Is Donald Trump a NIMBY or a YIMBY? Given that the housing crisis is a nationally front-line issue, whether the next president reflexively supports housing development is an important question. be.
But Trump is going all-in on housing, as he is on many other issues. It’s hard to know where he actually stands.
The idea of eliminating zoning restrictions to produce more housing has had support in both parties at the federal level for decades. A bipartisan commission appointed by then-Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp in a 1991 report titled “Not in My Backyard: Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing” “Local governments across the country are adopting zoning, zoning ordinances, and building standards,” he pointed out. , and authorizing proceedings to block the development of affordable housing. ” However, the federal government does not control local zoning, so its influence is limited.
As a former real estate developer and a general advocate of deregulation, Trump should be the anti-NYIMBY housing advocate: YIMBY, the backyard yes. In fact, in an interview with Bloomberg last summer, he slammed zoning, calling it a “killer” and promising to lower housing costs.
Unless, obviously, doing so would threaten suburban areas with single-family zoning regulations, the most far-reaching restrictions on development in California and elsewhere. President Trump has consistently said the idea of high-density suburban housing threatens the American way of life. “The destruction of suburbia ends with us,” he vowed during his first term.
NIMBYism crosses traditional political lines, suppressing housing in some of California’s most ostensibly liberal enclaves, but it also overlaps in many ways with Mr. Trump’s coalition. MAGA activists who prefer suburban homes and neighborhoods are increasingly at odds with the YIMBY movement, as evidenced by their determined resistance to housing growth in places like Huntington Beach.
Recently, Trump and others have blamed illegal immigration for the housing crisis, suggesting that deporting as many as 10 million immigrants would suffice for the real estate market. However, illegal immigrants tend to occupy the lower end of the housing stock and often live in crowded conditions. So even if a mass deportation were to occur, it is unlikely to help millions of native-born Americans locked out of the market suddenly realize their dreams of owning a home in the suburbs.
One of the few concrete ideas President Trump has proposed to increase housing supply is to open up federal land to housing development. Last year, he floated the idea of using federal land to build a “Freedom City,” a kind of unregulated enterprise zone for housing, businesses and flying cars.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, President Trump’s pick for Interior secretary, could be crucial to the administration’s housing strategy. Mr. Burgum will manage the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, which own vast tracts of land in California and throughout the West, nearly half of which is federally owned. (The U.S. Forest Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, also claims ownership of large swathes of states and territories.) Much of the coverage of Burgum’s appointment has focused on the prospects for fossil fuel extraction from federal lands. However, Burgum may be the key. A plan to build housing on land in the United States.
But developing federal land is legally difficult, as is conveying such land to local governments that wish to build on it. For example, the Bureau of Land Management is in a constant battle with Clark County, Nevada, over whether more land should be made available for development in the Las Vegas area. Additionally, much of the federal land is mountainous, remote, or both.
Burkum has been a strong advocate of building more dense housing in cities and suburbs, as well as zoning reform and housing development in general, which seems to contradict the MAGA agenda in some ways. is. Burgum, a wealthy technology entrepreneur, has poured millions of his own money into revitalizing the downtown area of his hometown of Fargo.
Of course, the federal government also owns a lot of land in urban and suburban areas. But the land is out of Burgum’s control, and as the recent battle over the Veterans Administration campus in West Los Angeles made clear, federal agencies with other missions are reluctant to give up the land for housing. It turned out that he was extremely resistant.
During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt also promoted the idea of building more housing on federal land, both in suburban and rural areas. This effort led to some innovative ideas, but ultimately only a few lots were built.
Trump’s Free Cities is likely to suffer the same fate. It is difficult for the federal government to implement local zoning reform and housing development. It becomes even more difficult if the president cannot decide where he stands on the issue.
William Fulton is the editor and publisher of the California Planning and Development Report. He is a former Mayor of Ventura and former San Diego Planning Director.
