Tag Archives: local government

Can pro-housing movements be bipartisan in a polarized era?

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Jerusalem Demsas tackles an interesting question: how can housing advocates navigate a society marked by political polarization?

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One thing that helps bind an ideologically diverse pro-housing movement is that everyone in a community suffers when housing prices soar. Checking Zillow is a nonpartisan activity. The other thing keeping the coalition together is that, well, it’s barely a coalition at all. YIMBYs work in the context of their own states and cities. No national group dictates the bills they support or the messages they send.

On the other hand:

That doesn’t mean the bill will become law. Hobbs told reporters she’s still considering whether or not to sign the Arizona Starter Homes Act, noting that she prefers legislation with support from local jurisdictions, and this bill has been opposed by the local-government lobby. Either way, the political price is low. In a state as divided as Arizona, where the last gubernatorial election was between Hobbs and the right-wing firebrand Kari Lake, no one’s switching their votes over zoning policy.

Not even die-hard YIMBYs. “I’m a Democrat; I voted for the governor,” Solorio told me. “And if she ended up being the biggest NIMBY in our state, I’d still vote for her reelection because zoning, even though I’m one of the biggest zoning-reform advocates in the state … still doesn’t rise high enough for me to flip my vote.”

I have argued before that housing is a local issue. Theoretically, Americans are less partisan at the local government level as they focus more on addressing community needs. Or, perhaps they are just less partisan here compared to the state or national levels.

If the YIMBY movement is able to be less partisan, is this partly because such movements are still rare or not that popular? It takes a lot of work to convince American property owners that more housing should be added near them. It is one thing to support housing in the abstract and another to support it nearby.

Might another path forward be to have third-party candidates that only promote more housing? This means they would not get entangled in other issues and could focus on one issue.

Grocery taxes and local government revenue

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A recent announcement by Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker that he wants to eliminate the 1% tax on groceries has some suburban official upset:

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In his budget address in February, Pritzker proposed raising taxes by almost $900 million, but called for eliminating the 1% grocery tax as a regressive tax that hurts poor people.

Revenue from the tax goes entirely to local governments. The mayors laid out how that would affect their municipalities.

The change would cost retail-rich Algonquin around $2 million, about 10% of its budget, Sosine said, calling it “unacceptable.”…

Libertyville Village President Donna Johnson said the mayors are sensitive to financially strapped residents, but said the cuts affect basic services like police, fire, public works and roads…

In anticipation of such criticism, the governor’s office released a statement that it supports local government operations with more than $1 billion annually in additional funds from sources including an internet sales tax, gas taxes and transportation bonds.

Local governments have an ongoing balance to keep in generating revenues and then providing services to their communities. On one hand, they have mechanisms by which they can raise their own revenue. As noted above, the small grocery tax has generated some monies that municipalities count on. On the other hand, local governments receive revenue from other governmental bodies. As noted above, the state of Illinois provides monies to communities through a variety of means.

The concerns expressed by these local officials hint at both immediate concerns of needing to address a potential budget shortfall if the grocery tax is halted and long-term concerns of making sure state funds continue to go to communities. Cited elsewhere in this story is that the percent of income tax monies going to communities has dropped several percentage points in recent years.

What is the ideal percent of revenue for municipalities that should be generated within the community? (Is the correct answer something like 110+%?) Answering this question has consequences for zoning and land use decisions as well as what local governments will offer to residents.

Needing thousands of signatures and a ballot initiative to start building a new community

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To build on rural land, the backers of a proposed new city in California need to collect signatures and get on the ballot:

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Former Goldman Sachs trader Jan Sramek unveiled his closely guarded ballot initiative for the proposed community between San Francisco and Sacramento in January, a plan that envisions 20,000 homes, transit infrastructure, schools, jobs and green space for an initial 50,000 residents. He has since amended it twice to address concerns raised by Solano County and a neighboring U.S. Air Force base.

