I agree that the seven-year sale provision on institutional investors building to rent makes no sense. If we're looking at a supply issue, then building more housing is exactly what you want to see - it adds to the overall supply and helps push housing costs down.
My only disagreement is that I am totally fine with keeping institutional investors from buying existing houses. That house is already part of the supply, so their purchase does nothing to alter supply beyond possible renovations shifting it into a higher tier of housing. In addition, since they have a profit incentive, they're likely to increase the sale/rent price, putting upward pressure on housing costs. I don't put a lot of stock in the counter argument that institutional investors don't make up a big portion of home purchases, so there's no need for the prohibition - it's good that they don't have a significant enough share to distort the market, and the prohibition will help keep it that way.
That state governors are amassing so much better a record than Congress is yet more evidence that devolution (aka federalism) is pro-abundance, as well as being anti-polarization. Which means, IMO, that pro-abundance Democrats should actually embrace federal tax cuts and shrinking federal state capacity, as long as the door is open to building state-level state capacity to compensate.
You mention child care, Medicare, and Medicaid as programs that the feds should conserve more fiscal capacity to expand. But child care and health care are both areas where blue states have already innovated in providing more comprehensive benefits to more people, and where their electorates have been willing to shoulder a higher tax burden in return. Why shouldn't we look to governors and state legislatures to continue that trend, rather than strive for one-size-fits-all national solutions in a Congress that is institutionally dysfunctional and a country riven by polarization? Other countries like Canada and Switzerland already devolve much more of their welfare states to subnational levels of government than we do, so a more devolved US welfare state is not some impractical fantasy.
I would add that few of the liberal "Dems must reject the tax revolt" thinkpieces reckon with why federal tax cuts are so popular that even Democratic senators are proposing them. It's fundamentally a trust issue: the median voter doesn't trust the federal government to give them good value for their tax money, and frankly they have ample reason for that distrust. We can hector people about how they shouldn't feel that way, or we can redirect state capacity building energies to levels of government that have earned more trust. Which is likely to deliver better results?
Lamont is no YIMBY. In the quote you provided, the real context is that he knows he got in hot water with the growing YIMBY majority when he bent the knee to NIMBYs to veto a housing bill last year.
He’s trying to play both sides, and thus can’t be trusted except in extremely transactional terms.
Good piece, thank you for that!
I agree that the seven-year sale provision on institutional investors building to rent makes no sense. If we're looking at a supply issue, then building more housing is exactly what you want to see - it adds to the overall supply and helps push housing costs down.
My only disagreement is that I am totally fine with keeping institutional investors from buying existing houses. That house is already part of the supply, so their purchase does nothing to alter supply beyond possible renovations shifting it into a higher tier of housing. In addition, since they have a profit incentive, they're likely to increase the sale/rent price, putting upward pressure on housing costs. I don't put a lot of stock in the counter argument that institutional investors don't make up a big portion of home purchases, so there's no need for the prohibition - it's good that they don't have a significant enough share to distort the market, and the prohibition will help keep it that way.
That state governors are amassing so much better a record than Congress is yet more evidence that devolution (aka federalism) is pro-abundance, as well as being anti-polarization. Which means, IMO, that pro-abundance Democrats should actually embrace federal tax cuts and shrinking federal state capacity, as long as the door is open to building state-level state capacity to compensate.
You mention child care, Medicare, and Medicaid as programs that the feds should conserve more fiscal capacity to expand. But child care and health care are both areas where blue states have already innovated in providing more comprehensive benefits to more people, and where their electorates have been willing to shoulder a higher tax burden in return. Why shouldn't we look to governors and state legislatures to continue that trend, rather than strive for one-size-fits-all national solutions in a Congress that is institutionally dysfunctional and a country riven by polarization? Other countries like Canada and Switzerland already devolve much more of their welfare states to subnational levels of government than we do, so a more devolved US welfare state is not some impractical fantasy.
I would add that few of the liberal "Dems must reject the tax revolt" thinkpieces reckon with why federal tax cuts are so popular that even Democratic senators are proposing them. It's fundamentally a trust issue: the median voter doesn't trust the federal government to give them good value for their tax money, and frankly they have ample reason for that distrust. We can hector people about how they shouldn't feel that way, or we can redirect state capacity building energies to levels of government that have earned more trust. Which is likely to deliver better results?
Lamont is no YIMBY. In the quote you provided, the real context is that he knows he got in hot water with the growing YIMBY majority when he bent the knee to NIMBYs to veto a housing bill last year.
He’s trying to play both sides, and thus can’t be trusted except in extremely transactional terms.