Tag Archives: single-family housing

Good Economic News

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On Tuesday, Breitbart posted an article reporting that housing starts increased more than 10 percent in February.

The article reports:

New home construction surged in February, as housing starts jumped 11.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.5 million, far surpassing expectations. The increase was led by a strong rebound in single-family homebuilding, a sign that builders are responding to demand despite lingering concerns over mortgage rates and supply constraints.

Single-family starts rose 11.4 percent to an annualized 1.11 million, the fastest pace in a year. Multi-family construction also posted a 10.7 percent increase, though that segment has shown more volatility in recent months. The strength in February’s report follows a period of stagnation in housing construction, particularly in the final years of the previous administration when builders faced high interest rates, rising costs, and regulatory uncertainty.

The article concludes:

The increase in new home construction also stands in contrast to some of the more downbeat economic indicators in recent weeks. While reports on consumer sentiment and retail sales have pointed to some lingering uncertainty, the housing sector’s strength signals that parts of the economy are still expanding.

With single-family home construction picking up pace and builders pushing forward despite higher costs, the February report suggests that the long-stalled housing market may finally be regaining its momentum.

Democrat administrations have attempted to control local zoning since the Obama administration with the goal of eliminating single-family housing. Owning a home is not only part of the American dream, it helps stabilize neighborhoods and create generational wealth.

In 2015, Investor’s Business Daily reported:

Under a sweeping new federal housing mandate, the Obama administration threatens to withhold funding for cities and counties that fail to remove local zoning laws and other potentially “discriminatory barriers” that restrict low-income housing in wealthy neighborhoods.

More than 1,200 municipalities will be impacted by the highly contested rule, which the Housing and Urban Development Department put into effect Wednesday.

The agency seeks to combat discrimination in affluent suburban areas, while also desegregating poor urban areas where it says too many minorities lack access to good schools and jobs.

“A ZIP code should never determine a child’s future,” HUD Secretary Julian Castro said.

The massive 377-page regulation requires local authorities to take “meaningful actions” to diversify neighborhoods. Municipalities that don’t comply risk losing millions in federal grant money. Some could face federal housing-bias probes.

That idea is still part of the Democrat Party playbook, so it should not come as a surprise that the housing market does well under a Republican President. All Americans need to be aware of the fight to federalize zoning and be ready to fight it whenever it is introduced. When the Democrat Party regains power, federalizing zoning will be reintroduced.

 

Killing The American Dream

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The American Dream used to be a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and a little bit of land to take care of. The dream represented stability and security. People are more inclined to take good care of something they have worked hard to own. Unfortunately that dream is under attack.

On Thursday, The American Thinker posted an article about New York State Governor Kathy Hochul’s move to advance a so-called Housing Compact that would eliminate local control and single family zoning.

The article reports:

Hochul’s plan would require that high-rise “affordable” (read: low-income, taxpayer-subsidized) housing be constructed close to each sleepy village train station — mostly a few miles apart — on Metro North and the Long Island Railroad. If the affected communities fail to do so “voluntarily,” the state will have the power to override local zoning. Those who fail to applaud this combined coup by warriors for social justice and real estate interests are, you guessed it, racist.

Suburban homeowners, Democrats as well as Republicans, are beginning to awaken to the deadly threat these proposals pose to their way of life. What is largely overlooked is that this is a repeat of a similar effort in 1972 about which I wrote at the time (“Housing Controversy in Westchester,” Congress Biweekly, November 10, 1972 and December 22, 1972). Believe it or not, the effort to overthrow zoning was then spearheaded by Republicans — with New York’s Westchester County selected to pioneer the program.

On June 20, 1972, the New York State Urban Development Corporation announced that it was overriding local zoning to create a variety of low- and moderate-income housing developments in nine, for the most part rural, Westchester communities. Reminiscent of the emotional reaction to the death of George Floyd, the UDC had been given zoning override power by a hitherto balky state Legislature the day after the murder of Martin Luther King. Republican governor Nelson Rockefeller, in a burst of virtue-signaling, argued that this was the best tribute the Legislature could give the slain civil rights leader. When rationality returned, efforts by the state Legislature to take away the override power were vetoed by Rockefeller.

The article concludes:

Whether Republicans or Democrats, suburban householders are unwilling to see community zoning decisions and local master planning become meaningless exercises and to see the value of their greatest investment potentially plummet at far-off bureaucratic whims. That means their representatives in the state Legislature, however “progressive” their personal views, will fear defeat at the next election if they don’t oppose Governor Hochul’s “death to the suburbs” legislative agenda.

The American Dream provided incentive to work hard. By changing the rules on home ownership, Governor Hochel will eliminate that incentive. The idea that the federal government can control local zoning is a violation of the Tenth Amendment. Our Founding Fathers have long since stopped turning over in their graves–they are now spinning.

The Democrats Are Still Going After Single-Family Housing

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Just the News reported yesterday that the budget bill the Democrats in the House of Representatives are currently drafting may include the Democrat’s plan to “eliminate exclusionary zoning” for single-family homes in America’s cities. This is the bill that the Democrats plan on passing in the Senate by using the reconciliation process, meaning that the Republicans have no way to stop it.

The article reports:

A portion of President Biden’s $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan offers grants to cities that “take concrete steps” to end “exclusionary zoning” for single-family homes.

Under a section titled “Eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies,” Biden’s jobs plan argues that “for decades, exclusionary zoning laws — like minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements, and prohibitions on multifamily housing — have inflated housing and construction costs and locked families out of areas with more opportunities.”

