January 14, 2025 Ward 3 Affordable Housing News Digest
District of Columbia
D.C. AG Announces New Housing Protection and Affordability Initiative
On January 13, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb announced the creation of a new Housing Protection and Affordability Initiative within the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) designed to streamline and prioritize OAG’s focus on preserving and expanding the District’s stock of affordable housing and improving the safety of District residents. These efforts will be led by Assistant Deputy AG Beth Mellen in a newly-created position of Senior Counsel for Housing Protection and Affordability.
The initiative “is designed to foster innovation and drive impact in preserving the District’s existing housing stock, improving security and habitability, and promoting the development of additional affordable housing.” Among other things, the new Senior Counsel will “develop strategies to advance affordable housing through advocacy during the zoning process, enhance enforcement of the housing and property maintenance codes, [and] address nuisance properties . . . .”
OAG’s Equitable Land Use (ELU) Section will move from the Commercial Division to the Public Advocacy Division and report to the new Senior Counsel.
Virginia
Senate Committee Passes ADU Bill — Barely
On January 13, the Virginia Senate’s Committee on Local Government voted 6-5 with 2 abstentions to report out SB 932, “Zoning; development and use of accessory dwelling units.”
The bill would require localities to include accessory dwelling units (ADUs) as a permitted accessory use in their zoning ordinances for single-family residential zoning districts. The bill restricts the fee a locality may charge for an ADU permit to $500 or less. The bill would also prohibit a locality from requiring (i) dedicated parking for an ADU except in densely developed neighborhoods; (ii) setbacks for an ADU greater than that of the primary dwelling; and (iii) consanguinity or affinity between the occupants of an ADU and the primary dwelling.
Maryland
MoCo Residential Property Tax Assessments Up Nearly 18%
Bethesda Today reports that residential property tax assessments are up 17.7% in Montgomery County over the last three years. This compares with an average increase of about 20.1% statewide, according to the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation.
Property tax assessments are distributed in three groups by the Department of Assessments and Taxation, so a third of Maryland homeowners received a new assessment for 2025 in December. Assessments for this 2024 group of homeowners increased by an average of about 23.4% across the state, and by 21% in Montgomery County.
Michael Coveyou, MoCo’s finance director, said that home values are increasing due to a decrease in available housing stock. “There is still low residential stock, and that leads to higher prices,” he said.
Federal
FTC to Sue Greystar Over Hidden Renter Fees
Bisnow and Bloomberg report that the Federal Trade Commission is planning to file a suit against Greystar, the country’s largest apartment landlord, alleging that the company falsely advertised rental prices by failing to inform potential renters of numerous mandatory fees. The suit reportedly alleges that the fees, related to things like pest control, trash services, and tenant background checks, were not properly disclosed to prospective tenants during the apartment application process.
Greystar manages nearly 800,000 apartments, making it by far the largest third-party property manager in the U.S.
News/Commentary
District of Columbia
The Ladybird Gets Financing
Bisnow reports that the development project on the former Superfresh site in Spring Valley, planned for 219 units with retail and branded “The Ladybird,” has obtained a loan to start construction more than eight years after it was first proposed. Mill Creek Residential and PGIM Real Estate secured the $92.3 million loan from U.S. Bank National Association.
Valor Development first submitted a 230-unit proposal for the site in 2016, then brought Mill Creek in as a partner two years later. “The project was delayed for years when neighbors in the wealthy, low-density section of Ward 3 complained about its size.” Valor has now sold its stake in the project.
The project sits in the Rock Creek West planning area, the section of the District that has seen the least new housing built over the past decade. The developers agreed to keep 12% of the units in the building affordable, a critical need for the area . . . .
Construction is scheduled to start early next month.
Is the RFK Campus Big Enough for Both a Stadium and Housing?
In Greater Greater Washington, Nick Sementelli argues that the RFK Stadium site — control of which was recently granted to D.C. by federal legislation — may not be big enough for both an NFL stadium and the other purposes that Mayor Bowser envisions, such as housing.
