OPINION:
President Trump is trying to make homeownership more affordable for families. If he wants to make lasting progress, then he should take an example from my home state of Michigan, where lawmakers unveiled a bipartisan package this month to lower the costs of building and buying homes. The plan rests on the time-tested principle that government simply needs to get out of the way.
Michigan is going in a different direction from some of the president’s housing ideas. The most talked-about plank of Mr. Trump’s homeownership agenda is blocking Wall Street firms from buying single-family homes, but that’s a phenomenon in only a handful of places around the country, mainly fast-growing cities in the South.
The nationwide issue is that too few homes are being built. State and local rules stand in the way of construction, driving up prices for existing homes. The president understands this, which is why he also signed an executive order to remove some regulatory and zoning obstacles. The best way to lower home costs is to double down on that approach.
Michigan shows why dramatic action is needed. The state was once famous for its booming middle class, and one of the biggest reasons was the affordability of homes. Hundreds of thousands of homes were built in Detroit and its suburbs, as well as in Lansing and Grand Rapids, in a relatively short time. That could never happen today. Almost every big and medium-size city, along with a host of small towns and counties, has wrapped homebuilding in reams of red tape.
Detroit is far and away the worst. The city is well known for losing hundreds of thousands of residents in recent decades, leaving vast areas without any homes. Yet building the same kinds of homes that families used to afford is now impossible. Detroit has the most extensive and comprehensive zoning code in the state, heavily restricting what can be built and where. As a result, much of the city’s empty space just sits there unused, while the houses that do exist cost more than they should.
What’s true in Detroit is largely true across the rest of the state. Not enough new housing is available to keep down the costs of existing homes. It’s a major reason so many people have left Michigan in recent years. Overwhelmingly, they’re going to places such as Texas and Florida, where state and local zoning laws have been reformed to make it easier to build homes. These states are making homeownership affordable, while Michigan isn’t.
Thankfully, after years of inaction and bickering, Michigan Democrats and Republicans are ready for reform. The plan they introduced in the Legislature on Feb. 17 rests on three pillars, all of which will lead to more home construction and lower costs for families.
First, they will stop local governments from banning new kinds of housing. That includes duplexes and accessory dwelling units, which are essentially smaller homes on existing properties. Under this reform, cities such as Detroit will have to allow the construction of more affordable homes.
Second, they will end a broken system that lets protesters delay or block construction. Currently, local governments can limit construction by requiring endless “studies” of proposed new builds. They also can allow people who don’t live near the property to file “protest petitions” to prevent groundbreaking. No more delays and death sentences, state lawmakers are saying; it’s legal to build.
Finally, they will eliminate some unnecessary and nonsensical rules that local governments force on home projects. City halls impose requirements for minimum parking spaces, severely limit how close homes and apartments can be to a sidewalk, and impose unreasonable minimum home sizes and maximum lot sizes. Navigating the permitting process makes homes more expensive and often blocks construction altogether.
Michigan could pass these commonsense reforms in a matter of weeks, ushering in a new era of affordable homeownership. Federal leaders, including the president, should pay attention and take similar action. The best thing they can do is repeal federal rules that make homes harder and more expensive to build; there are many such mandates at the federal level. They also could incentivize states to repeal the same rules that Michigan is about to reform, because zoning is a nightmare from coast to coast.
The president is right to make affordable homeownership one of his biggest priorities, but using the government’s awesome power to impose more restrictions won’t make much difference. Democrats and Republicans in Michigan show a better way: namely, getting government out of the way.
• Jarrett Skorup is vice president for marketing and communications at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
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