Maybe some housing relief

This past month saw two important moments for housing policy nerds that have implications for anyone who is interested in making big change. At the national level, the Harris-Walz campaign set a goal of 3 million houses in 4 years, recognizing that supply is a necessary (although not always sufficient) element of housing affordability.

*For those counting, that's 5,000 little house icons*

Another moment, at the local level, shows that if setting goals is human, then achieving them is divine (sorry Alexander Pope). In Washington, DC, Mayor Bowser announced the achievement of a critical goal: the production of 36,000 housing units between 2019 and 2025. This effort is near and dear to my heart, not only because I helped the administration calculate the number and then pursue more housing production, but also because it shows how an ambitious and clear policy goal can align varied stakeholders around a common goal to achieve success. And housing, perhaps more than any other policy system, needs this. There are three big lessons from this successful effort that can inform any big policy goal, including the Harris-Walz goal.

Lesson 1: let’s make a goal that is ambitiously realistic and also resonant

I recently spent a few days working with one of my partner organizations on goal setting for a long-term project. It got me thinking about the need and perils of setting goals. When striving for big, complex challenges like turning the tide of housing underproduction to lower housing costs, agreeing to set a goal is absolutely necessary to give context and measure progress.

Yet goals are scary: if not calibrated correctly or not fully committed to, they can become demoralizing, a distraction, and a political liability. Officials may be reluctant to set goals that they are not sure they can achieve. For housing, perhaps this is why states are starting to require cities and regions to set goals: California requires regions to set housing goals through a Regional Housing Needs Assessment and Colorado recently passed a bill that required housing goals to be set.

A screenshot of the Wayne Gretzky quote "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" from The Office. — *Just a note that Wayne Gretzky was quoting his dad, Walter Gretzky.*

So calibrating a goal, especially around these big, complex policy ideas, is as critical as agreeing to have a goal. It requires data and market analysis to understand what is needed to make change while staying within the realm of reality. Within that realm, a good goal will push toward the unrealistic. After all, if the purpose is to impact an outcome, a goal that simply restates what is likely to happen is not going to change anything.

In DC, we worked for months to determine the existing housing gap, the pipeline of production and what additional units would be a few decades to fill that gap. We then worked back to what we would need within a more tangible timeframe of five years. The Harris-Walz announcement was so exciting for housing policy folks because it set a goal and one that looks to be well calibrated.

In addition to this “science” of goal calibration, there is an “art” of communication. This is both about how central the goal is to leadership and how broadly it is understood. Policymaking is chock full of metrics and key performance indicators and even annual goals. There are lots of numbers we are constantly working to achieve. What makes a great goal is one that creates focus to make a broad impact. This means it must have buy-in at the highest levels. Both Mayor Bowser’s and the Harris-Walz goals clearly have this, while it seems that some of the state-mandated goals may not (See San Francisco which is not on track to meet its goal of 82,000 houses by 2031). Numbers alone are not destiny.

But even goals that high-level policymakers focus on can become technical and fail to get buy-in beyond bureaucracy. One question to ask is “does this resonate beyond insiders?” A goal about changing GDP is less resonant than one about wages or jobs (hence the old economic development adage of “jobs, jobs, jobs”). In the past, I worked on internal goals for affordable housing production, but such a number, while critically important, is not broadly resonant given the vast majority of people have no interaction with new affordable housing units. That’s why DC’s number was broad enough to resonate with many residents. Also, because it was a multiple of 12, it had a better vibe than something that may have been more technically accurate like 35,742 housing units.

President John F. Kennedy annoucing his space shot goal. — "...I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." An ambitious, resonant, focused, and successful goal.

Given the number of times I have heard the Harris-Walz goal mentioned in various media, it seems like it may also resonate, although the resonance of it will only be truly evident over time. The Harris-Walz campaign likely recognizes that the federal government can only indirectly impact housing production, which is far more impacted by policy at the local level. Luckily cities (and regions) have set housing targets, which is something the federal government should encourage more of.

One more note on goal setting. In DC, the Mayor created one big, clear, ambitious, resonant goal, then nested other supportive goals inside it. While an affordable housing goal alone was not resonant, it was a part (or 12,000 parts in this case) of the broader 36,000 housing unit goal. In addition, we broke these numbers down by neighborhood. Both sub-goals helped show we understood nuances, while keeping one umbrella goal that everyone could understand and refer to.