The bill transfers 174 acres to D.C. control. A 32-acre “riparian” area along the bank of the Anacostia River is cordoned off, to protect the river from polluting runoff. An additional 30% of the site, not including the riparian area, must be dedicated to parks and open space. That’s another 42.6 acres on which nothing — neither a stadium nor housing—can be built.
Without a stadium, the remaining 100 acres could be transformed into a neighborhood, housing maybe 12,000 people in about 8.000 units. “RFK presents one of the last remaining opportunities in the District to make a serious dent in [the housing shortage] in a single stroke, taking pressure off of other neighborhoods feeling the crunch and generating tax revenue to support public services.”
If the site is used for a football stadium, Sementelli points out that parking alone for an average NFL stadium could consume more than 100 acres for surface parking. Even using parking garages would take 50 acres. Paired with even the very smallest stadium, and the access roads necessary for the parking, that would leave at best 20 acres. “Twenty acres is not going to make true Bowser’s assertion that all things are possible at RFK.”
Sementelli says the only possible way for Bowser to create a world in which new housing and amenities can be built at RFK alongside a stadium is to buck the NFL’s pattern and just build less parking: insist on no more than 10,000 parking spaces and on keeping the entire complex — stadium and parking — to less than 50 acres.
Meanwhile, Washington Business Journal and Urban Turf report that structural demolition of the old RFK Stadium will begin at the end of this month. Sadly, Mayor Bowser said there won’t be an implosion.
Funding Obtained for Modernization and Preservation in Anacostia
Bisnow reports that Capitol Housing Partners LLC, an affiliate of the D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA), in partnership with Urban Atlantic Development, has closed on the financing of the rehabilitation of Henson Ridge I, a 124-unit rental community in Anacostia.
The District of Columbia Housing Finance Agency (DCHFA) issued $34 million in tax exempt bonds, and underwrote more than $25 million in Federal and D.C. Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) equity to support the preservation and modernization of affordable housing at Henson Ridge I. The rehabilitation will bring the property up to modern building codes and energy standards through the replacement of roofs, windows, doors, kitchens, bathrooms, and mechanical systems.
Henson Ridge I, with 18 one-bedrooms, 30 two-bedrooms, 38 three-bedrooms, 31 four-bedrooms and 7 five-bedrooms, will remain affordable with units restricted to residents earning up to 60% of area median income. 68 of the 124 units will receive subsidies through a Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) conversion to Project-Based Vouchers.
D.C. Metro Area
Federal Personnel Cuts Could Lead to a “Regional Recession for Housing”
A report from WTOP says, “Whatever ultimately comes of the new Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE], headed by Trump’s billionaire advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the potential effects on the D.C.-area housing market could be significant.”
The federal government employs approximately 283,000 people in the Washington metropolitan area, including 141,000 in D.C. itself, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Many of those employees are homeowners, and if DOGE recommendations result in drastic reductions in government employees in the area, whether through job cuts or moving agencies out of the capital region, the effect could be dramatic.
Corey Burr at TTR Sotheby’s said, “It’s going to free up a lot of inventory and potentially lead to a regional recession for housing.” An increase in the number of homes for sale in the D.C. region might be welcome, considering the biggest factor affecting prices and the pace of sales is the lack of inventory. But an outsized wave of DOGE-related listings could overcompensate for that inventory deficit — at least initially. “I don’t think it is going to be very long-lived, because I think there is a lot of demand that’s been waiting out there for the right opportunity to strike,” Burr said.
Nationwide
More Older Women Sharing Homes
In The Washington Post [gift link], Amanda Erickson writes that “As housing markets tighten and inflation spikes unpredictably, more older women are seeking shared housing options” — sometimes referred to as the “Golden Girls trend.” A rising number of seniors are cost-burdened when it comes to housing, and older women feel this economic stress more keenly, because they often have less saved for retirement then men.