Thursday is the deadline for the county counsel’s office to give the ballot initiative a title and summary, which will allow signature gatherers to hit the streets in search of the 13,000 they need — and preferably thousands more as a cushion. The delays mean the campaign has just two months, not three, to collect signatures if they want to give elections officials the maximum time to verify them…

“We’ve been walking a line of making sure we get this right and also realizing that the clock is ticking,” he said. “At the same time, we believe that the amendments that we made to the measure will significantly help increase our chances of success in November, and it was definitely worth the additional time that it cost us to get it right.”…

California Forever could have avoided this had the campaign shared its proposal with local officials ahead of time, said Ross, the consultant. “It’s very much an outsider approach,” he said…

The initiative specifies that the development agreement will include the 10 guarantees made by California Forever, such as $400 million to help county residents and Travis Air Force Base families buy homes in the community and $200 million for the county’s existing downtowns. An environmental impact review would also be required.

A friendly reminder: you cannot just start building a city or community in the United States. You may have been able to do this in the days before states or even afterward with more undeveloped land and smaller populations. But, at some point, communities had to appeal for incorporation. Later, they could appeal for home rule or other recognition.

Today, land use is governed by zoning guidelines at the county and municipal levels. Any change usually has to be approved by some body of local government. Local officials and local residents may disagree with developers and property owners about the best use of land. Some proposals are turned down while others are approved.

It sounds like this proposal has multiple local governments steps to proceed through. Will there be enough signatures to get on the ballot? Will it be approved by voters? What will local (and state) officials do? There is a long way to go even before any ground is broken.

If Americans increasingly do not trust or feel they cannot get answers from local governments, what happens then?

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Even as trust in the federal government has fallen in the United States, Americans often have a rosier view of their local governments. What if those local relationships become more adversarial or less open?

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The council’s silence leading up to the decision highlights what some observers say is a striking trend toward secrecy among local governments across the U.S. From school districts to townships and county boards, public access to records and meetings in many states is worsening over time, open government advocates and experts say…

Few states compile data on public records requests, and laws governing open records differ by state, making a comprehensive analysis difficult. However, a review by Cuillier of data provided by MuckRock — a nonprofit news site that files and shares public records requests – found that between 2010 and 2021, local governments’ compliance with records requests dropped from 63% to 42%…

Incidents of governments suing journalists and residents for making records requests also have become more common, said Jonathan Peters, a media law professor at the University of Georgia.

Accessing local government meetings is getting more difficult, too. Elected officials are discussing significant public business in closed sessions, observers say. In some regions, they’re engaging in more combative behavior with constituents.

Many Americans like suburban, small town, and city local governments because they are more responsive to local needs, directly use local monies for visible benefits, and are more accessible to residents.

But, if local governments end up looking like what many perceive the federal government to be – faceless, cold, distant, and untrustworthy – what happens? Local government often works on the idea that any resident can show up or see what has been discussed. It is easy to contact local officials. Things need to get done and long arguments about abstract ideals or petty issues detracts from the local quality of life. Getting elected to a local position does not necessarily require independent wealth or political partisanship.

If Americans get to a point where they do not like local government, they might withdraw even further from civic life. Already, local voting turnout is very low. We can already find people online to interact with and drive where we want to rather than engage with neighbors and community members. I hope there is room for local government officials and residents to find ways to work together to serve their communities.

“Washington just isn’t set up to address the housing crisis”

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One writer looks at what the federal government, particularly HUD, can and cannot do regarding housing:

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The problem is structural: Washington just isn’t set up to address the housing crisis. The federal government plays a large, but largely indirect, role in the housing market. It operates through incentives, credits, guarantees, and subsidies. Rather than building housing, it makes mortgages cheaper and covers part of market rents. Rather than setting up retirement communities, it provides tax breaks for developers. You could say the country’s real department of housing and urban development is the Treasury Department, along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Senate committee responsible for housing is the Banking Committee…

It wasn’t always that way. Indeed, Washington played an aggressive role in expanding the country’s housing stock from the 1930s to the 1970s. As part of the New Deal, the government financed the construction of homes for tens of thousands of families. HUD was founded during Lyndon Johnson’s administration and, as part of his Great Society, set out to build or rehabilitate millions of housing units…

Something else is stopping Washington from addressing the housing crisis: the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. Land-use policy is not the purview of the federal government. It’s the purview of the states. Congress cannot rewrite Los Angeles’s building code. The White House can’t decide to upzone West Hartford, Connecticut. “I used to spend time with my counterparts in other countries and they’d say, Well, we just updated our national building code and national zoning code. We just wrote a national housing strategy,” Donovan told me. “I’d say, Wait, you have a national building code?”

