Is Donald Trump a NIMBY or a YIMBY? The answer is not obvious

Is Donald Trump a NIMBY or a YIMBY? Given that the housing crisis is a central issue across the country, whether or not the president-elect reflexively favors housing development is an important question.

But Trump is all over the place on the housing issue, as he is on so many others. It's hard to know where he really is.

The idea of ​​removing zoning restrictions to produce more housing has had bipartisan support at the federal level for decades. In a 1991 report titled Not in My Backyard: Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing, a bipartisan commission appointed by then-Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp noted that across the country, local governments enforce zoning ordinances and subdivision, building codes and permits. procedures to prevent the development of affordable housing. But the federal government does not control local zoning, so its influence is limited.

As a former real estate developer and supporter of deregulation in general, Trump should be a YIMBY, the yes man in my backyard, pro-housing, as opposed to a NIMBY. In fact, in an interview last summer with Bloomberg, he railed against zoning, calling it a killer and promising to reduce housing costs.

Except, apparently, it threatens suburban neighborhoods with single-family zoning, the most sweeping restriction on development in California and beyond. Trump has consistently said that the idea of ​​high-density housing in the suburbs threatens the American way of life. The destruction of the suburbs will end with us, he promised during his first term.

NIMBYism crosses traditional political lines, suppressing housing in some of California's most seemingly liberal enclaves, but it also largely intersects with Trump's coalition. MAGA activists who love their homes and suburban neighborhoods are increasingly at war with the YIMBY movement, as demonstrated by the staunch resistance to more housing in places like Huntington Beach.

Lately, Trump and company have started blaming the housing crisis on illegal immigration, suggesting that the housing market will be just fine once they deport about 10 million immigrants. But illegal immigrants tend to occupy the lower end of the housing stock ladder, often in overcrowded conditions. So even if mass evictions occurred, it probably wouldn't help millions of native-born Americans, priced out of the market, suddenly realize their dreams of suburban homeownership.

One of the few specific ideas Trump has proposed to increase the housing supply is opening federal lands to residential development. Last year, he floated the idea of ​​using federal land to build Freedom Cities, a kind of unregulated enterprise zone for housing, business and flying cars.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump's pick for Interior secretary, could be crucial to any administration's housing strategy. Burgum would control the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, which own vast land holdings in California, nearly half owned by the federal government, and throughout the West. (The United States Forest Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, also claims much of the state and region.) Although much of the media coverage of Burgum's nomination has focused on the prospect of increased fossil fuel extraction on federal lands, Burgum could also play a key role. to housing construction projects on American properties.

But developing federal lands is legally difficult, as is transferring that land to local governments that might want to build on it. The Bureau of Land Management, for example, is in an ongoing battle with Clark County, Nevada, over whether more land should be made available for development in the Las Vegas area. Additionally, much of the federal government's land is mountainous, isolated, or both.

Burgum has been a strong advocate not only for zoning reform and housing development in general, but also for building higher-density housing in cities and suburbs, which appears to be at odds with MAGA's agenda in some respects. A wealthy technology entrepreneur, Burgum has invested millions of dollars of his own money in the downtown revitalization of his hometown, Fargo.

Of course, the federal government also owns a lot of urban and suburban land. But that land would be beyond Burgum's control, and federal agencies with other missions have been extremely reluctant to give up their properties for housing, as the recent battle for the Veterans Affairs campus west of Burgum revealed. Los Angeles.

During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt also promoted the idea of ​​building lots of housing on federal land, both in suburban and rural areas. Although these efforts generated some innovative ideas, only a few housing developments were ultimately built.

Trump’s Free Cities will likely suffer the same fate. It is simply difficult for the federal government to reform local zoning and expand housing. It's even more difficult when the president can't decide where he stands on the issue.

William Fulton is the editor and publisher of the California Planning & Development Report. He is a former mayor of Ventura and a former planning director of San Diego.

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