The housing shortage and rising cost of groceries, health care, and insurance have made it harder for many older Americans to afford their monthly expenses, and home sharing is a way for older adults to maintain their independence.
Companies that help connect roommates say older adults are increasingly turning to these kinds of living arrangements. The number of people over 55 looking for roommates or spare rooms on SpareRoom.com, which hosts profiles for renters in 23 U.S. cities, has nearly doubled over the last five years . . . .
What Happens When You Reduce or Eliminate Parking Requirements?
A piece in The New York Times [gift link] looked at the effect on housing production when cities reduce or eliminate minimum parking requirements. The article notes that the U.S. has an estimated two billion parking spots — roughly seven spaces for every car.
Housing advocates, environmentalists and real estate developers say that getting rid of excess parking requirements can give space to desperately needed housing development and help make cities more walkable and less reliant on cars.
Hundreds of cities and municipalities have rolled back or completely thrown out parking requirements on real estate projects in the last decade. Many of these changes are recent, so the evidence is limited, but some studies show that more housing has been built as a result of the repealed rules. In New York, Seattle and Buffalo, for example, reducing or eliminating minimums has encouraged housing development that would not have been possible under the former mandates.
A 2022 study by the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit group focused on the New York City area, found that more low-income housing was built in city neighborhoods where parking requirements were reduced.
In Seattle, roughly 60% of the housing developed since changes were put in place in 2012 and 2018 would not have been possible under the old rules. In Buffalo, nearly 70% of the housing built after 2017 would have been illegal under the old parking regulations.
“It helps to unlock land that was formerly parking spaces,” one urban planning professor said. “It’s the simplest zoning reform you can have. Minimum parking requirements have done immense harm. We have so much asphalt.” “The problem is when you require a bunch of parking the market doesn’t want, it just adds to the cost of development,” said Jenny Schuetz, until recently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and now vice president of infrastructure for housing at Arnold Ventures.
Like most policy changes that affect the everyday lives of lots of people, changing the parking rules has received backlash from residents who are concerned that reducing requirements will lead to less parking overall and an increase of traffic from drivers hunting for on-street spaces. One urban planner acknowledged that “you definitely often end up in a situation where people have to walk farther to get to a parking spot, [or] circle longer before they get a parking spot,” but said “it’s also about management. . . . A huge bit of this is managing street parking well,” which he says many cities fail to do.
Co-Living with a Serial Killer?
According to Bisnow, co-living operator Common has been sued by a former resident who claims the company housed him with an accused serial killer. Filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on January 8, the lawsuit says Common breached its duty to the plaintiff by knowingly placing him with a dangerous roommate and ignoring his requests to be moved to another unit. The roommate was eventually charged in connection with four murders, after which Common finally offered to relocate the plaintiff.
Common quickly became one of the largest co-living operators in the U.S., expanding its portfolio to 7,000 units from 2020 to 2022. But by 2024, the company was facing increased pressure from high interest rates and tightening margins from growing operating costs, and the firm filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, indicating its plans to liquidate assets and cease operations.
The U.S. Has a Record Number of Spare Bedrooms
According to an analysis by Realtor.com, the number of “excess bedrooms” in the U.S. reached a record high in 2023 of 31.9 million, over four times as many as in 1980. Much of the trend in the increasing number of excess bedrooms is being driven by both declining household sizes and an increase in the number of bedrooms per home (although the latter has been flat for the last decade).
The trend of excess bedrooms is most pronounced in the Mountain West and South. In contrast, homes in densely populated urban areas where land is scarcer tend to have fewer extra bedrooms, reflecting the higher demand for space-efficient living and affordability. The New York Times also has a story on the Realtor.com report.
Why the Social Housing Movement Needs to Think About Design
Susanne Schindler, a research fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, says the recent wave of proposals for an American version of social housing is impressive and unrelenting, but “no one is talking about architecture. This is a missed opportunity for social housing.”