Lesson 2: alignment, alignment, alignment

Well-designed goals are necessary but not sufficient to reach outcomes. Even a well-calibrated goal can fail if it does not result in clear action by numerous individuals and organizations. Whether through the motivators of excitement, fear, obsequiousness, charity, or any other force, goals need to create alignment among lots of people to become real.

A screenshot from the Simpsons with a woman in front of a fundraising thermometer — *The fundraising thermometer is a physical manifestation of the alignment value of a goal, even if the alignment is mostly created through guilt.*

I saw this in DC, where the 36,000 goal was a clear message to developers, advocates, councilmembers, residents, and every level of government worker. I smiled inside every time I heard one of these parties recite back the goal as a reason to do something, regardless of what I personally thought about whatever they were proposing. Our country’s land use is very slow to change and is much better at stopping action by offering many people many opportunities to intervene, weigh in, and file lawsuits. As I saw in DC, a goal can help spur aligned action that can get more people to weigh in for change.

To scale this up to a national level, we will need much more doing and much less obstruction, something that each of the last three presidential administrations have recognized, but struggled to overcome. Changing housing production from the federal level will require multiple systems to change across many different agencies: tax policy, housing finance, environmental requirements, fair housing, among others. It also means using budget levers by tying local outcomes to federal funding, not just housing (which many wealthy communities neither take nor want), but also transportation. The Clean Air Act did this very thing by tying air quality analysis to federal highways funding. A strong goal with senior-level focus can quickly enable the needed alignment across varied agencies and offices with varied leadership and missions.

Lesson 3 (the hardest one): lots of hard, sometimes grueling, work

Once goals are set and various parties are aligned, everyone has to get to work. As this 51-page report on New York’s achievement of its housing goals illustrates, it takes a lot of work in a number of different areas to achieve change. In DC, it took efforts from numerous agencies to adjust priorities, propose new budgets and actually move projects forward. It also took constant measurement (including a snazzy dashboard) to check on progress and make any needed adjustments.

As I shared, perhaps no domain is more challenging than that of zoning, which can take years (and sometimes more than a decade) of sustained effort to achieve results. Governor Walz knows this since he recently signed a law to reinstate Minneapolis’ watershed 2018 zoning law.

Given I have an 18 month old, I want to compare the ongoing process to achieve more housing in one neighborhood in DC (Chevy Chase) to a child’s development:

2018-2019 (pregnancy & infancy) - Build case. Why is this needed, what should the goal be and why does the goal make sense? Set goals for overall housing, affordable housing, and by area of the city.

2019-2021 (toddler) - Change the overarching document that constrains efforts. In DC this was the Comprehensive Plan. Use numbers as a way to have numerous conversations about change.
2021-2022 (preschooler) - Zoom in to plan specifically for an area. In DC, this was a roadmap and small area plan.
2023-2024 (kindergartner) - Change the zoning.
Now (elementary schooler) - implement projects (like this great one).
After now (Hopefully before middle schooler, but let’s say by freshman year of high school) - people actually move into new houses.

At a federal level, even the changes that can indirectly move the needle on production cannot simply be done administratively. They require regulatory, budgetary, and sometimes legislative changes, none of which happens quickly and all of which will require people to work both inside and outside of government. The long and sometimes tedious work of implementing changes that can even feel insignificant or not worth the time. A good goal can help buoy everyone through this slog.

The best goals change the trajectory of outcomes in the long run

Many changes may take one or more presidential or mayoral term to implement and begin affecting outcomes. Given the Harris-Walz goal is for four years, if an action will take longer than four years to bear fruit, does this goal even matter?

Clear goals not only can give all parties a reason to keep moving forward, but can keep the change and momentum going even when the goal is met. In DC’s situation, even though the new houses we are still working toward in Chevy Chase will not contribute to the original goal, that original goal helped us get past the first few critical stages, which included significant opposition. As Mike Kingsella of Up for Growth notes, while the Harris-Walz goal is commendable in itself, to truly see the changes in housing costs we are looking for, we will need to keep that momentum going well beyond the four year time horizon. In a complex and slow-moving system like housing, good goals can “bend the curve” and change systems in long-term and lasting ways.