As my colleague Jerusalem Demsas has written, we have delegated our housing policy not just to state and local governments but to every neighborhood’s homeowners association. Residents of a given place have ample opportunities—zoning-board meetings, candidate forums, historical architectural reviews, city-council open mics—to stop development. So they do. And thus mostly wealthy, mostly older people shape policy to their preferences: keeping new families out, maintaining single-family zoning, stopping development, and prioritizing the aesthetics of buyers over the needs of renters.

I understand the difficulties of creating federal laws or policies that then run into local government and zoning issues. I have written about this.

But, I am a little confused about the argument overall. It might be more accurate to say that the HUD and federal agencies have been reluctant to be directly involved in providing housing. The United States tried to provide some public housing in the mid-twentieth century and this did not go well. The federal government ended up retreating and, as the article notes, largely provides help now through housing vouchers.

At the same time, the federal government has an impact on financial markets, housing policy, and housing aspirations. Look at all of the interest in addressing interest rates. Or, the interest in mortgage regulations. Or, how politicians discuss homeownership. In other words, one journalist provided this quote of how housing works in the United States: “The former governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, told me this: “Most countries have socialized health care and a free market for mortgages. You in the United States do exactly the opposite.”

Could the federal government do more to provide actual housing units? Yes, it could. This would require a concerted effort and resources as this has not been the approach for a while. Does the federal government promote housing, specifically supporting single-family homes? Yes, it does.

Americans largely in favor of policies that would lead to more housing – but how many want that housing near them?

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New data from Pew shows large majorities of Americans are in favor of more housing:

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The findings from one of the largest surveys done on these issues shows significant but varying support for 10 policy initiatives to encourage more housing. At the high end, nearly 9 in 10 (86%) say they would back efforts to expedite permitting processes, while at the lower end, about half (49%) support the concept of allowing smaller lots, and homes to be built closer together…

Support for most of the housing policies transcended the usual fault lines of political party, region, race, income, and gender. The eight most popular proposals received clear majority support from Republicans, Democrats, and independents. In addition, 9 of the 10 tested measures received majority support from both renters and homeowners. All of these policies have either already been shown to work in improving housing affordability in American cities and towns or have recently been enacted by state or city policymakers hoping to do so.

Some approaches that stood out as especially popular—earning support from more than 70% of respondents—are similar to state laws that have passed in recent years (although the survey questions themselves were not modeled on any particular laws). For example, in 2023, California, Montana, Texas, and Washington took steps to simplify permitting for new housing. In recent years, California, Massachusetts, Montana, and Utah have passed laws to enable more housing near commerce or transit. And Maine, Montana, Oregon, Utah, and Vermont, among others, have enacted legislation to allow houses to have an accessory apartment or dwelling unit, as have many cities…

Respondents also broadly supported the reasons behind efforts to create more housing, with 65% to 82% seeing each reason as excellent or good. (See Figures 3 and 4.) However, in some cases, Republicans and Democrats prioritized different reasons. For example, somewhat more Republicans (68%) than Democrats (62%) identified freedom for property owners as an excellent or good reason, while more Democrats (81%) than Republicans (49%) chose reducing racial segregation as an excellent or good reason. But large majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents see improving housing affordability and allowing more people to live near their preferred jobs and schools as excellent or good reasons to change housing rules to allow more homes to be built in cities and suburbs. Successful state-level efforts to allow more housing have consistently received bipartisan support, and the survey results indicate that people with different political views can come together to support policies to end the housing shortage and affordability crisis for different reasons. 

Americans like the idea of owning housing. Add this to the current state of housing where both owning and renting is expensive and Americans broadly like more housing.