Schindler recounts reasons why social housing advocates avoid talking about design. But she argues that,
Making design central to the conversation is key to addressing some of the hesitations with respect to political expediency, the fear of standing out, and cost. Centering a conversation on design will allow the social housing movement to demonstrate that the public investment necessary to make its goals a reality will benefit not only the immediate residents, but everyone, in the long run.
YIMBY Movement Has Set the Terms of Debate Over Housing Policy
In Governing, Jared Brey writes:
The YIMBY approach to housing development has expanded from a small band of Bay Area activists sitting at their keyboards to a sophisticated nationwide movement. Their diagnosis of the country’s housing crisis — that housing is too expensive because there isn’t enough of it being built — has become taken-for-granted wisdom for lawmakers in both major political parties . . . .
Now, the YIMBY approach has spread far beyond California, and its favored policies, including legalizing accessory dwelling units, promoting denser housing near transit stations, and allowing multifamily housing in areas traditionally reserved for single-family homes, have since been taken up in multiple states.
YIMBYism vs. Supply Skepticism
Dissent magazine has an interesting debate between Ned Resnikoff, policy director for California YIMBY, and supply skeptics Brian Callaci and Sandeep Vaheesan of the Open Markets Institute.
Resnikoff argues that research firmly supports the YIMBY analysis that legalizing more housing development in supply-constrained cities will ease the housing crisis.
The empirical case for the supply-skeptic argument is thin and getting thinner every year; mostly, supply skeptics on the left are forced to rely on a small handful of already debunked studies with deeply flawed methodologies. But that’s OK, because the core of their argument is philosophical, not conceptual: deregulated markets exist to enrich capitalists, and so any policy that relies on market instruments will inevitably tend to benefit the ultra-wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
He rejects an either/or distinction between using market tools and employing non-market state intervention to achieve our ends; these two approaches are complementary. He also points out that much of the real estate sector comprises actors with wildly divergent interests: large developers who are satisfied with land use rules as they currently exist, smaller developers who want to be able to build a wider variety of housing, institutional landlords who profit off of housing scarcity, and homeowners who have become wealthy off of home price inflation.
Callaci and Vaheesan counter that the empirical evidence on the YIMBY program so far is decidedly mixed. “While we agree that upzoning may be necessary, and we recognize zoning’s racist and classist origins and effects (particularly in the suburbs), zoning reforms by themselves are unlikely to be sufficient.” They argue that housing markets are power-laden; “Simply increasing the number of landlords in housing markets is not enough to eliminate this market power, just as increasing the number of employers is not enough to eliminate their power over workers.”
Where we diverge from Resnikoff is when it comes to his conclusion that the modest program of deregulation of land use rules and subsidies to private developers are sufficient to make a major dent in the housing crisis, particularly for working-class families and individuals.
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[T]he overarching problem is that private developers and landlords simply lack the incentives to provide an adequate supply of decent housing at fair prices for all. Merely enticing private actors to build more, let alone just getting out of their way, will not suffice. To deal with this reality, the state has no choice but to take a more active role in the housing market, both by establishing and enforcing fair rules for market conduct — disciplining private actors through antitrust, tenant protection rules, and rent-regulation policy — and also through direct provisioning of decent housing, or social housing.
Book Review: Unlocking the Mysteries of Zoning
Common Edge has a review of a new book by Sara Bronin, Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World. Bronin chaired Hartford, Connecticut’s Planning and Zoning Commission from 2013 and 2020 and recently stepped down as chair of President Biden’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
The book explains how zoning operates in the U.S., both its limitations and dynamic potentials for creating life-affirming built environments. “The effects of bad zoning decisions — some unexamined and unchanged for more than 75 years — are replicated across America. Bronin’s book is a call to understand, revisit, and revise existing zoning codes nationwide.”
