Housing Policy

Tim Walz's Other Stolen Valor Scandal

The Minnesota governor is being hailed as a YIMBY zoning reformer despite doing nothing of consequence on the issue.

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Tim Walz | Travis Ball/Sipa USA/Newscom
(Travis Ball/Sipa USA/Newscom)

Tim Walz is riding high on some stolen valor. By that, I don't mean to refer to the false or otherwise deliberately misleading statements the Democratic vice presidential candidate made about his war record (or lack thereof) over the years.

Rather, I'm referring to the unearned enthusiasm he's receiving from housing activists, lawmakers, and the media who somehow have concluded that Walz is a sterling champion of YIMBY (yes in my backyard) zoning reforms.

Business Insider called him a "YIMBY" in a recent headline. California Sen. Scott Wiener (D–San Francisco), a prolific author of state-level zoning reform legislation, applied the label to him as well. YIMBYs for Harris is happy to claim him as one of their own.

What exactly has Walz done to earn this reputation as a YIMBY housing champion? As best I can tell, as governor of Minnesota, he signed a 1,400-page Democratic-passed omnibus bill that contained two policies of interest to zoning reformers in the state.

One requires state officials to study and recommend code changes that would allow apartment buildings up to 75 feet tall to be built with one staircase. The other exempts local comprehensive plan updates from the state's environmental review laws.

Single-stair reform supporters say allowing more apartment buildings to be built with a single staircase (as opposed to the current two-staircase standard) will lower building costs, make more small apartment buildings feasible, and allow for more flexible floor plans—all good things. The study bill in Minnesota's omnibus package is a first step toward making that happen.

The other bill exempting comprehensive plan updates from state environmental review law is a big win for the Minneapolis city government and zoning reformers in the city.

Back in late 2018, the city passed a comprehensive plan update that made a number of zoning changes, including allowing triplexes in single-family neighborhoods, apartments on commercial corridors, and a citywide elimination of parking minimums.

In response, local environmental groups sued, saying the city failed to properly study the environmental impacts of that comprehensive plan update. Last year, a judge ruled in their favor and halted Minneapolis' reforms.

By exempting comprehensive plans from environmental requirements, the Minnesota Legislature is now allowing Minneapolis' local reforms to go back into effect.

So in short, those are two pretty wonky but not insignificant reforms.

But Walz has really nothing to do with either policy.

He didn't make any public statements about them. He merely signed a giant bill of Democratic policy priorities into law. What else would one expect of a Democratic governor?

Indeed, the Center for Building in North America, which helped write Minnesota's single-stair bill, mentions a local architect and lawmaker who worked on the bill. Walz's name doesn't come up.

When The New York Times' Ezra Klein asked Walz earlier this month about the environmentalists' lawsuit that halted Minneapolis' zoning reforms, Walz gave a pretty milquetoast, middle-of-the-road answer that gives no real indication of what he thinks about housing:

We have good environmental laws in Minnesota, and that's the way it should be. We're protectors of 20 percent of the world's fresh water. But we also have permitting that takes too long and makes more expensive doing renewable energy projects, things that we want to get done. I think that same thing applies on housing, that we put up barriers to making it more affordable.

So, basically, Walz said strong environmental laws are good, as is faster permitting of housing, but he had no particular comment on how this was affecting his home state where strong environmental laws had been used to slow down housing permitting. Got it, thanks.

As it happens, this year the Minnesota Legislature considered a range of other bipartisan-backed state-level zoning reforms that would have eliminated parking minimums, allowed smaller multi-unit housing and accessory dwelling units in single-family areas, and permitted residential developments in commercial zones.

They all ended up failing largely because of opposition from Democratic legislative leaders and local government lobbying.

By all accounts, Walz was totally absent from debates on those bills as well.

Compare that to other governors who have made state-level zoning reform a priority and spent a considerable amount of energy getting bills to their desks.

In Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis spent a lot of time and effort writing zoning reform legislation, talking about the need for zoning reform, endorsing individual zoning reform bills, and encouraging the Legislature to pass them.

That paid off this year, when the Colorado Legislature passed a series of bills allowing accessory dwelling units in single-family-only areas and apartments near transit lines.

Montana's blockbuster year for zoning reform in 2023 largely grew out of a housing task force assembled by Gov. Greg Gianforte. Zoning reform supporters in the state also credit the governor for being involved in the legislative process and doing what he could to encourage lawmakers to pass the zoning reforms on the table.

Walz did none of that stuff.

Some media write-ups of his YIMBY credentials mention that he signed into law more affordable housing funding and tenant protections that require landlords to give tenants longer notice before filing for eviction.

Whatever one thinks of those policies, they don't have anything to do with the distinctively YIMBY policy agenda of reducing regulatory barriers to new housing construction.

Giving Walz unearned credit for being a YIMBY isn't just unseemly; it's also a bad habit that YIMBY advocates would do well to break.

When politicians can earn plaudits for doing nothing, their incentive to do something worthwhile is minimal. That's particularly true on an issue like housing policy, where meaningful reform is hard and provokes a lot of heated opposition. Why catch all that flak fighting for zoning reform when the people who really want zoning reform will pat you on the back for doing nothing at all?

Politicians should be held accountable for their actions. Sometimes that means shouting at them when they do bad things. Other times it means not cheering them on when they do nothing at all.