Socialist Candidates Are on the Rise—With a New, Pro-Building Platform for the Housing Crisis

D.C. mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George has admitted she used to be skeptical of the very homebuilding agenda she now champions. But the reality, she said, is visible in other cities that adding more housing works.

"Increasing supply, paired with policies to protect residents, really is critical to stopping further displacement and making housing more affordable for all," Lewis George wrote in a local op ed earlier this year.

Lewis George, who is likely D.C.'s next mayor after winning the Democratic primary this year, beat another Democrat with his own pro-homebuilding platform. But while the city has for years tried to build more housing, it has long focused its efforts on affordable units. Meanwhile, many progressives argued the idea of a general housing shortage was a ruse dreamed up by profit-hungry developers.

"When I was first elected to the DC Council, I myself was skeptical of this," she wrote. "And I wasn’t certain about the role private development should play in making housing more affordable. I saw cranes everywhere, but I knew so many people struggling to afford their rent."

Her campaign referred further questions about her positions on housing to the article.

With the continuing influence of Sen. Bernie Sanders, and the elections of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and pro-development NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani, Democratic Socialist ideas have become more mainstream. Some adherents have emerged as strong contenders in a number of elections around the country. Their views could have a major impact on city policy that is the front line of homebuilding. And more and more candidates are embracing pro-building agendas.

Socialists tentatively embrace developers

In New York, Mamdani has quickly established a pro-building agenda with a goal of building 200,000 affordable homes and preserving another 200,000. Renters face an ever-tougher market and relief could be years away.

That's meant picking fights with neighbors over housing development in more areas, as well as the now-under-litigation pied-a-terre tax aimed at high earners with second homes in the city.

For Lewis George, the issues are similar. D.C. is landlocked and federally-run, but one of few areas where the local government exercises substantial control is zoning for much of the city's residential areas.

Current Mayor Muriel Bowser championed a goal to create 36,000 new housing units over six years, and beat it by 4,000 units. But the city fell short of building new affordable units.

Lewis George wants to double that, with 72,000 new units in five years. And that policy builds on some of the messier fights D.C. has had with neighborhoods over up-zoning near transit stations and building out some of the city's last industrial stretches for residences.

"The mayor is DC’s chief planner and, in that role, I won’t let local land use regulations interfere with housing production," Lewis George said.

Other candidates at the federal level have their own ideas. Melat Kiros, the Democratic nominee for Colorado's 1st Congressional District, pushed not just for socialized housing, but for mixed-income housing that's government-backed, as well as a repeal of the Faircloth Amendment which stopped construction of new affordable housing.

"The private market has proven it cannot house everyone," Kiros' campaign site states.

The end of rent?

Probably the most well-known DSA position involves so-called 'social housing,' which means government-controlled housing and stronger tenant rights. In its most radical form, the idea seeks to decouple real estate from the private market entirely.

In the long term, the party's platform seeks "the end of rent, the end of eviction, and the social recognition of the human right to dignified housing. We should conceive of social housing as a horizon, incompatible with housing’s existence on the market, to permanently address the demands of organized tenants."

The concept contains a wide spectrum of policy possibilities, and candidates who espouse Democratic Socialist views are by and large sticking with the shorter term aspects of the plan. Realtor.com reached out to the Democratic Socialists of America for an opportunity to comment.

The rise of 'social housing' proposals has attracted criticism from across the political spectrum. The libertarian Cato Institute, for instance, said Mamdani's affordable housing development push would "distort the market further and lead to demands for even more state involvement."

Another libertarian group, The Independent Institute, argued some of the ideas pushed by the party have been tried before in California. It also pinned some of those policies for the state's housing shortage. The Touro University Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center also critiqued whether supply-side economics alone would improve affordability.

Reason examined how similar ideas on the right and left feed into a sort of political nihilism. But the embrace of radical alternatives also reflects the harsh realities of the current housing market.

Frustration fuels rise of socialist proposals

The rise of the socialist movement is contemporaneous with one of America's most severe housing crises. Harris Poll released a survey this month that found 85% of Americans want to be homeowners. But 55% don't think they'll ever be able to afford to.

Consequently, 47% say they feel they've put their lives on pause because of housing costs, Harris found.

That's led to frustration with young voters, who've watched home prices rise out of sight while the number of starter homes has fallen by almost three-quarters in recent decades. Or as Ezra Klein writes in his book Abundance, "we are building too little and we are too often paralyzed by process.”

And as Klien noted in his book, that's meant younger voters are breaking with older, traditional Democrats whose NIMBYism is locking them out of access to homes in the large cities where jobs are concentrated.

Realtor.com® economists estimated last year that the nation had a shortfall of about 4 million homes. But virtually every major city has seen residents fight more housing, especially denser housing such as apartments and condos that young people can more easily afford.

Nikhil Agarwal, a research associate at the free-market think tank Pacific Research Institute, argued the rise in support for socialism stems from pessimism among young people that they will ever be able to afford a home.

One of his takeaways is that constraining housing development leads to rents rising, and thus boosts support of rent control measures, which can further discourage new development.

"States that undertake free-market reforms will enjoy an increase in housing supply that lowers prices, but failure to do so may result in more sympathy and support for democratic socialism," he said.

A few months later, Democratic socialist Michael Kinnucan wrote that the movement has to embrace homebuilding "if we ever want to build social housing at scale."