Here is my question: how many want this new housing near them? Even if Americans like more housing in the abstract, they may display much more resistance when this becomes a local issue. This is part of the reason housing is such a difficult issue to address in the United States: it is often a local issue where local governments and residents who want to control their surroundings. Housing is a good thing but people often move to a neighborhood and community and want to limit who else can live there.

Thus, the expression of this majority for housing is difficult to put into practice. Even state laws are often fraught as it can run against local desires. Take the efforts in Illinois to promote affordable housing at the state level: the initial legislation had limited enforcement and more would need to be done for state-level policy to provide more housing.

As noted above, one of the routes forward that could gather more local support involves policies that provide more opportunities for current property owners. Adding ADUs, for example, provides a choice for current property owners to generate more income or provide housing for family. Other policies might be viewed as funneling money to outside developers or providing housing for people who would not be as welcome in the community. If policies can add housing units and enrich/protect homeowners, they might find more support.

Chicago area suburbs passing ordinances to not allow long-term stays by migrants

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The Chicago suburb of Oak Park is devoting resources to helping migrants while other suburbs are trying to keep migrants from having long-term stays in their community:

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Unlike their counterparts in Schaumburg and Rosemont, Elk Grove Village officials aren’t yet taxing long-term hotel stays, but have crafted a local ordinance of their own to prevent migrants from coming back to town.

The new village rules bar hotel and motel owners from providing a room to anyone without certified medical documentation verifying that the individual is free of contagious diseases, such as malaria or tuberculosis, over the last 60 days. That certification can only come from a board-certified infectious disease physician, according to the ordinance. The requirement doesn’t apply to anyone who has been living in the United States for at least a year.

The ordinance also aims to prevent warehouse owners in Elk Grove Village’s sprawling industrial park, or the owners of vacant shopping centers, from turning their buildings into temporary housing. Property owners would have to get a village license and meet certain zoning and health and safety requirements, such as providing a complete bathroom including flush toilet, sink, bath or shower in each sleeping unit…

The former La Quinta Inn at 1900 Oakton St. in Elk Grove Village — since purchased and demolished by the village — was among the first suburban locations to host migrants in September 2022.

Elk Grove’s board was set to consider the new regulations Thursday, but moved up approval to a Nov. 20 special meeting once officials received a spreadsheet purporting to show suburban hotel locations being eyed to host new migrant arrivals. The list came from a restaurateur who was asked to provide meals for migrants, Johnson said.

The idea seems to be that by limiting sites where migrants can stay, a suburb can keep migrants out and/or discourage other actors from making arrangements for migrants to stay in a suburb.

It would be interesting to compare these suburban efforts to those that might be taking place in other suburbs in the Chicago region and in other metropolitan regions. Some suburbs have hotels or industrial properties while others do not. These conditions are the result of decades of planning and zoning decisions.

Furthermore, do suburban residents as a whole feel migrants should be temporarily housed in their communities and do their opinions differ from city or rural residents? One reason Americans like suburbs is the accessible local government and I would guess the ordinances in the suburbs mentioned above came, at least in part, do to input from local residents and business owners.

Chicago suburbs lobbying at the federal level – and it might pay off?

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Multiple Chicago suburbs employ lobbyists in Washington and those lobbyists may pay for themselves:

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Crashes at one of the state’s most dangerous rail crossings, in Elmwood Park, have killed seven people and injured at least 27 over the last few decades. Village officials want to build an underpass to make the intersection safer, but the village can’t do it alone — the $121 million price tag is more than four times the western suburb’s annual budget, according to Village Manager Paul Volpe…

Elmwood Park has paid $230,000 since 2020 to the transportation lobbying firm Tai Ginsberg and Associates, according to federal lobbying records. So far, the village has received $3 million in federal funds, Volpe said…

Illinois cities, towns, villages and counties besides Chicago spent about $838,000 on federal lobbyists in 2020, $1 million in 2021 and $1.4 million in 2022, lobbying disclosure records kept by the U.S. Senate and analyzed by the Chicago Tribune/Pioneer Press show. This year, they have spent a total of $720,000 so far, per lobbying disclosures. The grand total is slightly inexact because lobbyists are not required to report receipts under $5,000.

