- Obama endorsed Kamala Harris' housing plan during his DNC speech.
- Harris' proposal aims to address housing affordability in part by building millions of new homes.
In making his case for Vice President Kamala Harris to be America's next president, former President Barack Obama singled out a few of Harris' policy proposals and focused on one near and dear to anyone worried about the country's housing affordability crisis.
Obama hailed Harris' pledge to build millions of new homes, calling it a "bold new plan" and highlighting her promise to strip away regulations restricting development.
"We can't just rely on the ideas of the past, we need to chart a new way forward to meet the challenges of today — and Kamala understands this," Obama said. "She knows, for example, that if we want to make it easier for young people to buy a home, we need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people in this country."
Obama's comments quickly reverberated among online YIMBYs — adherents of the pro-housing "Yes In My Backyard" movement.
"DEMOCRATS ARE NOT GOING BACK TO NIMBY POLICIES," Sam Deutsch, who writes the pro-housing newsletter "Better Cities," wrote on X.
California State Sen. Scott Wiener, a prominent leader in pro-housing policy, celebrated Obama's remarks as a sign of YIMBYism becoming mainstream among Democrats.
"First Kamala, now Obama. We're winning the argument on housing: That we will solve the housing crisis only when we build an enormous number of new homes," Wiener wrote in a post on X. "YIMBYism — more homes, more public transportation, more clean energy, more of all the good stuff — is absolutely the future."
Open New York, a group that advocates for more housing in New York State, declared, "the housing debate in the Democratic Party is over."
"Obama said build, baby, build!" Bryan "Bubba" Fish, a pro-housing candidate for city council in Culver City, California, wrote on X.
PRO-HOUSING OBAMA THAT’S CANON pic.twitter.com/SdhyCeKF0J
— Open New York (@OpenNYForAll) August 21, 2024
Obama and Harris' focus on housing policy is unusual in national politics in part because the federal government doesn't have much direct control over it. Most of the policies that shape housing — including land-use laws like zoning — are controlled by local and state governments.
And Democrats aren't uniformly in favor of this approach to building. Many NIMBYs — or anti-development "Not In My Backyard" proponents — cite progressive causes, including environmental protection, in opposing new construction.
Last week, Harris rolled out a multi-part housing plan that includes plans to build three million homes over her first term, crack down on corporate landlords, and expand downpayment assistance for first-time homebuyers. While pro-housing policies — particularly those designed to boost the supply of housing by eliminating regulations — have some bipartisan support in Congress, Harris' full suite of proposals would likely have a hard time passing a divided Congress.
Harris' decision to release the housing plan illustrates just how important the issue is to many voters. Indeed, polls have found that Americans are extremely pessimistic about the housing market. And the concern is bipartisan. A recent survey found 83% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans think the lack of affordable housing is a significant problem.