmart and McDonalds suburbs as you see all across the USA. If I wanted to live in suburbs it would have been easy to move to suburbs.
The board of supervisors here is always saying "We need more jobs and we need more growth." Ironic because the majority of them are developers, and my property taxes have gone up over 12% each of the past 3 years.
I don't think the housing crisis is being caused by people who live in rural areas and don't want there to be endless urban and suburban sprawl. Most people want to live in urban areas, because those areas are where the jobs, shops, and infrastructure are. Sprawl is expensive, inefficient, and bad for the environment. It should be prevented as much as possible. But, the only way to prevent it is to make housing in urban areas, the area where people want to live because it's where everything is, more affordable, and that means building more, dense housing in those areas. The real NIMBYs are people who own low density, single family homes in urban areas and don't want higher density housing to be built in that area because it would bring down their property values.
like thedemonbuer said many folk would love to live in the city and many live further due to cost. I live in the suburbs of a city because of cost but I would absolutely love to be in a condo in the city proper and estatic to live in a highrise downtown. Theoretically these should be some of the cheapest per square foot given the efficiency with building.