Preserving the continuity, vitality, and quality of life of exurban and rural red America should be a top priority for conservative policymakers.
Instead, red America faces a multifront assault on land use and development. Corrupt local Republican politicians and their developer donors are pushing data centers, solar and wind farms, and Section 8 housing for foreign labor. Now, Congress has sent President Trump a uniparty housing bill — the Obamacare of housing — that will open the floodgates for the federal government, globalists, and special interests to force more of that transformation on red communities.
Conservatives need communities that remain intact, counties that can govern themselves, and neighborhoods that are not remade by federal bribes and developer schemes.
After years of negotiations, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) just sent the largest housing bill in recent memory to the president’s desk. Only five Senate Republicans voted against it. Every Democrat supported it. Trump had signaled he would sign the bill — but only after Congress passes the SAVE America Act.
The bill is being sold as a magic wand to lower housing prices. In reality, it expands the Housing and Urban Development and Federal Housing Administration programs that helped fuel the housing bubble through artificial subsidies.
Conservatives are being told the bill bars corporate ownership of residential homes. But that provision was tacked on at the 11th hour, accounts for only 19 of the bill’s 381 pages, and is riddled with loopholes. Worse, the bill’s main provisions incentivize overdevelopment and Section 8 expansion in red America, negating whatever limited utility the corporate ownership provision might have.
The result is more social transformation than the partial corporate ownership ban claims to prevent.
Obama-style zoning incentives
Section 107 sets the tone by creating a federal zoning standard for “directing local reforms,” including “mechanisms to encourage adoption” of loose zoning rules — all in the name of increasing housing inventory. It also creates a national standard for developers and builders to request special zoning and appeal denials of variances.
That may sound appealing when discussing onerous regulations in blue states. But in red America, already overbuilt since COVID, this bill will create a federal standard that pressures communities to drop one of their few remaining tools of self-defense against the transformation of their neighborhoods.
The rest of the bill offers incentives to communities that follow this national standard. Inevitably, that will encourage localities to rezone not just for housing but also for other uses, including data centers.
HUD should not exist. It certainly should not dictate zoning policy to rural America.
The zoning guidelines would push communities to “reduce minimum lot sizes and setbacks,” increase the number of “duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes,” and promote “transit-oriented development.” Nothing good will come from federal incentives that effectively impose Section 8-style housing and density mandates on suburbs, exurbs, and rural towns.
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Grant money as a weapon
Ask any conservative living in red America under RINO leadership — which describes much of America — and he will tell you that one of the greatest threats to the character of his county comes from developers working with corporatist GOP politicians, usually their donors, to transform the neighborhood through overdevelopment.
This bill does not directly mandate adoption of the zoning standards. It does something almost as dangerous: It offers local communities and developers incentives that will function like a mandate.
Section 207, written by pro-Hamas Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), creates new competitive HUD grants for states, localities, tribes, and other entities for planning, zoning reform, barrier reduction, and implementation to increase “affordable” housing supply.
Some grants will go toward reducing environmental barriers, which is how Warren got Republicans to support the bill. But much of the remaining criteria is rooted in urbanizing more of America.
The funds are contingent on adopting plans to rezone and “increase the availability of affordable housing and access to affordable housing.” In practice, this provision places a loaded gun to the head of communities that want to keep out Section 8. Nothing gets between local politicians and grant funds.
Section 208 goes further by granting funds to communities that have already demonstrated measurable progress in expanding housing supply at all costs. Eligibility criteria include localities that build more multiunit housing, reduce lot sizes, create “zoning overlays for mixed-income housing,” and use “local tax incentives or public financing for attainable housing.”
Want to densify your suburb and destroy single-family neighborhoods? This bill is for you.
Then comes the Community Development Block Grant program. Rather than following through on every Trump budget proposal’s promise to abolish this program, the bill expands it. Worse, it creates a zero-sum reallocation within the existing CDBG formula by shifting money from low-growth communities to high-growth communities.
Build more homes, and you get rewarded. Build fewer, and you get punished.
That will either shift more money to blue areas, which make up the lion’s share of places needing more inventory, or incentivize red areas to overdevelop.
Subsidizing the next bubble
No bad housing bill would be complete without provisions expanding the FHA’s authority to extend even more loans to people who cannot afford houses, thereby fueling the next housing bubble.
Section 213 allows the FHA to insure larger loans for apartment buildings, enabling more and bigger multifamily projects to be financed with FHA insurance.
Outside the Northeast, home prices are already beginning to tumble from COVID-era overbuilding, and builders are desperate to sell. In June, 35% of builders cut prices, while 62% used sales incentives to attract buyers. America does not need to expand HUD’s reach into local communities to incentivize what is already happening.
Ironically, this bill is being sold as a way to prevent corporations from transforming neighborhoods by purchasing too many homes. But almost every other provision accelerates an even greater transformation.
Section 1001 supposedly bans very large corporate investors from buying more single-family houses. But it carves out practical exceptions for new construction, build-to-rent developments, meaningful renovation programs, and certain pathways that help renters eventually buy homes.
In other words, the same corporations will enjoy even more subsidies to build Section 8 rentals in the suburbs under the bill’s extremely limited ban than they enjoyed before it.
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No one is home
This is why Congress should not rush through a bill of this magnitude on the suspension calendar without debate.
Then again, nobody is home in the so-called conservative movement to flag a bill this large. Obamacare could pass overnight, and the loudest voices on the right might not even notice.
The bill’s supporters claim they are solving a housing crisis. In reality, they are giving HUD, developers, corporate investors, and local Republican sellouts more tools to transform red America.
Conservatives do need homes. They need communities that remain intact, counties that can govern themselves, and neighborhoods that are not remade by federal bribes and developer schemes.
That is the home conservatives must ultimately construct. Where is the bill to expedite that construction?