“[M]uch of the book is devoted to how zoning shapes our day-to-day lives. The impacts of parking and lot-size minimums on housing affordability, environmental degradation, and transportation alternatives are subjects that Bronin turns to often.”
New State Housing Laws Taking Effect This Month
Stateline enumerated new state laws taking effect this month that “aim to confront the nation’s ongoing housing crisis in various ways, from expanding housing options, to speeding up the development process, to protecting struggling tenants from eviction.”
The article gives a rundown of new laws in various states, including measures to combat landlord retaliation, to seal eviction records, and to streamline the process for building backyard accessory dwelling units (ADUs). Other states focused on the barriers preventing housing from being built by relaxing zoning laws to allow for new types of development, and put the onus on cities to make affordable housing available.
Rent-to-Own Startup Divvy Homes Being Acquired
According to Fast Company, the Maymont Homes division of Brookfield Properties is buying Divvy Homes. Divvy rents out houses while setting aside parts of the monthly payments for the resident to use as a down payment to buy the house.
With U.S. housing supply at record lows, Divvy initially gained traction with families that had been priced out of homeownership, promising them a pathway to the American Dream and distancing its brand from the rent-to-own category’s predatory history. Divvy bought a home of the customer’s choosing and then rented it back to them while setting aside a portion of their monthly payments for a future downpayment. Customers had three years to buy the home outright at a predetermined price.
As the company expanded to new cities, more and more residents complained that Divvy overcharged rent, didn’t maintain the properties and evicted renters at a higher clip. It’s been on a downward trajectory the last few years, with multiple rounds of layoffs bringing it down to about 100 employees.
Other States
Court Ruling Lets Massachusetts Enforce MBTA Communities Law
Streetsblog reports on a January 8 ruling by Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court that affirms that the state government has clear authority to sue cities and towns that insist on preserving exclusionary zoning laws near transit stations, in violation of the state's MBTA Communities Law. Enacted in 2021, the law established new requirements for municipalities in the MBTA service area to legalize zoning for multifamily development near MBTA stations. “[A] handful of holdout communities have resisted the state's mandate in an effort to preserve segregationist single-family zoning laws.”
The California Wildfires
Wildfires Could Exacerbate Housing Inequality
A story from AP News says, “The California wildfires could be leaving deeper inequality in their wake.”
[A] drive through the charred neighborhoods around Altadena shows that the fires . . . burned through a remarkable haven for generations of Black families avoiding discriminatory housing practices elsewhere. They have been communities of racial and economic diversity, where many people own their own homes.
Altadena, a community of 42,000, had been a mix of tiny blue-collar bungalows and magnificent mansions. About 58% of residents are non-white, with one-fourth of them Hispanic and nearly a fifth Black.
During the Civil Rights era, Altadena became a rare land of opportunity for Black Americans to reach the middle class without the discriminatory practices of denying them access to credit. They kept homes within the family and helped others to flourish. Today, the Black home ownership rate there is at 81.5%, almost double the national rate.
Recovery and rebuilding may be out of reach for many families, and pressures of gentrification could be renewed. The pastor at Altadena Baptist Church said, “We’re seeing a number of families who are probably going to have to move out of the area because rebuilding in Altadena will be too expensive for them.” He’s worried the fires will lead to gentrification, with Black parishioners, who make up half the congregation, paying the price.
Displaced Angelenos Wonder Where to Go
A story in The Washington Post says, “Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, faced an unprecedented housing crisis even before the past week’s fires destroyed an estimated 12,000 structures, including thousands of homes, and forced mass evacuations.” Across California, housing shortages were already acute in part because of land costs, a strict regulatory environment and limited supply.
The market leaves displaced people with few options. Some whose rent-controlled apartments burned can’t afford anything else in the city.
Los Angeles has taken steps to address its housing shortage in recent years.
