Good news from Andrew Ackerman and Nicole Friedman over at the Wall Street Journal who are reporting that the Biden administration actually wants to do something to help fight this housing shortage. (WSJ)
- The details were in the recent infrastructure plan put forward by Biden. The plan “includes a competitive grant program to target so-called exclusionary zoning laws that the administration says have inflated housing and construction costs and locked families out of areas with more opportunities.”
- How would this money help? Joseph Gyourko said the grant program “would help compensate for the costs and burdens of new construction, such as increased congestion, that can stymie affordable housing projects.”
- Does zoning matter this much? Yes, according to the National Association of Home Builders, “Regulatory compliance accounts for about 24% of the price of a newly built single-family home”
Read More at Wall Street Journal
NIMBYs are obviously going to fight this tooth and nail. They successfully got Trump to reverse his position on this issue before the election. In 2019, President Trump signed an executive order that “address, reduce, and remove the multitude of overly burdensome regulatory barriers that artificially raise the cost of housing development.” However, by election time 2020 President Trump had changed his mind. (POLITICO)
At least a dozen times since June, he has painted Biden as a threat to the suburban American Dream. He even enlisted HUD Secretary Ben Carson to jointly pen an Aug. 16 op-ed saying Democrats want to reimpose “the Obama-Biden dystopian vision of building low-income housing units next to your suburban house.”
NIMBYs are a powerful group. Let’s hope the Biden administration can stand strong against them to help to make housing more affordable going forward.