Joyful Tuesday, and welcome to a different version of Lease Free.
This week’s e-newsletter takes a take a look at former President Barack Obama’s current speech during which he urged Democrats to be extra YIMBY.
Additionally included is an replace on Charlottesville, Virginia, which—contra town’s earlier statements—nonetheless has a zoning code in spite of everything.
Obama’s powerful love electoral recommendation to his fellow Democrats throughout a fundraiser occasion in New Jersey this previous Friday included a broadside towards blue-state zoning legal guidelines.
Stated Obama, per a Monday CNN article:
“I do not care how a lot you like working folks. They cannot afford a home as a result of all the principles in your state make it prohibitive to construct. And zoning prevents multifamily buildings due to NIMBY,” he mentioned, referring to “not in my yard” views. “I do not wish to know your ideology, as a result of you possibly can’t construct something. It doesn’t matter.”
Zoning reform nonetheless has the texture of a distinct segment, nerdy subject, so it might sound considerably shocking {that a} mainstream determine like Obama would reference it in a fundraising speech. That he did so definitely made a stir within the YIMBY corners of social media.
The truth is, the previous president has been quietly forward of the curve on zoning reform for a very long time now.
You might be studying Lease Free from Christian Britschgi and Cause. Get extra of Christian’s city regulation, growth, and zoning protection.
As Bloomberg‘s Kriston Capps has reported, the Obama administration proposed incentivizing native zoning reform with federal grants all of the means again in 2016. (The essential concept would finally change into legislation with the creation of the PRO program in 2022.)
It’s nonetheless an indication of the rising salience of YIMBY-style coverage reforms that Obama is speaking increasingly about zoning reform.
If one appears again on the feedback Obama made about housing as president, they had been largely about stabilizing the housing market submit–Nice Recession.
Because the nationwide dialog has shifted from falling residence costs to rising residence costs, zoning has change into a a lot larger a part of the dialog, and consequently, it is change into a problem that Obama feels more and more snug speaking about.
One remembers that he included a number of YIMBY-themed strains in his 2024 Democratic Nationwide Conference speech. (The previous president reportedly needed to be talked out of mentioning zoning particularly.)
Obama’s remarks about zoning on Friday are extra attention-grabbing nonetheless, on condition that he did not make them within the context of a coverage speech, however fairly as a part of some normal recommendation on how Democrats can take again the nation from President Donald Trump’s Republican celebration.
A main means of doing that, in accordance with Obama, is to supply folks with actual financial alternative by eradicating liberal states’ regulatory boundaries on housing manufacturing.
That is the gist of the “abundance agenda” promoted by the likes of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and more and more embraced by Democratic politicians resembling California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Their self-reflective story is that blue states’ regulatory regimes have undercut liberals’ personal coverage objectives of extra reasonably priced housing, extra clear vitality, extra public transit, and so on.
On the nationwide degree, Obama is sort of definitely proper that embracing YIMBY insurance policies is nice politics for Democrats. (Newsom’s adoption of “abundance” rhetoric as he seemingly prepares for a presidential run is proof that the governor thinks in order nicely.)
Actually, relating to optics, it is exhausting for Democrats to pitch themselves as worthy of governing when the states they run are the least reasonably priced within the nation. On a sensible degree, the extra folks depart blue states due to excessive housing prices (amongst different points like excessive taxes), the tougher it will likely be for Democrats to win management of Congress and the White Home.
The difficulty is that on the state and native ranges, NIMBY zoning legal guidelines have been a profit to Democratic electoral prospects.
As states resembling California and New York have gotten costlier due to extreme land-use laws, they’ve additionally gotten extra Democratic. Excessive housing prices have inspired plenty of extra reasonable and conservative middle-class voters to maneuver to Florida and Texas. The citizens they depart behind is more and more made up of (more and more Democratic) rich voters and equally Democratic lower-income voters who’re cushioned from rising prices by numerous value controls and subsidy packages.
On the state degree, it advantages Democrats for his or her states to change into enclaves of rich liberalism.
State and native Democratic politicians who do embrace zoning reform put themselves able of getting to struggle with main curiosity teams inside the Democratic coalition (labor unions, environmental teams, reasonably priced housing teams, literal socialists, and Democratic-controlled native governments) that each one have their issues with zoning reform.
Within the discourse, any time a liberal author says labor teams or tenant advocates are holding again blue-state progress, one other liberal author will marvel why they’re punching left when Trump is dragging the nation additional into authoritarianism.
In the meantime, in crimson and purple states, it is typically Democrats who’re the extra NIMBY celebration. An extended historical past of Republican-controlled state governments preempting the liberal insurance policies of blue cities has made Democrats partisan defenders of native management.
See Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ opposition to zoning reform in that state or Texas Democrats’ concerted (in the end unsuccessful) efforts to kill zoning reform in that state’s Legislature this 12 months.
This is not to say that there aren’t Democratic state politicians making strides on zoning reform. California, Washington, and Maine managed to enact a variety of productive reforms this 12 months. In nearly each state, there are YIMBYs and NIMBYs in each events, and most zoning payments require bipartisan assist to move.