One town that’s turned its attention to opportunities in Washington is north suburban Niles, where the village board recently renewed a $60,000 contract with lobbying firm Smith, Dawson and Andrews…

So far, Alpogianis said the village is more than satisfied with that change. He pointed to a recent $200,000 federal grant for the Niles Teen Center the village secured with the help of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s office.

Suburbanites tend to like local government because they believe it is easier to convey their interests and they can see and experience local decisions. So getting more federal money that can be directly used to improve a local quality of life is a win, right?

I could imagine two primary objections:

  1. Do lobbyists always pay for themselves? The story cited highlights several examples of successes. Does this work for every suburb?
  2. Is federal money the money suburbs want? Local government beholden to federal dollars? Some might object, others may not care where helpful money comes from.

It would be interesting to hear from the lobbyist side about firms or individuals that do well for suburbs. What is their success rate?

Participatory budgeting in the US started in Chicago

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Participatory budgeting involves community members in discussions of and decisions about local monies. While this is not a widespread process, it started in this country in Chicago:

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Participatory budgeting, in which members of the public get a direct vote in how tax dollars are spent, has been around in Chicago for more than a decade, and made its U.S. debut here in the North Side’s 49th ward in 2009, led by then-Ald. Joe Moore.

The concept was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989 and is now used in cities across the world. In Chicago, residents vote on how to spend the majority of the $1.5 million in “menu money” City Council members are allotted for infrastructure projects each year — in the handful of wards that choose to use it. It’s also utilized in a handful of Chicago Public Schools as a form of civic education.

But despite its special ties to the city, participatory budgeting, or PB, has failed to launch on the scale advocates envision, lagging other U.S. cities such as New York and Boston that have implemented different versions of citywide programs. Now, proponents of participatory budgeting see an opportunity with Chicago’s newly elected mayor, who has vowed collaboration with residents, and whose transition report calls for Chicago to be “real pioneer” in participatory democracy.

Many local issues involve money. Where is it coming from? Where is it being spent? Who is benefiting and who is not? One local expert describes the benefits of participatory budgeting:

“That’s what our research shows is that over and over again, people who participate talk about how they learn more about what their needs are in their community, that they meet more neighbors, they feel more positively about their aldermen, they learn more about how government works, they’re more comfortable contacting government agencies and officials,” said Crum, whose group also helps alderpersons facilitate ward-level participatory budgeting processes each year.

Would doing more participatory budgeting help restore public faith in government? If a good number of residents feel that elected people or appointed officials are not using money in ways that are good for the community, it can be easy to criticize the whole system. At the least, participating in budget conversations can help reveal all of the possible priorities and how decisions might be made.

Who owns a neighborhood? Or, who can make decisions to alter it?

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A discussion of recent housing changes in Arlington, Virginia, an increasingly whiter and wealthier community, included this summary:

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Perhaps the opponents are beginning to accept that their community is not, has never been, exclusively their own domain.

Who owns a neighborhood? In many American communities, the people who live there might feel this way. They expect to provide input and exercise some oversight of what happens in their neighborhood. They want to exercise control over their own properties and those around them.

But, they do not do this on their own. They interact with other property owners and also engage with local governments. These local governments typically represent a broader community and have regulations about what can and cannot be done in neighborhoods.

In this particular case, the residents are single-family home owners and they have money and status. Thus, they really expect to be able to control their surroundings and they have means to back up their interests. Zoning in the United States often privileges protecting single-family homes.

In the end, however, local government has the task of considering the broader interests of a community. These may or may not align with the interests of a neighborhood. The neighborhood residents can respond by not voting for these local government officials and it is relatively easy in a smaller community to express discontent with local officials. But, action may already be underway that cannot be changed.

Or, here is another way to address the same questions: if every neighborhood will change over time, who gets to street this change and/or benefit from this change? Those with means and vested interests will have their own perspective and goals while a broader community might have another point of view.