Utah is among the states that are “aggressive players” in the housing space, said a former federal housing secretary.
“Those of us who care about housing haven’t really thought about states much,” said Henry Cisneros, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
But there’s now “real innovation and real results” coming out of state governments, Cisneros said as he moderated a panel Wednesday during the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Terwilliger Center Summit on Housing Supply Solutions.
The panel included Steve Waldrip – who serves as Gov. Spencer Cox’s senior adviser for housing strategy and innovation – and people in leadership roles in state housing agencies in Maryland, New York and Rhode Island.
It makes sense for states to be in the housing space for several reasons, panelists said, like ensuring economic well-being and using levers the federal government can’t.
There’s been a “seismic shift in the housing market all across the country,” Waldrip said, to the point where states need to step in to help with market-rate housing that’s half as affordable as it used to be.
‘Everybody hates density’
That means trying to advocate for and enable more housing, even as people resist more density, panelists said.
“There is no political ideology that’s consistent in housing other than that everybody hates density,” Waldrip said. “Everybody wants to have kids [and] they want their kids to be close, just not that close. They want them to build in a different city.”
He added that people have convinced themselves they own things like traffic and schools “beyond our property” and resist change.
It can be hard for local governments to deal with “our friends who make the most noise,” said Julia Glanz, deputy secretary for Maryland’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
And if local officials aren’t going to deal with the pushback, she said, the state has to step up.
Deborah Goddard, the secretary of housing for Rhode Island, said she’s willing to be the “pesky, insistent” voice for density that’s crucial for cost-effectiveness. She also endorsed a sophisticated phone tree to get “yes” people at local meetings.
There are a lot of stereotypes about affordable housing, she said, and she’s started putting faces to it – like a day care worker or truck driver making 30% of the area median income – to address misconceptions about affordable housing and the people who live in it.
Glanz stressed that more density doesn’t overcrowd schools or overtax infrastructure and services.
“Those people are already in our communities,” she said. “They’re just living in overpopulated housing.”
A ‘carrot-shaped stick’
As states push for more density, panelists said, they’re navigating a sometimes tenuous relationship with local officials.
“It’s a carrot or stick approach,” Glanz said, using access to “a lot of grant dollars.”
Waldrip said a “carrot-shaped stick” using the “power of the purse” is the key.
He talked about a recent summit at the governor’s mansion with leaders from 48 cities, and said Cox called out some cities where officials are doing it wrong.
“Some of them are still angry,” Waldrip said. “They were mad that they got called out in front of their colleagues as a bad actor.”
Waldrip met with one of those cities last week and said they were able to solve a three-year delay for a 100-acre development in 70 minutes.
It takes a willingness by local officials, he said, to accept the right set of incentives from the state.
Waldrip added he was hopeful hearing a conversation shift from “partnership, not preemption” – what he described as the mantra cities have had for years – to “practicality, not politics.”
“If we can get into practicality, we can solve issues,” he said. “That’s a huge, huge shift.”
The federal government’s role?
Even with that shift, there’s a looming question on the horizon of what the federal government will do.
President Donald Trump’s budget plan would dramatically shrink the federal rental aid that helps keep people housed – including thousands of Utah households.
That would end a critical part of the toolbox needed to address the housing crisis, panelists said.
“There is no full solution if the federal government walks away,” Goddard said. “The states can’t make it up.”
Even with federal help, though, there isn’t “enough government money in the world to solve this issue,” Waldrip said.
Government at every level has struggled to keep pace supporting housing for people with the lowest incomes, he said, and adding market-rate housing to the plate makes the math impossible.
