Barack Obama Wants Democrats To Be the YIMBY Party. That's Easier Said Than Done.
The housing crisis is bad for national Democrats. At the state level, it's a political winner.
Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free.
This week's newsletter takes a look at former President Barack Obama's recent speech in which he urged Democrats to be more YIMBY.
Also included is an update on Charlottesville, Virginia, which—contra the city's previous statements—still has a zoning code after all.
Obama Wants Democrats To Be the YIMBY Party. That's Easier Said Than Done.
Obama's tough love electoral advice to his fellow Democrats during a fundraiser event in New Jersey this past Friday included a broadside against blue-state zoning laws.
Said Obama, per a Monday CNN article:
"I don't care how much you love working people. They can't afford a house because all the rules in your state make it prohibitive to build. And zoning prevents multifamily structures because of NIMBY," he said, referring to "not in my backyard" views. "I don't want to know your ideology, because you can't build anything. It does not matter."
Zoning reform still has the feel of a niche, nerdy issue, so it might seem somewhat surprising that a mainstream figure like Obama would reference it in a fundraising speech. That he did so certainly made a stir in the YIMBY corners of social media.
In fact, the former president has been quietly ahead of the curve on zoning reform for a long time now.
You are reading Rent Free from Christian Britschgi and Reason. Get more of Christian's urban regulation, development, and zoning coverage.
As Bloomberg's Kriston Capps has reported, the Obama administration proposed incentivizing local zoning reform with federal grants all the way back in 2016. (The basic idea would eventually become law with the creation of the PRO program in 2022.)
It is still a sign of the rising salience of YIMBY-style policy reforms that Obama is talking more and more about zoning reform.
If one looks back at the comments Obama made about housing as president, they were mostly about stabilizing the housing market post–Great Recession.
As the national conversation has shifted from falling home prices to rising home prices, zoning has become a much bigger part of the conversation, and consequently, it's become an issue that Obama feels increasingly comfortable talking about.
One recalls that he included a few YIMBY-themed lines in his 2024 Democratic National Convention speech. (The former president reportedly had to be talked out of mentioning zoning specifically.)
Obama's remarks about zoning on Friday are more interesting still, given that he didn't make them in the context of a policy speech, but rather as part of some general advice on how Democrats can take back the country from President Donald Trump's Republican party.
A primary way of doing that, according to Obama, is to provide people with real economic opportunity by removing liberal states' regulatory barriers on housing production.
This is the gist of the "abundance agenda" promoted by the likes of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and increasingly embraced by Democratic politicians such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Their self-reflective story is that blue states' regulatory regimes have undercut liberals' own policy goals of more affordable housing, more clean energy, more public transit, etc.
At the national level, Obama is almost certainly right that embracing YIMBY policies is good politics for Democrats. (Newsom's adoption of "abundance" rhetoric as he seemingly prepares for a presidential run is evidence that the governor thinks so as well.)
Certainly, when it comes to optics, it's hard for Democrats to pitch themselves as worthy of governing when the states they run are the least affordable in the nation. On a practical level, the more people leave blue states because of high housing costs (among other issues like high taxes), the harder it will be for Democrats to win control of Congress and the White House.
The trouble is that on the state and local levels, NIMBY zoning laws have been a benefit to Democratic electoral prospects.
As states such as California and New York have gotten more expensive thanks to excessive land-use regulations, they've also gotten more Democratic. High housing costs have encouraged lots of more moderate and conservative middle-class voters to move to Florida and Texas. The electorate they leave behind is increasingly made up of (increasingly Democratic) wealthy voters and equally Democratic lower-income voters who are cushioned from rising costs by various price controls and subsidy programs.
At the state level, it benefits Democrats for their states to become enclaves of wealthy liberalism.
State and local Democratic politicians who do embrace zoning reform put themselves in a position of having to fight with major interest groups within the Democratic coalition (labor unions, environmental groups, affordable housing groups, literal socialists, and Democratic-controlled local governments) that all have their problems with zoning reform.
In the discourse, any time a liberal writer says labor groups or tenant advocates are holding back blue-state growth, another liberal writer will wonder why they're punching left when Trump is dragging the country further into authoritarianism.
Meanwhile, in red and purple states, it's often Democrats who are the more NIMBY party. A long history of Republican-controlled state governments preempting the liberal policies of blue cities has made Democrats partisan defenders of local control.
See Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs' opposition to zoning reform in that state or Texas Democrats' concerted (ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to kill zoning reform in that state's Legislature this year.