According to the White House fact sheet on the plan, which has not been formally drafted into legislation yet, Biden is “calling on Congress to enact an innovative, new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate such needless barriers to producing affordable housing.”

The article notes:

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure agreement that a bipartisan group of senators reached with the White House does not mention exclusionary zoning. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats would seek to pass the parts of Biden’s jobs plan and $1.8 trillion American Families Plan that are left out of the bipartisan framework on infrastructure.

Michigan Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow, chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, said the Democrat-led Congress should enact Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda instead of only focusing on the bipartisan agreement on physical infrastructure spending.

“It’s not just a slogan, we want to come out of this stronger than ever, and the bipartisan effort on infrastructure is one piece of that,” said Stabenow, a member of the Senate Budget Committee. “But we need to do the rest of what needs to be done in the jobs plan and the family plan to really meet the needs of our economy and our families.”

It should be noted that the tax and spend programs that the Democrats are trying to pass will ultimately hurt American families. As inflation increase, the spending power of every American decreases. As the price of a gallon of gasoline increase, it is essentially a tax increase on every American. The current policies being supported by the Democrat party will negatively impact the American economy and all Americans.

Hidden In The Infrastructure Bill

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I have written before about the Biden administration’s plan to end single-family housing (article here). Because home ownership is historically part of the American dream, I have no idea why this is a goal. However, hidden in the infrastructure bill is an item that will begin to end that dream.

Just the News posted an article (updated today) about the infrastructure bill.

The article reports:

The largest item in President Biden’s originally proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure bill “is intended to literally eliminate local zoning, single-family zoning,” former N.Y. Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey told the John Solomon Reports podcast. 

“[P]eople spend a lifetime dreaming that they’re going to have a home with a plot of lawn around it,” said McCaughey. “They can let their kids play on the lawn, go out and mow the lawn, it’s a way of life. And the Biden administration wants to eliminate that. Their message is, ‘You can’t have that unless everybody can have that.’

“So unless you have multifamily units, you know, some sort of apartment building, on the same street in the same neighborhood — it’s not the same town because all towns now have areas for apartment dwellers, you know. But no, that’s not good enough for them. They want to put bus lines on all the little streets, and that’s going to change the way of life.”

…The Biden administration negotiated a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure framework on Thursday, which does not include affordable housing, according to Business Insider.

However, afterward, Biden said that the rest of the original infrastructure plan will go through as a budget reconciliation bill in addition to the bipartisan version. Upon learning this, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Biden can “forget” the bipartisan bill. “Most Republicans could not have known that,” he said. “There’s no way. You look like a f–ing idiot now.” 

We need to pray for some patriotic Senators who are willing to vote to protect the American dream of owning your own home.

The Proposal To End Single-Family Housing In America

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One of the great things about America is that many Americans are homeowners. As homeowners, they create individual homes that reflect their personalities. That is the reason driving through many of our cities can be a fascinating study of architecture and how it changed through our history. Well, if the Biden administration gets its way, single-family housing will be a thing of the past.

The National Review posted an article today detailing how the Biden administration is planning to eliminate single-family housing:

The article reports:

How, exactly, does Biden plan to end single-family zoning? According to the fact sheet released by the White House, “Biden is calling on Congress to enact an innovative new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate [‘exclusionary zoning’].” In other words, Biden wants to use a big pot of federal grant money as bait. If a county or municipality agrees to weaken or eliminate its single-family zoning, it gets the federal bucks.

The wildly overreaching Obama-Biden era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation — which Biden has pledged to revive — works in a similar fashion. The difference is that by adding another gigantic pot of federal money to the Community Development Block Grants that are the lure of AFFH, Biden makes it that much harder for suburbs to resist applying — and that much more punishing to jurisdictions that forgo a share of the federal taxes they’ve already paid so as to protect their right to self-rule.

Are federal carrots enough, however? Prosperous suburbs may forgo the grants in an effort to secure their independence. The success of Biden’s initiative depends in part on exactly how much money gets allocated to grants tied to zoning reform. The details of that ask haven’t yet been released, but the $213 billion allocated to Biden’s total affordable housing initiative leave room for an awfully big pot for the anti-zoning portion.

I don’t think our Founding Fathers envisioned a country where the government could tell you what kind of a house you could live in.

The article concludes:

Last summer, when California floated a measure to kill single-family zoning, there was powerful opposition from residents who objected to a law that would make their neighborhoods denser, noisier, and more filled with traffic. Predominantly minority residents in South Los Angeles saw the bill as an “affront to how hard Black Americans fought to join single-family neighborhoods, battling redlining, racist covenants and even targeted violence. And they worried that suddenly relaxing zoning rules would not only ruin the low density they enjoyed, but also unleash an investment flood that would accelerate displacement of the Black community as developers scooped up old homes and built new ones unaffordable to most in the community.”

The zoning issue is tough and complex. It balances principled libertarian objections to zoning and the interests of developers, on the one hand, against core principles of federalism and local control, on the other. Massive spending and taxation are fundamental to the federal effort to override local zoning laws. Neighborhood preservation vies with “creative destruction.” There are plenty of complex, conflicting, and legitimate considerations in the balance. But reducing the zoning issue to bogus charges of “racism” is the way Democrats play the game nowadays.

If Republicans find the courage to stand up to the usual nonsense and oppose this big-government attempt to kill off the federalist system itself, they will find not only the vast majority of Republicans, but a great many independents and Democrats in their corner.

This is something to watch. If the infrastructure bill passes the Senate, it will not only kill our wallets, it will also end a lot of our freedom to choose where and how we live.