Build, Baby, Build: The Housing (and Future Electoral) Crisis Coming for Democrats

Photo credit: Shannon Badiee

If you’ve paid any attention to discourse related to California politics, you know that housing is a topic that frequently gets brought up. People talk about having to pay higher interest rates on mortgages, having trouble finding a home to buy, or, as famed political activist Jimmy McMillan would say, “the rent is too damn high.” All kinds of propositions related to housing affordability have been put to a vote, most recently in 2024 with Proposition 33, an initiative that would have expanded what types of housing can be covered under municipal rent control laws. It ended up failing to pass, with 60% of California voters opting to reject the initiative.

This dance of housing-related propositions being put on the ballot, only for voters to reject them, is getting us nowhere. A lot of people out there just don’t want new housing if it means their neighborhood is impacted in any way.

Legislation attempting to liberalize the construction of Affordable Dwelling Units (ADUs), a type of smaller housing built on the same lot as a regular-sized home with the same functions as the primary unit itself, has been introduced and enacted into law. New laws requiring municipalities to stop mandating replacement parking be built when a parking space is converted into an ADU and expand the number of ADUs that can be built on a lot definitely help, but can only go so far.

Mortgages and rents keep climbing. The national average mortgage payment in October 2024 was just north of $2,100, according to Investopedia. The state of renting isn’t any better. An article published by TIME Magazine early last year listed the median rate by state; California’s median rent? A staggering $1,856. People are feeling it. People are getting fed up with the impossibility of finding a reasonably priced home or making rent. And they’re looking to greener pastures.

States like Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, and Texas have reported some of the biggest increases in their state population. These states in particular had gains of anywhere from 1.3 percent to 1.91 percent over a one-year timespan alone, according to Pew Trusts, an independent, non-profit non-governmental organization (NGO). The common denominator here is a typically lower cost of living in these states, especially when it comes to housing. That same TIME article reports that in these states, the gap in rental price is between $400 in the case of Florida, and a whopping $800 difference between median rental prices in California vs. North Carolina, whose median rent is reported to be a mere $1,093.

Every ten years, all 50 states go through their own process to re-draw what maps they use to elect who serves in the state legislature, state-wide elected boards (think the California Board of Equalization, which handles tax collection here in CA), and, perhaps more notably, redrawing congressional maps. Barring any successful legal challenges, whatever maps are adopted by the states stay that way until the next redistricting cycle, when the process starts over again. California is one of just nine states that uses some form of an independent redistricting commission. The other 41 vary widely between having an alternative commission, or straight up letting the state legislature determine the next congressional maps.

California currently has 52 Representatives in the House. If current trends continue, we would lose four house seats come 2032. Other reliably blue states like New York, Oregon, and Minnesota are projected to lose one or two seats. And that’s going to end up being a problem for Democrats real soon.

Let’s get back some of those states that I just mentioned (and, for the sake of simplicity, let’s stick to them). While states like Florida and Texas might not exactly be competitive for Democrats in the near future (or, at least, that’s what it looks like given the successive Republican victories in statewide and national elections over the last few years, despite what many pundits and Democratic Party loyalists might have predicted), there are still a handful of competitive congressional races in states like Texas, Florida, and North Carolina. None of these states have independent redistricting commissions, and instead have their redistricting processes dictated by their state legislatures. It is reasonable to infer that with the sizable Republican majorities in these legislatures, they will do their best to ensure that Republican candidates benefit from this increase in representation.

North Carolina is a good example of this. Currently, Republicans control both chambers of the state’s General Assembly by wide margins since the 2010 midterm elections. In the years since, the maps produced by the North Carolina General Assembly have been subject to numerous lawsuits because of what many of the participants in said lawsuit and countless activists describe as unfair design, engineered to give North Carolina Republicans an unnecessary advantage. The most recent of these suits was a years-long battle that ended with the North Carolina Supreme Court throwing out a ruling it had made just a year earlier declaring the proposed congressional maps unconstitutional.

The housing exodus could also make it harder for Democrats to win presidential elections in the future. For those who need a refresher on the Electoral College, the amount of votes a state gets in the Electoral College is based on how many people that state sends to Congress (in addition to the two senators afforded to each state). This means that Florida, Texas, and North Carolina, who currently have a combined 82 out of 538 electoral votes, would jump to 93 electoral votes. With several reliably blue states losing congressional seats, and therefore votes in the Electoral College, this is going to force Democrats to campaign in these states (North Carolina in particular) even more than they have in the past few election cycles.

But not all hope is lost. Democrats could do the thing that countless housing advocates have been asking legislators to do for years on end, and actually build housing, for once.

I’m well aware that it’s more nuanced than that. There’s red tape. There’s always the infamous “Not In My Backyard” or NIMBY crowd that shows up at city council meetings the mere nanosecond someone brings up building a new housing project. But here’s the thing. People sometimes just don’t know what's good for them. We frequently see people at local board meetings raise objections against attempts to create new housing in their area, providing all kinds of reasons as to why nothing new can be built where they live, when new housing brings costs down, and can bring much-needed life into a community. A lot of the time, people just don’t bother to do any research when it comes to housing policy before speaking out against reforms.

That’s why I really do believe that, at every corner imaginable, Democrats in control of state and local governments need to get rid of any height restrictions, zoning laws that prohibit ADUs, and laws restricting what types of homes can be covered under rent control. State-level Democratic Party organizations should also scrutinize any candidate running under the party banner who repeats popular NIMBY talking points, and actively withhold financial and volunteer support from them. Why? Because it either makes the state of housing a little less challenging for people to deal with in these states, or risk being locked out of power for years on end.