City of Yes We Can
The Abundance Agenda goes national
Hi All,
We often start these emails by gesturing to the national news that’s sucking up the media’s attention before turning ours to the local, under-the-radar stories more likely to impact your lives.
This time, the national story is the local story.
If you watched any of the DNC last week—amidst Democratic leaders’ invocations of joy and reclamations of freedom—you might have noticed something relevant to our work: a former president, a current president, and a potential future president all went full YIMBY.
In her acceptance speech, Vice President Harris said, “We will end America’s housing shortage,” echoing a tweet from earlier in the week from President Biden: “The bottom line is we have to build, build, build.”
But it was President Obama who most fully articulated the shift: “if we want to make it easier for more young people to buy a home, we need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build…” As Ezra Klein said in his recap of the night, “Welcome to the abundance agenda, Barack Obama.”
It’s extremely notable that national Democratic leaders have embraced the reality that there are too many barriers to building homes, and that processes once meant to protect the environment and community input are now causing harm. The housing shortage is driving up costs, driving climate-damaging sprawl, and driving new neighbors out of the places they want to live.
Klein has long talked about how Democrats are particularly in thrall to fetishizing these processes, making blue states especially expensive and slow to build in—whether housing, rail, or renewable energy.
Because it’s not just housing: the national Democratic platform also lays out investments in transit and reductions in barriers to permitting clean power, expanding on what Tim Walz has already done in Minnesota. (On the other hand, Project 2025 rejects any effort to overrule local zoning, defunds assistance to local transit agencies like the MTA, and undoes the IRA’s climate action.)
Why have national Democratic leaders adopted YIMBY ideas, beyond their being good policy?
For them, it’s crucial politics. Housing prices are one of the main reasons voters, especially younger voters, see the economy as failing; and insofar as inflation is the albatross around Democrats’ necks, it’s housing prices that are the primary culprit. Further, failed blue state governance means population loss—and loss of electoral college votes.
Some purple and red states have passed abundance policies with bipartisan coalitions; one big question coming out of this election will be what happens if the Abundance Agenda becomes the Democratic Party agenda.
That would be good news for New York, with our Democratic supermajorities in Albany and the City Council. But it remains to be seen what our electeds will do in response to this clarion call from the national leaders they went to Chicago to cheer on.
Will our city councilors, hoarse and hungover after celebrating Kamala, bring the same fervor to supporting the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity?
Will Kathy Hochul, who got a plum speaking slot at the DNC, undo her single-handed defunding of the MTA—no Trump win required—and start congestion pricing?
Or will New York’s Democrats support one set of policies for the country but another in their own backyards?
Ryder
P.S. RSVP now for our September happy hour on Wednesday, 9/18. Look forward to seeing you!