Pick Your YIMBY

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. 

It’s election day here in D.C., so our lead story looks at the district’s mayoral race, where the two leading candidates both talk a good game on building more housing, but also have some anti-supply skeletons in their closets. 

Additionally, the newsletter includes stories on:

• Yet another church being told its homeless shelter violates the local zoning code
• An inventive challenge to city-sponsored affordable housing in Phoenix, Arizona
• A new federal bill that would suspend “Buy America” requirements for federally funded housing developments

Today, Washington, D.C., voters head to the polls to vote in their respective party primaries. 

Given how blue the district is, the Democratic primary might as well be the general election. Most eyes are on the mayoral contest that will pick the likely successor to retiring, three-term Mayor Muriel Bowser. 

The most recent polling shows that D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George has a commanding lead over former councilmember Kenyan McDuffie. 

Lewis George is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, who is running to the left of McDuffie, a former councilmember who’s generally seen as the status quo successor to Bowser. 

That puts plenty of distance between the two candidates on issues of taxation and public safety. On housing, McDuffie and Lewis George are remarkably aligned. 

If you scan their housing platforms, both talk about the need to cut entitlement times, build more housing near transit, allow more “missing middle” homes in existing neighborhoods, reduce minimum parking requirements, and pass a more aggressive comprehensive plan. 

That’s driven a split within the district’s wider-tent housing-supply movement that wants to see D.C. build its way to being a more affordable city. 

The local D.C. YIMBY chapter and the city’s main urbanist policy think tank, Greater Greater Washington, both endorsed Lewis George. 

The various real estate trade associations have lined up behind McDuffie, as have some prominent YIMBY commentators like Matt Yglesias. 

The pro–Lewis George YIMBYs point to her more ambitious growth targets (she wants D.C. to build 72,000 housing units, as opposed to McDuffie’s 12,000) and more full-throated support for zoning reform and other YIMBY housing and transportation policies. 

In an op-ed published by Greater Greater Washington, Lewis George herself made sure to cite Austin, Texas, and Minneapolis as models to emulate. The two cities have a good reputation among YIMBYs for upzoning and building more housing. 

Her critics argue that her other left-wing commitments on housing undermine her more full-throated embrace of zoning reform. Lewis George voted against a bill aimed at reducing the massive eviction backlog in D.C. courts and reforming its easily exploitable Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act. 

McDuffie, in contrast, voted to speed up the clogged eviction process, which was causing a nonpayment crisis for a lot of affordable housing. While he’s a little less practiced at urbanist speak, he’s also consistently campaigned on the need to cut red tape to ensure that D.C. builds more. 

On the flip side, the longtime councilmember has not always been a consistent vote for upzoning and permit streamlining. While he voted in favor of recent reforms to D.C.’s eviction process, he’s also supported laws that prevent landlords from screening tenants based on their criminal history. 

Contra other big, blue cities, D.C. actually has a decent record of building new housing and staying relatively affordable as a result. A major question in the mayor’s race then is who can keep that growth going.

Much of D.C.’s housing growth has been concentrated in formerly industrial and commercial areas in the NoMa and Navy Yard neighborhoods. With those sites now developed, new housing will need to go into existing residential neighborhoods. 

Which candidate is going to be better about permitting that infill housing they both say they want? 

One could say McDuffie, as the more pro-business candidate, would be better at ensuring that new infill development is financeable and isn’t blocked by overgenerous “tenant protections,” affordable housing mandates, and other policies Lewis George favors.   

On the other hand, McDuffie’s base is generally older voters more worried about crime than housing affordability. Perhaps Lewis George, who is backed by younger renters, would be more willing to push through controversial upzonings. 

Ultimately, it’s a question of trust and bigger-picture priorities.

As Joe Bishop-Henchman, an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in the Eckington neighborhood and occasional Reason contributor, put it to me recently, “[McDuffie and Lewis George] are saying the same thing on housing, so pro-housing people are having to judge which candidate they support by which one they believe will do the pro-housing things they’re saying.”

Another day, another church is cited for zoning violations for letting the homeless sleep on its property. 

The Christian Post reports on a case out of Ocean City, Maryland, where city officials threatened St. Paul’s By-the-Sea Episcopal Church with $1,000 daily fines for opening an overnight homeless shelter in its parish hall. 

The church had initially allowed the homeless to set up tents on its property. When that proved controversial with the city, they brought the homeless inside. But Ocean City officials allege that the church’s zoning does not allow for “barracks-style living quarters.” 

The church says that they plan to sue the city in federal court to protect their right to operate a homeless shelter. 

Churches’ charitable activities often run afoul of local zoning codes. Shelters in commercial zones, soup kitchens in residential areas, even prayer gatherings in private residences all have attracted citations from local officials. 

Federal law and the First Amendment provide some additional protections to religious land uses. But that doesn’t stop every zoning administrator from trying to fine the good Samaritan.

Arizona is one of four states that ban “mandatory” inclusionary zoning policies that require developers to include discounted affordable housing units in their projects. 

A Phoenix property owner now claims this ban prohibits his city from selling land to a developer on the condition that it be turned into a deed-restricted affordable housing development. 

Per the Arizona Republic, Bramley Paulin has sued the city of Phoenix over its agreement to sell a plot of downtown real estate to affordable housing developer Pennrose, which plans to build a 64-unit development on the site. 

Paulin, who is represented by the Goldwater Institute, makes two claims against the sale. One argues that the land is being sold at below market value, in violation of the Arizona Constitution’s gift clause. 

Because the city requested proposals that include affordable housing, the lawsuit argues that the development agreement between Phoenix and Pennrose also violates the state’s ban on mandatory inclusionary zoning policies. 

On Monday, Reps. Mike Flood (R–Neb.) and Maggie Goodlander (D–N.H.) introduced a bill that would temporarily exempt federally subsidized affordable housing from “Buy America” requirements. 

The federal government has long had requirements that major infrastructure projects use American-made steel and iron. The infrastructure law passed in 2021 under President Joe Biden expanded both the number of materials that needed to be American-made and the range of projects that were subject to Buy American provisions. 

Under the 2021 infrastructure law, federally subsidized affordable housing developments now had to source American-made copper, glass, and drywall for the first time. 

Because American-made materials are more expensive (hence the need to require project sponsors to buy them), the costs of delivering federally subsidized housing projects increased. 

Flood and Goodlander’s bill, the Building Housing Affordably Act, would suspend most federally funded housing projects from the need to comply with Buy America provisions while the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) completes a study on those requirements. 

The bill would also direct HUD to create a faster process for reviewing developers’ requests for waivers from Buy America provisions.

• California lawmakers continue to introduce bills that prevent homeowners in the wildfire-ravaged areas of Los Angeles from using state streamlining laws and zoning reforms to help rebuild their properties.
• The Gotham Housing Alliance, a group representing landlords, hired actors in zombie makeup to lurch toward a Rent Guidelines Board hearing as a protest of a rent-stabilization law they say is leaving “zombie” apartments vacant.
• The back-and-forth over Congress’ housing bill continues, with the Senate proposing its own compromise measure.
• Homebuilders report being in a glum mood over high material costs and mortgage rates.