In This Housing Fight, It’s Conservative Politicians vs. Conservative Policies

Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida. (Source: Flickr/Gage Skidmore.)

There’s a strange battle brewing in Florida. In one corner, a local government is trying to solve a policy problem by deregulating a sector of the economy and allowing free-market solutions to bring more options to consumers. Meanwhile, opponents at the state level assert that only government intervention and business incentives will address the issue. 

It sounds like a classic standoff in American politics between free-market conservatism and government-centric liberalism. So why is the conservative Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, suing the municipality to reverse these new policies? 

Welcome to the tangled, confusing world of housing politics. 

In this case, the city council of Gainesville, home to the main campus of the University of Florida, voted to eliminate single-family zoning. Its stated goal is that by allowing homeowners and developers to build a variety of housing types, including accessory dwelling units and multiplex apartments, buyers and renters will find more affordable options. 

This approach is gaining traction nationwide, with the states of California, Oregon, and Maine, and the city of Minneapolis, among many others, eliminating single-family zoning, parking minimums, and other restrictive rules to encourage development of a wider range of missing-middle housing. 

Strong Towns strongly supports these efforts: The organization urges that every neighborhood in America be zoned to allow the next increment of development, according to Editor-in-Chief Daniel Herriges. “In the late 20th century, many American cities adopted a really unprecedented and, we now know, destructive experiment,” says Herriges. “We began to place our neighborhoods under glass, using local regulations to prohibit the creation of additional housing even in places where demand is intense. This has resulted in cascading consequences, from housing unaffordability and the displacement of people from cities and neighborhoods, to the loss of local economic dynamism and opportunities to build wealth. It’s an issue that should unite people on the political left and right.”

Seen through the prism of traditional politics, the Florida case is baffling. In its court filing on behalf of the DeSantis Administration, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity is seeking to reverse Gainesville’s land-use changes. Its main argument is that affordable housing is a state interest and Gainesville’s actions threaten it. To make this argument requires rejection of some bedrock conservative principles—local control, deregulation, and free-market solutions. 

It isn’t just that deregulation won’t solve the problem, the state argues, but having more housing units on the market will actually drive prices up. “The Amendment adversely affects the creation and preservation of an important state resource—affordable housing,” the filing asserts. 

The Libertarian publication Reason swats down this argument, saying it “ignores both the theory and the evidence that when new housing is built, even very expensive housing, it lessens demand on existing housing stock, leading to lower prices and rents.” 

Florida also argues that the “removal of exclusionary land-use controls must be paired with inclusionary zoning controls that require or encourage developers to create affordable housing in what are otherwise market-rate developments.”

Writing for The American Conservative, Roger Valdez refutes this prescription: “When the government puts its finger on the scales, the result is inefficient allocation of resources, and more pain for poor people.” Or, as Reason puts it, “That's an incredibly government-centric view of housing affordability.” 

There’s also a cultural line of criticism, that such changes threaten the integrity of neighborhoods of exclusively single-family dwellings. Fox News host Tucker Carlson has sounded off on this subject, claiming the goal of less restrictive zoning is to “abolish the suburbs” and “make suburbs into cities.”  

Critics of these policy changes are getting it wrong, says Herriges. “The Suburban Experiment that took over North American development in the middle of the 20th century is the real aberration. The traditional development pattern, which allows for a variety of building types and allows them to be adapted according to citizens’ needs, was how all prosperous places evolved before this radical change. The suburban, single-family approach was not a free market outcome but largely a result of government and private sector policies, fueled by an unprecedented infusion of government money.”

Writing for The American Conservative, Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn sums it up: “The suburbs run on federal subsidies. Without them, America’s suburbs would have to become more financially productive. They would need to get greater returns per foot on public infrastructure investment. That would mean repealing repressive zoning regulations, allowing the market to respond to supply and demand signals for housing.”

The housing affordability crisis is evidence of the failure to allow these market signals to work, says Marohn. Creative solutions that hark back to traditional development, such as those allowed by these rezoning plans, have the best chance of meeting the market where buyers and renters are.

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