Democrats Are Pushing One Policy Loud And Clear: Build, Baby, Build

CHICAGO — Democrats want to build more housing — from the window to the walls.

Political party conventions are rarely policy-heavy. The star-studded convention in Chicago, which featured a rendition by Lil Jon of his hit song “Get Low” during the state roll call, has been no different.

But there was a surprisingly consistent, substantive theme that cropped up on both the mainstage and the sidelines: construction of new housing.

President Barack Obama, in his keynote speech Tuesday, said Vice President Kamala Harris knows “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we want to make it easier for more young people to buy a home, we need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people in this country.”

“That is a priority,” he added. “And she’s put out a bold new plan to do just that.”

Activists I talked to saw it as a watershed moment that lack of housing supply was cited by both the former president and the current president as a central issue. (“Folks, they’ll make housing more affordable, building 3 million new homes,” Joe Biden said in his own primetime speech.) Harris herself is sure to follow in her own speech on Thursday.

The rhetoric is striking partially because housing hasn’t been a prominent campaign issue since the 1990s, when the party pushed hard to increase the rate of homeownership. What Harris is proposing is different — bringing down costs by building more units, whether you want to buy or not.

Adrianne Todman, who leads the Department of Housing and Urban Development, told me in an interview at the CNN-POLITICO Grill here that the reference from Obama was “phenomenal.”

“But not unsurprising because it is something that is polling well,” she added. “It is an important issue for Americans across the country.”

Despite the obvious importance of the issue, it’s hard to message: Many of the policy issues that affect home prices and availability are complex financial rules. It’s also historically been seen as most salient for lower-income people, who may be less likely to vote. And affluent homeowners have historically recoiled from housing-supply policies that involve changing zoning laws, a sentiment Donald Trump has rallied by casting such efforts as a threat to the suburban way of life.

But lack of affordable housing is now no longer confined to coastal cities and is increasingly affecting middle-class Americans — with many smaller cities suddenly seeing an influx of people from larger metropolises. That’s why we’ve heard leaders in rural red states like Montana and Utah calling for new housing policy, too.

It’s commonly cited as a top issue among, well, many regular people I talk to, with the potential to bring in more votes. Analilia Mejia, co-director of grassroots activist organization Center for Popular Democracy, told me that renters are 25 percent of eligible voters, and many of them are still on the sidelines of the election.

That dynamic has now created an opening for a simple, tangible message — which also happens to be an actual thing that needs doing: Build, baby, build.

That message doesn’t fit neatly into other Democratic economic policy themes: boosting worker power and fighting Big Business. There are intersections, certainly — there’s still vilification of big corporate landlords, and both Biden and Harris have embraced policies aimed at restricting their ability to raise rents — but the notion of building more housing is a bipartisan one that is supported by policy wonks of all stripes.

Of course, the broad umbrella of “more housing” masks deeper questions about the extent to which we need more housing, period, versus housing that is specifically designed to be affordable to the most disadvantaged people. Different localities would have different answers.

Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat with a top spot on the House Financial Services Committee, told a room of activists on the sidelines of the convention that having more housing isn’t enough if people can’t afford it.

“When I go into L.A. every weekend, I drive by all of the new units that are being built that are supposed to be affordable for rentals,” she said at the event, hosted by CPD. “Nobody’s there.”

That view from Waters is not the one we’ve heard from the primetime speakers so far. The louder message from Democrats here has focused on the topline: build more.

Still, getting more units constructed is easier said than done, particularly because of restrictions at the local level like zoning and permitting that make it difficult to build denser housing, as Obama referenced. The federal government cannot simply override those municipal regulations.

Harris herself name-checked that problem in her economic policy speech last Friday — another striking victory for the movement to build more housing.

“As president, I will work in partnership with industry to build the housing we need, both to rent and to buy,” she said in North Carolina. “We will take down barriers and cut red tape, including at the state and local levels.”

In the meantime, Harris is also proposing a subsidy for first-time homebuyers, building off a similar push by Biden. The idea has raised concerns among experts that boosting demand for homes in this way will simply push prices up further — unless specifically directed to places where there aren’t significant barriers to construction.

In a briefing for reporters hosted by Bloomberg News, campaign adviser Brian Nelson waved off those worries, noting that the proposal is only geared toward people buying their first house. “We have a good sense of what that universe is, and [we’re] doing that in the context of this four-year push to build these 3 million houses,” he said.

Figuring out the balance is perhaps a conversation for if she wins the election.

“Nobody thinks the Senate is poised to pass a $40 billion subsidy package yet,” said Alex Armlovich, a senior housing policy analyst at the center-right Niskanen Center. “The current package is a popular, feel-good signal for Democrats that communicates pro-housing energy. But it is ultimately still ‘campaign poetry’ that will need to be translated into ‘governing prose.’”