The Solution to the Housing Crisis is More Housing

Most of America’s big cities are governed by Democrats.

In fact, it’s an overwhelming majority of them.

While these urban centers are the economic and cultural engines of the United States who pay the majority of taxes (you’re welcome, red states), they do have some serious problems that need to be addressed.

Two of the biggest are crime and housing.

Now, crime rates have risen all over the country (though they are starting to descend), especially in parts of the country that have loose gun laws, economic weakness, and overall poor governance.

Again, largely red states.

But there is an issue that many metropolitan areas and blue states are struggling with more than red states.

Having enough housing.

This is not a bad problem per se. If demand for housing is high, it means that a lot of people want to live in your area.

But it has gone past a problem and into a crisis in many urban areas, especially those on the West Coast.

To be frank, housing policy is where Democrats at the local level have done the worst, and it is largely the fault of rich White liberals who block new housing in the name of higher property values and—let’s not kid ourselves—pricing out people of color, primarily Black people. They will, however, frequently cite “neighborhood character” as the principal reason when they want to keep “those people” out. Comments I heard whenever I door knocked in Minneapolis only prove this point.

Think of the Armitages from the movie Get Out.

It’s also the fault of NIMBYs (Not in My Back Yard) who oppose development for its own sake, regardless if they are left- or right-leaning NIMBYs.

In addition to housing, NIMBYs are also a significant part of the reason it is so hard to get big and vital projects done. It is incredibly easy to sue projects into oblivion, which is the main reason I support permitting reform.

The solution here is quite simple in concept but difficult in execution.

Build more housing.

For those of you living on the West Coast, you know just how bad the homelessness crisis is.

Solutions

The immediate, medium, and long-term solution to this crisis is to build more housing, especially dense and affordable housing.

But to make that happen, we need to change zoning laws that make it next to impossible to build dense housing anywhere except for a few places.

Thanks in large part to zoning laws written to enforce segregation, it is almost impossible to build duplexes and apartment buildings outside a few select areas in most American metropolises. So repealing these zoning laws is of vital importance. They must be replaced by laws that encourage the building of housing, especially affordable housing.

Thanks to the rise of working at home, many downtown areas are bereft of office workers who previously made up their tax base. A possible solution is to convert these empty offices into housing. Not only will this expand the housing supply, but it will also help to stabilize the tax base and help downtown businesses that have been hard hit by the decline in onsite office work.

Solutions to the housing crisis are not just related to homelessness. Denser housing can help mitigate the effects of climate change and aid in climate resilience, for example.

But it is absolutely vital that more housing is built for more people and fast, or at the very least converted.

This crisis cannot go on.