This isn't to say that there aren't Democratic state politicians making strides on zoning reform. California, Washington, and Maine managed to enact a number of productive reforms this year. In almost every state, there are YIMBYs and NIMBYs in both parties, and most zoning bills require bipartisan support to pass.
Nevertheless, a YIMBY/abundance politics that plays well for Democrats at the national level faces a lot of political headwinds in several states and their many localities.
Consider this thought experiment. If Obama's audience this past Friday were not Democrats writ large but rather a candidate trying to win office in Martha's Vineyard (where the former president has his summer home), would he be wise to urge that candidate to embrace zoning reform as his main cause? Almost certainly not. And yet, it's local officials in Martha's Vineyard who have the most say over zoning policy.
Certainly, anyone who wants to see the liberalization of land-use laws should be happy that major Democratic figures are pushing the party to make this a central theme of its policy agenda.
Obama's remarks are welcome and encouraging. On pure policy grounds, the former president is correct that zoning has been a disaster for working people's ability to afford a home.
Still, what is good land-use policy is not necessarily good or easy politics, especially in the places with the worst land-use regulations and the worst housing crises.
The current Republican Party, of course, has its own internal contradictions on the issue of housing affordability. The same Trump administration that wants to open up Western lands for more housing development also wants to deport the workers who'd construct that housing and tariff the materials needed to build it.
For the foreseeable future, we should expect both major political parties to offer a contradictory mix of housing policies that offer to lower costs with one hand and raise them with another.
Charlottesville, Still Zoned After All
The strange saga surrounding Charlottesville's zoning code continues to unfold, with the city now saying that it does still have a zoning code after all.
That's a reversal of City Manager Sam Sanders' statements to local media (which this newsletter covered last week) that, as a result of a circuit court judge issuing a default judgment in favor of residents suing to block the city's 2023 zoning code update, Charlottesville's entire zoning code had been struck down.
"The old ordinance had to be repealed in order for the new one to be adopted. The void of the new one leaves us without one temporarily," Sanders had told Charlottesville Tomorrow in an email earlier in the month.
Absent an effective zoning ordinance, the city didn't have the ability to "regulate a number of things important to the community, including which uses are allowed in certain parts of the city," Sanders had said.
But in an email to Reason this past Thursday, Charlottesville Director of Communications Afton Schneider said Sanders' statement was "mistakenly conveyed" and that the city still had an active zoning ordinance.
"As of today, July 11, 2025, we are still operating under the 2024 Development Code, pending the Circuit Court's issuance of a formal, written order," the city further clarified in a Friday-issued press release.
In fact, as a practical matter, the city's land-use regulations have gotten a lot more restrictive.
While the city is still "operating" under the new development code, it also said on Friday that it has paused consideration of "zoning-related applications", which include "new construction, additions, site modifications, and changes in use." Building permits outside of that scope are still being considered and issued.
I wrote last week that the apparent court decision voiding Charlottesville's zoning code was a surprise victory for YIMBY zoning abolition.
The suing residents' primary complaint about the 2023 zoning code was that it allowed too much density in formerly single-family neighborhoods. (The 2023 code allowed at least three-unit developments in single-family zones, and in some cases six- to eight-unit developments.)
It was an ironic twist, then, that their lawsuit would void the entire zoning code and permit projects of theoretically unlimited density.
With the city's walk back of Sanders' remarks, that YIMBY paradise is now gone—and apparently never existed. Instead, property owners are left waiting for the court to enter a written order before they can know exactly what land-use rules will actually be in effect going forward.
In an article for Information Charlottesville, land-use reporter Sean Tubbs reported general confusion from the public and minimal comments from city officials about what exact zoning rules were currently in place and whether projects would be able to move forward under the new code.
The city says that it is currently attempting to work out a settlement with the plaintiffs, and will appeal the judge's decision if those prove unsuccessful. In the event of unsuccessful legal appeals, the city said it will readopt the voided code.
So, to summarize, Charlottesville's new zoning code is still in effect, but the city also won't process applications relying on the 2023 zoning code until a written court order clarifies exactly what zoning rules remain in effect.
Quick Links
- Seattle is sued (again) over its affordable housing mandates.
- Matt Yglesias on the errors of "inclusionary zoning."
- Multifamily housing production plummets in Montgomery County, Maryland, following the county's adoption of a new rent control policy.
Rent control just devastated Montgomery County, Maryland's multifamily construction. (Via @salimfurth) https://t.co/iYkxS9C797
— Jason Sorens (@JasonSorens) July 12, 2025
- The case for new cities.