But rebuilding after a major disaster brings new problems. Experts warn of the thorny logistics and complicated construction work that still lie ahead — made harder by the challenges of working in dense cities. Debris needs to be hauled from hundreds of side-by-side lots. Thousands of building permits will need to be processed, all while local governments lose much of their tax bases. There have to be enough construction workers, electricians and plumbers for reconstruction, but workers in those trades are often in short supply, experts said.
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The construction industry was already trying to keep apace with demand for new homes. But in the wake of a fire, flood or hurricane, there’s a rush on all of the parts, and workers need to start over — typically sending prices up. Lauren Finegan, a research associate at the MIT Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab, called it the “sheer magnitude of demand happening all at once” as people and businesses clamor for materials, skilled labor and building permits.
The Los Angels Times also had a story about fire victims competing to find new homes. “Thousands of families were displaced . . . when fires torched homes throughout Pacific Palisades and Altadena, kicking off a regionwide house hunt as victims scoured a tight market looking for homes to rent — or even buy.” The mass displacement has pushed up already sky-high prices, with rentals leasing for over asking, agents said, and every rental on the market is getting multiple offers.
Newsom Issues Executive Order to Expedite Rebuilding
As reported by The Guardian and multiple other news sources, on January 12, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order suspending key environmental laws to expedite rebuilding for wildfire victims in areas like Pacific Palisades and Altadena. The order modifies requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act and Coastal Act, aiming to cut permitting delays and fast-track approvals to within 30 days. This approach mirrors his stated desire to implement a “Marshall Plan” to cut red tape and restore affected communities as quickly as possible.
Effects on the Real Estate Industry
Bisnow spoke with members of the real estate industry in Los Angeles. Some, like Martin Muoto, the CEO of SoLa Impact, L.A.’s largest private affordable housing developer, had lost everything. “My house and everything I own is gone,” he told Bisnow. He’s back at work, “trying to get more housing units on the ground to meet the crisis.”
Muoto said he is urging the city to provide clarity around how rebuilding can happen. He has recommended that any home built in the last 10 years be granted over-the-counter approval to rebuild. Forcing families to go through the normal lengthy permitting process might accelerate the much-discussed and politicized outmigration of Angelenos.
Thousands of people going back to the market to build, buy or rent will drive up the price of housing, Muoto and another real estate executive said. And it will put a tremendous strain on the supply chain as materials and labor competition increase. Muoto’s SoLa owns 2,000 low-income housing units in the city and has 3,000 more in various stages of development. Muoto said SoLa will be pushing hard to accelerate the construction of its pipeline, but he’s worried about competing for labor against people rebuilding in the Palisades.
The co-founder of Waterford Property Co. said, “The regulations for building in areas like the Palisades are incredibly difficult. If there’s going to be meaningful recovery, we’ll need significant reform. Without it, I’m not sure how this ends well.” Another developer noted that the rebuilding will create a logjam at a very precarious time, given the World Cup coming to L.A. in 2026 and the Olympics in 2028.
The two co-founders of Housing Impact Partners said their company is involved in the development of a few properties that are delivering this month, and it is doubling down to get a few more ready for occupancy next month.
It expects to put together at least 1,000 vacant units across the affordability spectrum. Much of that was targeted toward housing high-acuity homeless individuals, and the pair said striking a balance between maintaining that momentum and meeting this crisis, which has created thousands of homeless evacuees, will be crucial.
Rebuilding Will Intensify California's Existing Housing Problems
Another Bisnow story says the rebuilding effort will multiply problems with housing affordability, construction costs and insurance that have plagued the Los Angeles area for years.
The extent to which the fires will increase multifamily rents depends on how many housing units are ultimately lost. Richard Green, Director of the University of Southern California's Lusk Center for Real Estate, said that 35,000 units lost would decrease the vacancy rate by about 1%, and that every 1% decline in vacancy leads to a roughly $200 to $300 per month increase in rent for the average unit.
California has an anti-price-gouging law that prohibits rent increases beyond 10% of pre-emergency levels for existing tenants and new leases. Those protections extend to areas wherever displacement increases demand for housing, but they’re temporary.
