Name: The Homevoter Hypothesis
ISBN: 9780674015951

SchiendelmanJul 2022

Homeownership is well below 50% of the voting eligible population in many major cities. But it’s the majority of the voters.

There are many studies on homeownership and voting. I recommend the book “The Homevoter Hypothesis” if you’d like to start informing yourself about these issues!

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nicoffeineOct 2021

In addition to your points here, I found the hypothesis below very interesting. In a nutshell, American governments are incentivized to zone for expensive land that doesn't require much infrastructure. So we get giant, sparse suburbs and institutional opposition to affordable housing because that reduces the tax base.

'Local German officials, like local leaders everywhere, seek bigger budgets to provide more and better services to their constituents. What’s different about Germany is that the way to get bigger budgets is to increase local populations. And, as Professor Buettner says, “Ultimately, to get people, municipalities will need to support housing.”

The result is a system of incentives that is the opposite of “fiscal zoning”—the US practice of zoning land in ways that maximize local governments’ income and minimize their costs. In places with high sales taxes, such as Washington State, leaders zone more land for shopping centers. In places where residential property taxes are capped, such as California, they zone less land for homes and more for offices. In affluent suburbs, they often zone land for houses on large lots, excluding low-income people.

Maximizing property values is such a central concern of local government in the United States that Dartmouth economist William Fischel developed the notion into an entire political theory. His “homevoter hypothesis” holds that local governments are almost single-mindedly focused on maximizing real estate values, because homeowners typically vote their home values in local elections. German jurisdictions gain financially by maximizing population, not house values, and because renters outnumber homeowners in the country, homevoters are not the dominant electoral force in local German elections. Renters are.'

https://www.sightline.org/2021/05/27/yes-other-countries-do-...

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nicoffeineSep 2021

I found a pretty interesting theory reading about Germany, since their property values are extremely stable:

'Local German officials, like local leaders everywhere, seek bigger budgets to provide more and better services to their constituents. What’s different about Germany is that the way to get bigger budgets is to increase local populations. And, as Professor Buettner says, “Ultimately, to get people, municipalities will need to support housing.”

The result is a system of incentives that is the opposite of “fiscal zoning”—the US practice of zoning land in ways that maximize local governments’ income and minimize their costs. In places with high sales taxes, such as Washington State, leaders zone more land for shopping centers. In places where residential property taxes are capped, such as California, they zone less land for homes and more for offices. In affluent suburbs, they often zone land for houses on large lots, excluding low-income people.

Maximizing property values is such a central concern of local government in the United States that Dartmouth economist William Fischel developed the notion into an entire political theory. His “homevoter hypothesis” holds that local governments are almost single-mindedly focused on maximizing real estate values, because homeowners typically vote their home values in local elections. German jurisdictions gain financially by maximizing population, not house values, and because renters outnumber homeowners in the country, homevoters are not the dominant electoral force in local German elections. Renters are.'

https://www.sightline.org/2021/05/27/yes-other-countries-do-...

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nicoffeineSep 2021

Posted in another thread, but there is a very interesting theory about why Germany has stable housing prices compared to other nations. This funding model may also explain why local municipalities are against multi-family housing, which is driving sprawl and unwalkable zoning policy in the US.

'Local German officials, like local leaders everywhere, seek bigger budgets to provide more and better services to their constituents. What’s different about Germany is that the way to get bigger budgets is to increase local populations. And, as Professor Buettner says, “Ultimately, to get people, municipalities will need to support housing.”

The result is a system of incentives that is the opposite of “fiscal zoning”—the US practice of zoning land in ways that maximize local governments’ income and minimize their costs. In places with high sales taxes, such as Washington State, leaders zone more land for shopping centers. In places where residential property taxes are capped, such as California, they zone less land for homes and more for offices. In affluent suburbs, they often zone land for houses on large lots, excluding low-income people.

Maximizing property values is such a central concern of local government in the United States that Dartmouth economist William Fischel developed the notion into an entire political theory. His “homevoter hypothesis” holds that local governments are almost single-mindedly focused on maximizing real estate values, because homeowners typically vote their home values in local elections. German jurisdictions gain financially by maximizing population, not house values, and because renters outnumber homeowners in the country, homevoters are not the dominant electoral force in local German elections. Renters are.'

https://www.sightline.org/2021/05/27/yes-other-countries-do-...

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plughsJan 2020

> In 2001 William Fischel of Harvard University proposed his “homevoter hypothesis”. The thinking runs that owner-occupiers have an incentive to resist development in their local area, since doing so helps preserve the value of their property.

This is a common sentiment that, I think, misses the point and makes a lot of the discussion around housing costs unproductive.

I'm a homeowner and I've seen the resistance to new construction. The concerns are often

* more traffic

* more students at schools that are already overcrowded

* more noise

* etc.

Also proposals to build more houses often are planned on property that is already occupied. In a nearby area they want to tear down an existing school, in other areas they want to take away open space that is used as walking/running/biking paths.

Now I'm not going to pretend that homeowners are otherwise pure and virtuous and not even slightly concerned about the price of their house. But that's rarely the only concern.

I don't say that to shut discussion down - maybe homeowners are still wrong to have these concerns. Maybe they just need to deal with more traffic and trust that the schools will address overcrowding as needed.

But that conversation never happens. It is _always_ greedy homeowners who worry only about their house price at the expense of everyone else. As long as the conversation is framed that way, I don't think it will ever move forward.

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yonranAug 2018

Rather than blaming the company Airbnb for a city’s ills, it may be more helpful to examine why it has popular support in the first place, while family-only zoning is declining in popularity. Short-term rentals in residences were already illegal in San Francisco and New York; they were legalized to allow Airbnb because short-term rentals have popular support from voters. Single-family zoning was designed 100 years ago to create neighborhoods of families who were protected from the nuisances of the lower-class apartment “parasite”s (Euclid v. Ambler) and lower-class houses that were used to raise chickens and take on boarders (https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/07/it-time-bring-back-bo... or https://www.amazon.com/American-Nightmare-Government-Undermi...). I think exclusionary zoning has been so extreme in some cities that it is beginning to lose its support among the middle class, for whom it is now more necessary to use their property as a business rather than only as consumption.

Edit: Related point: In some places, it is ingrained in our culture since the 1970s that housing should be a good investment. Low property taxes (Proposition 13) and zoning restrictions are designed to increase the private gains to this investment (https://www.amazon.com/Homevoter-Hypothesis-Influence-Govern...). A small change of use to short-term rentals is perhaps the next incremental step for house investors. It sucks for people who want to use housing as only a peaceful consumption good, but in my opinion that ship sailed a long time ago in Closed-Access cities.

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