Gradualism in the US
The downside of ambitious omnibus bills
An observation by Christian Britschgli in the latest "Rent Free" newsletter:
Last year, housing supply-siders in Colorado, Arizona, and New York went for broke on big, bold housing bills that tried to squeeze through the entire "yes in my backyard" (YIMBY) agenda in one fell swoop. They all failed.
This year, housing is still a top issue in all three states, but housing supply-siders are forswearing omnibus bills in favor of smaller, more focused reforms.
Matthew Yglesias had a similar observation in his roundup last August, YIMBYs keep winning:
Notably, the wins include Dem trifecta states (Oregon, Washington, Maine, Colorado, Rhode Island, New Jersey) along with GOP trifecta states (Texas, Florida, Arkansas, Ohio, Idaho, Montana) and divided governments (Arizona, Wisconsin, Vermont).
I should say that most of these housing reforms are pretty modest.
That said, politics is the strong and slow boring of hard boards, so you absolutely have to accept incremental change. One major lesson from California’s experience with zoning reform is that anything you pass to try to force cities to allow more housing can be undermined by stubborn and creative cities. You end up needing to pass more laws and do a bit of whack-a-mole across multiple sessions to really unlock change. So to an extent, you are necessarily playing a long game in which progress is going to be incremental.
YIMBY successes depend on pragmatism and compromise. One of the big failures this year came in New York, where Kathy Hochul endorsed a really ambitious set of reforms that then all fell apart. The more common and more successful model involves a layered approach to reform, where the most ambitious ideas don’t pass but some smaller stuff gets done as wavering legislators want to show that they aren’t totally indifferent to the issue.
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Previously: Copying and gradualism.
Noah Kazis summarized the New York state housing plan when it came out in February 2023. For a detailed discussion of reform options, see Kazis, Ending Exclusionary Zoning in New York City’s Suburbs, November 2020. Finally, Kazis has an interesting paper comparing NIMBYism in transportation to housing: Transportation, Land Use, and the Sources of Hyper-Localism, August 2021.
Nolan Gray summarizes an omnibus housing bill introduced in Kentucky by Steven Doan.