New homes construction site. Getty Images photo.
On the evening of Aug.28, Gov. Wes Moore headlined a fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz – hardly an unusual event for a popular governor with a growing national profile. What was unusual, was that the group hosting the event, YIMBYs for Harris, was streaming the fundraiser live to an audience of 30,000 who raised over $130,000 for the ticket.
Most Marylanders may not know it, but Governor Moore and his secretary of Housing and Community Development, Jake Day, are bona fide celebrities housing affordability circles. Pro-housing advocates favor increasing the supply of all types of housing and getting rid of onerous regulatory barriers to construction – to bring down rental and home purchase costs for working families and grow our economy in the process.
Housing supply boosters cheered earlier this year when Moore’s signature housing legislation, the Housing Expansion and Affordability Act, passed the House and Senate. The bill makes it easier to build more housing near transit and on government or non-profit-owned land in return for setting aside a portion of units in these new projects as units affordable to those making 60% of the area’s median income.
Moore lauded the bill as “the most aggressive housing package introduced by any Maryland Governor” and it’s already delivering on its promise: New construction projects are moving forward with many more units than would have been possible previously, like a project in Lutherville that added 110 more units.
The governor isn’t out on a limb as a pro-housing politician these days. Some of the movement’s most prominent recent public advocates these days are former President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris, who both gave the policy agenda prime-time billing in their speeches at the Democratic National Convention.
But it’s one thing to go from pitching the ideas and concepts of increased housing supply and another task entirely to pass legislation. As a part of the advocacy campaign to pass the bill, Greater Greater Washington, a nonprofit that I sit on the board of that works to increase the supply of housing, commissioned polling from the firm YouGov to inform voters and legislators of what Marylanders want when it comes to housing policy.
One of the central arguments housing supply skeptics often bring up in opposition to the state taking on the issue of zoning regulations and housing supply is local control. Put simply, many think that these issues should be left up to municipal and county-level governments, and given that many senators and delegates are former local elected officials themselves, many are reluctant to wade into issues that they would consider to be their purview in a previous job in government.
However, the sentiment that only local governments should have a say over their housing and zoning policy, is what led to the inaction that resulted in out-of-control rents and home prices. As a result, at the beginning of the legislative session when the Housing Expansion and Affordability Act was introduced, many seasoned observers of Annapolis doubted the bill could pass.
What we learned is critical to understanding why we are in a pro-housing moment and explains why the Governor was successful in passing his ambitious agenda:
Voters don’t think local governments have done a great job controlling the cost of housing. In our survey, 55% and 60% of Marylanders respectively believed local governments do a poor job of controlling housing costs and that local governments aren’t doing enough to “create rental and homeownership opportunities for every household budget.” On top of that, a whopping 72% of Marylanders agreed that the state should “do more to improve access to rental and homeownership opportunities.”
Most importantly, 31% of voters agreed that lowering housing costs was more important than protecting local control, while only 16% agreed that local control should never be broached. Perhaps even more telling, 42% thought both were equally important and should be given equal consideration, which is exactly what the governor did, working in conjunction with the Maryland Municipal League and the Maryland Association of Counties in crafting the legislation and bringing them along, making future legislation more likely and local governments less fearful of state involvement in land use policy in the state.
Instead of listening to the pundits, Wes Moore heard the concerns of voters loud and clear, delivering on one voter’s most important issues in a way that brought various stakeholders to the table and respected the will of the voters who desperately want action from government and work towards a solution on this increasingly important issue.