However, a YIMBY/abundance politics that performs nicely for Democrats on the nationwide degree faces quite a lot of political headwinds in a number of states and their many localities.
Contemplate this thought experiment. If Obama’s viewers this previous Friday weren’t Democrats writ giant however fairly a candidate making an attempt to win workplace in Martha’s Winery (the place the previous president has his summer time residence), would he be sensible to induce that candidate to embrace zoning reform as his major trigger? Virtually definitely not. And but, it is native officers in Martha’s Winery who’ve probably the most say over zoning coverage.
Actually, anybody who desires to see the liberalization of land-use legal guidelines needs to be glad that main Democratic figures are pushing the celebration to make this a central theme of its coverage agenda.
Obama’s remarks are welcome and inspiring. On pure coverage grounds, the previous president is appropriate that zoning has been a catastrophe for working folks’s capability to afford a house.
Nonetheless, what is nice land-use coverage will not be essentially good or simple politics, particularly within the locations with the worst land-use laws and the worst housing crises.
The present Republican Occasion, after all, has its personal inner contradictions on the difficulty of housing affordability. The identical Trump administration that wishes to open up Western lands for extra housing growth additionally desires to deport the employees who’d assemble that housing and tariff the supplies wanted to construct it.
For the foreseeable future, we must always count on each main political events to supply a contradictory mixture of housing insurance policies that supply to decrease prices with one hand and lift them with one other.
The unusual saga surrounding Charlottesville’s zoning code continues to unfold, with town now saying that it does nonetheless have a zoning code in spite of everything.
That is a reversal of Metropolis Supervisor Sam Sanders’ statements to native media (which this text coated final week) that, because of a circuit court docket choose issuing a default judgment in favor of residents suing to dam town’s 2023 zoning code replace, Charlottesville’s total zoning code had been struck down.
“The outdated ordinance needed to be repealed to ensure that the brand new one to be adopted. The void of the brand new one leaves us with out one briefly,” Sanders had instructed Charlottesville Tomorrow in an e-mail earlier within the month.
Absent an efficient zoning ordinance, town did not have the flexibility to “regulate a variety of issues essential to the neighborhood, together with which makes use of are allowed in sure elements of town,” Sanders had mentioned.
However in an e-mail to Cause this previous Thursday, Charlottesville Director of Communications Afton Schneider mentioned Sanders’ assertion was “mistakenly conveyed” and that town nonetheless had an energetic zoning ordinance.
“As of at present, July 11, 2025, we’re nonetheless working underneath the 2024 Improvement Code, pending the Circuit Courtroom’s issuance of a proper, written order,” town additional clarified in a Friday-issued press launch.
The truth is, as a sensible matter, town’s land-use laws have gotten much more restrictive.
Whereas town continues to be “working” underneath the brand new growth code, it additionally mentioned on Friday that it has paused consideration of “zoning-related purposes”, which embrace “new development, additions, website modifications, and modifications in use.” Constructing permits outdoors of that scope are nonetheless being thought of and issued.
I wrote final week that the obvious court docket choice voiding Charlottesville’s zoning code was a shock victory for YIMBY zoning abolition.
The suing residents’ main grievance in regards to the 2023 zoning code was that it allowed an excessive amount of density in previously single-family neighborhoods. (The 2023 code allowed a minimum of three-unit developments in single-family zones, and in some instances six- to eight-unit developments.)
It was an ironic twist, then, that their lawsuit would void the complete zoning code and allow tasks of theoretically limitless density.
With town’s stroll again of Sanders’ remarks, that YIMBY paradise is now gone—and apparently by no means existed. As a substitute, property homeowners are left ready for the court docket to enter a written order earlier than they’ll know precisely what land-use guidelines will truly be in impact going ahead.
In an article for Info Charlottesville, land-use reporter Sean Tubbs reported normal confusion from the general public and minimal feedback from metropolis officers about what actual zoning guidelines had been presently in place and whether or not tasks would be capable to transfer ahead underneath the brand new code.
Town says that it’s presently making an attempt to work out a settlement with the plaintiffs, and can enchantment the choose’s choice if these show unsuccessful. Within the occasion of unsuccessful authorized appeals, town mentioned it’ll readopt the voided code.
So, to summarize, Charlottesville’s new zoning code continues to be in impact, however the metropolis additionally will not course of purposes counting on the 2023 zoning code till a written court docket order clarifies precisely what zoning guidelines stay in impact.
- Seattle is sued (once more) over its reasonably priced housing mandates.
- Matt Yglesias on the errors of “inclusionary zoning.”
- Multifamily housing manufacturing plummets in Montgomery County, Maryland, following the county’s adoption of a brand new hire management coverage.
Lease management simply devastated Montgomery County, Maryland’s multifamily development. (By way of @salimfurth) https://t.co/iYkxS9C797
— Jason Sorens (@JasonSorens) July 12, 2025