Many of the homes destroyed were expensive houses owned by wealthy residents who have more resources and options for their emergency lodging. While they are unlikely to take up residence in market-rate apartments, their displacement will still have a ripple effect of increased demand on the city’s already tight multifamily housing market. “Are you going to start to see more gentrification and displacement pressures on neighborhoods that were previously less desirable because they weren't in the hills, that are now more desirable because they aren’t in the hills?” the director of a tenant advocacy group asked.
A Denser Los Angeles Would Be More Fire-Resistant
M. Nolan Gray writes in The Atlantic [gift link] about lessons to be learned from the Los Angeles wildfires. He reminds us that well-intentioned policies sometimes have unintended consequences.
Policy didn’t just pull Californians into dangerous areas. It also pushed them out of safer ones. Over the past 70 years, zoning has made housing expensive and difficult to build in cities, which are generally more resilient to climate change than any other part of the state.
The classic urban neighborhood in America — carefully maintained park, interconnected street grid, masonry-clad shops and apartments — is perhaps the most wildfire-resistant pattern of growth. By contrast, the modern American suburb — think stick-frame homes along cul-de-sacs that bump up against unmaintained natural lands — may be the least. Several of L.A.’s hardest-hit neighborhoods resemble this model.
Infill townhouses, apartments, and shops could help keep Californians out of harm’s way, but they are illegal to build in most California neighborhoods. And even where new infill housing is allowed, it is often subject to lengthy environmental reviews, which NIMBYs easily weaponize.
At his blog Rent Free, Christian Britschgi, a critic of restrictive zoning rules, explained why he doesn’t think California’s policy choices made a significant contribution to the disaster. While Britschgi doesn’t address Gray specifically, he rebuts some of the arguments, and concludes, “[O]ne shouldn't overpromise the results of reform. A California with more rational, liberal zoning laws and more accurately priced insurance is still going to experience wildfires. Those wildfires will still destroy homes and tragically continue to claim lives. Better policy can mitigate the damage and reduce risk. But those risks can never be erased . . . .”
Britschgi acknowledges that:
A number of [California’s] policies will certainly make it more difficult for California to recover from the still-burning wildfires ravaging the Los Angeles area. . . . California's land use regulations made building housing an unnecessarily expensive and lengthy process before the fires. The burden of those regulations will only become more apparent as tens of thousands of homes and businesses need to be rebuilt.
Short Takes From Around the Country
Housing construction is up dramatically in Spokane, Washington, after the city passed a bunch of housing reforms — eliminating parking minimums, increasing height maximums, reducing lot minimums, allowing more missing middle housing, and expanding property tax exemptions for new multifamily projects.
AP News reports that New York Governor Kathy Hochul is pushing for new laws to make it harder for hedge funds to purchase large numbers of single-family homes in the state. Hochul said on January 9 that she will propose legislation this year that would require a 75-day waiting period before large investment firms can place bids on new homes hitting the market and limit certain tax benefits when the firms purchase homes. The New York Times also has the story.
Boulder, Colorado’s city council has signaled approval for a set of proposed “missing middle” zoning changes that could allow more than 7,000 new housing units to eventually be built in the city, according to the Daily Camera. While the project was initially dubbed “Zoning for Affordable Housing,” it’s now known as “Family-Friendly Vibrant Neighborhoods.” Council members favored changes that would allow more dwelling units per lot in medium-density residential zones, allow duplexes on any lot within 350 feet of a bus route in low-density residential zones, and exempt permanently affordable housing projects from the city’s site review process.
Gothamist reports that on January 10, a New Jersey appeals court rejected a bid by a coalition of 26 towns to halt the state’s new affordable housing law from taking effect. The law sets forth new affordable housing targets for the local governments. While a stay of the law was denied, the towns’ lawsuit will continue. By the end of January, all New Jersey municipalities must either accept the number of affordable homes the state is requiring them to build in their communities, or present an alternative number they reasonably believe they can develop over the next decade.
