The high cost of new houses doesn’t exist due to greed alone. The cost of constructing and maintaining housing is too high for many to afford. Whether we recognize it or not, all low-cost housing has been either explicitly or implicitly subsidized by somebody else:

– A new inclusionary-zoned apartment is being subsidized by its neighbors.

– A new Habitat house was subsidized by volunteers, donors, and probably the local government.

– A new LIHTC apartment was subsidized by the federal government and maybe local/state government; its construction costs may even have been higher than the “luxury apartments” nearby.

– An old, cheap house in a declining milltown was subsidized by prior owners who sold it at a loss, and will only remain cheap by deferring maintenance, which means future occupants will pay more.

– A cheap house in a distant suburb is directly subsidized by $1T in annual subsidies for US sprawl; these subsidies have declined since their postwar introduction, but they spun up giant industries which can mass-produce sprawl cheaply. Meanwhile, tremendous indirect subsidies make driving, and thereby car-dependent sprawl, unrealistically cheap, with huge costs for human and planetary health.

Simply demanding lower-cost housing will not lower the cost of housing, any more than demanding lower-cost groceries will. Somebody has to actually write down that cost. (Notice that we don’t have fights over whether to provide subsidized food, because we provide it everywhere — through agricultural subsidies and food stamps.)

Local government CAN do something about the cost of housing, of course. It can reduce all the major costs of housing inputs — land costs, construction costs, and “soft costs”. Upzoning directly reduces per-unit land costs. If upzoning allows smaller, simpler, and more standardized housing units, those can reduce construction costs per unit. If upzoning makes permitting simpler, it can reduce “soft” costs. Best of all, upzoning is entirely within local governments’ control and costs nothing out of pocket. But all of these will only reduce the cost of providing housing somewhat; I can’t promise any silver bullets.

Governments also can direct, or redirect, subsidies that directly or indirectly lower consumer housing costs. This is especially important “for low-income families, [as] the only way to bridge the gap between incomes and housing costs is through public subsidies” (Brookings): for the 26,000 households in Raleigh who earn less than $20K, an “affordable” rent is <$500, which is less than it costs to *operate*, much less build, a minimum-quality apartment.

But most of those subsidies are beyond local governments’ authority or fiscal capacity; covering rent for just those 26,000 households would cost $156M a year, equal to hiking city property taxes by 50%! So local governments have to do what they can, while also working with other governments and the private sector to get more resources AND reduce costs.

(It’s worth noting that in the 1971 law review article where Paul and Linda Davidoff coined the very term “inclusionary zoning”, they noted that it was a tool to be used WITH additional government subsidy: “changes in local land use controls combined with the infusion of new funds and new forms of aid from the federal government to permit the construction of vast amounts of moderate-income housing” [emphasis added]. “Inclusionary zoning” was never meant to shift the burden of funding affordable housing onto developers, but rather to have developers participate in the construction of government-funded affordable housing. The original Montgomery County Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit program only provided low-income housing because the county purchased moderately priced units and subsidized their rental to low-income households.)

And yes, a formula of more housing + more subsidies works. It works in many other countries; all the exemplars of social housing build many more units than the US per capita, and spend much more in public subsidies. It even worked in the US during the Great Society era; in 1970, 46% of multifamily housing starts were HUD subsidized! Then Nixon, fearing backlash from white suburban homeowners, eviscerated HUD’s budget, and federal subsidies never really returned.

The lowest-hanging fruit, and one that (as others have written) Wake County in particular has been attuned to, is preserving existing lower-rent apartments. Allowing new multifamily houses to be built in R zones will relieve the pressure to redevelop the RX-zoned land underneath existing apartments. Wake County’s new subsidy dollars can be matched with untapped federal dollars (namely, NCHFA bonds + 4% LIHTC). Clever developers can densify around existing buildings, especially with relaxed parking requirements.

That’s now happening right now (instead, existing apartments are flipped or torn down for pricier units) because of exclusionary zoning’s evil twin, “expulsive zoning.” Zoning’s original intent was to comfort the comfortable (by surrounding rich and white people’s spacious houses with more spacious houses, aka “exclusionary zoning”) while afflicting the afflicted (by packing apartments, commercial, and industry next to one another, aka “expulsive zoning”). Andrew Whittemore at UNC has researched the history of Durham’s zoning and found ample evidence of expulsive zoning at work for generations. While he’s found matters have improved slightly since 1985, today’s zoning map is almost identical to 1985’s. The twin demons of exclusionary and expulsive zoning still haunt the zoning map today.

YIMBYism isn’t about doubling down on the exclusive/expulsive dichotomy. It isn’t “more of the same,” and doesn’t seek to perpetuate the inequality that’s baked into current development patterns – which directly lead to rising costs, displacement, and further inequality.

YIMBYism is about abolishing that dichotomy.

Adapted from an email sent to a Raleigh listserv