International
New Study Confirms That Increased Housing Supply Decreases Rents
A new research paper by Andreas Mense, “The Impact of New Housing Supply on the Distribution of Rents,” evaluates the impact of housing supply by looking at what happened in Germany when weather events delayed housing construction. Mense found that 1% more housing supply decreased rents in a city by 0.19%. The rent decreases are biggest for lower-quality units, suggesting that poor renters reap the biggest benefits from increased supply. And the impact of supply is equally large in high-demand markets.
Housing Access Boosts Fertility Rates in Brazil
A new study (“Housing and Fertility,” by Fazio, et al.) looking at housing lotteries in Brazil finds that homeownership prompts people to have more kids:
We find that obtaining housing increases the average probability of having a child by 3.8% and the number of children by 3.2%. For 20-25-year-olds, the corresponding effects are 32% and 33%, with no increase in fertility for people above age 40. The lifetime fertility increase for a 20-year old is twice as large from obtaining housing immediately relative to obtaining it at age 30. The increase in fertility is stronger for households in areas with lower quality housing, greater rental expenses relative to income, and those with lower household income and lower female income share. These results suggest that alleviating housing credit and physical space constraints can significantly increase fertility.
While it’s not clear whether this result will generalize from Brazil to richer countries with different cultures, it may be that greater housing abundance would help solve the global fertility crisis.
Spain Considering 100% Tax on Non-EU Homebuyers
AP News reports that “Spain is planning a raft of measures to address its brewing housing crisis, including an up to 100% tax on properties bought by people who are neither citizens nor residents of the European Union.” The plan is intended to address housing affordability and high rents. In announcing the proposal, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said, “The West faces a decisive challenge: To not become a society divided into two classes, the rich landlords and the poor tenants.”
Spain is in the throes of a growing housing affordability problem. Skyrocketing rents are particularly acute in cities like Barcelona and Madrid, where incomes have failed to keep up, especially for young people. Housing prices are also steadily rising, especially in cities and coastal areas.
Rental prices have also been driven up by short-term contracts mainly offered for tourists. Spain sees more tourists than almost any country in the world, having received more than 88.5 million visitors in 2024.
Raising taxes by up to 100% on properties bought by people who are not EU citizens and do not reside in an EU country would be a way to reduce the number of homes purchased by foreigners — often buyers of investment or vacation properties.
Spain also plans to build more public housing and allocate around 21.5 million square feet of residential land to a newly created public housing agency. Other proposed measures include higher taxes on holiday rentals, tax breaks and protections for landlords who provide affordable housing, and amending laws to speed up construction processes and expand the availability of land for private construction.
Calendar
January 16 — The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs will hold a nomination hearing for Scott Turner, President-elect Trump’s nominee for HUD Secretary, 10:00 a.m. Watch the hearing here.
January 21 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3C (Cleveland Park and Woodley Park), 7:00-9:00, online.
January 21 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3A (Middle Wisconsin Avenue), 7:00 p.m. in person at the McLean Gardens Ballroom and virtually via Zoom.
January 27 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3/4G (Chevy Chase), 7:00-8:45, in person at the Chevy Chase Community Center and virtually via Zoom.
January 30 — The D.C. Zoning Commission will hold a public meeting to consider final action on its proposal to rezone the Chevy Chase Civic Core and surrounding blocks of Connecticut Avenue. 4:00 p.m., online. The 30-day public comment period on the proposal closed on December 1.
February 13 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3E (Friendship Heights & Tenleytown), 7:30 p.m., online. Although not confirmed, representatives of the Office of Planning may attend this meeting to discuss OP’s rezoning proposal to implement the Wisconsin Avenue Development Framework.
February 18 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3F (Van Ness), 7:00-9:00 p.m., online.
To let us know of something we should add, please email christopher.vaden78@gmail.com.