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Developing a pro-housing movement? Public distrust of developers, fractured coalitions, and the challenges of measuring political power

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Abstract

Developers have a longstanding history of exercising disproportionate influence over federal, state, and local policy decisions, often at the expense of communities of color and lower-income neighborhoods. Recent research suggests, however, that homeowners and the interest groups that represent them may have gained the upper hand politically, making it harder to build housing—especially in high-demand cities. This article explores how the link between developers and perceived profit-seeking may limit the construction of new housing and the formation of effective housing reform coalitions. It concludes by evaluating why measuring developer power—and disproving negative views of developers—is methodologically quite challenging.

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Notes

  1. In keeping with much of the literature on developer politics, this article focuses on private, for-profit developers. Other entities—notably the federal, state, and local government and nonprofits—can also act as housing developers. The discussion of these developers likely differs markedly in those contexts—though, we note, the public opposition to this type of housing remains fierce (Tighe 2010).

  2. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-07/downtown-developer-will-pay-1-2-million-in-l-a-city-hall-corruption-case.

  3. While Marble and Nall (2020) asked respondents about their trust in developers, they do not report the results of this question in their article. We rely on their full survey data, helpfully shared with their article replication data, for this analysis. The survey included 4100 respondents across the 20 largest MSAs and was conducted online in 2017.

  4. While Fig. 3 reports the results for the full data, the results are similar when limited to the control group.

  5. We make no claims here about causality from these survey data. Experimental results from Monkkonen and Manville (2019) suggest that this distrust does, in fact, lead to opposition to new housing. But, this does not rule about the possibility that opposition to new housing could also lead to antipathy towards developers.

  6. While meeting commenters are identified by name in the public meeting minutes, we have redacted their names to preserve their privacy.

  7. We have relatively little empirical evidence on whether CBAs succeed in this stated aim (Chapple and Loukaitou-Sideris 2021).

  8. The Menino Survey of Mayors is conducted annually by Boston University’s Initiative on Cities.

  9. Details about the demographics of participating mayors, compared with the national population, can be found here: https://www.surveyofmayors.com/files/2021/11/2021-Menino-Survey-BBB-Report.pdf.

  10. A wide body of scholarship links land-use regulations and exclusionary zoning practices with higher housing costs and greater economic and racial segregation (Gyourko and Molloy 2014; Rothstein 2017; Trounstine 2018).

  11. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-20/inside-the-virginia-bill-to-allow-denser-housing.

  12. https://3d81d522-ce99-431c-a359-61f1ce06c557.filesusr.com/ugd/a48bae_0e6e1c52b02549c6a82410946fecee1b.pdf.

  13. https://www.cambridgeday.com/2021/02/15/black-response-cambridge-on-upzoning-petition-missing-middle-fails-for-housing-affordability/.

  14. https://www.livablecalifornia.org/livable-california-housing-background/.

  15. https://sites.google.com/view/arfrr/facts-faqs?authuser=0.

  16. http://www.ethanelkind.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/SB-827-Wiener-Oppose-Final.pdf.

  17. https://www.livablecalifornia.org/letters-submitted-for-against-california-housing-bills/.

  18. https://www.cambridgeday.com/2021/03/29/missing-middle-zoning-is-bait-and-switch-cambridge-style-and-wont-aid-affordability/.

  19. We coded 44 developer/team member statements across these five cities and towns.

  20. Candidates in smaller cities and towns file locally, and contributions are not reported to a centralized database.

  21. Other large cities, such as Worcester and Cambridge, are excluded because they elect their mayors as part of the city council election.

  22. We restricted the sample due to the large number of candidates who raised minimal funds and did not run viable campaigns.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Katherine Levine Einstein, David M. Glick & Maxwell Palmer

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  1. Katherine Levine Einstein
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  2. David M. Glick
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Correspondence to Katherine Levine Einstein.

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We are grateful to Sarah Anzia and anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. We thank Will Marble and Clayton Nall for sharing survey data.

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Einstein, K.L., Glick, D.M. & Palmer, M. Developing a pro-housing movement? Public distrust of developers, fractured coalitions, and the challenges of measuring political power. Int Groups Adv 11, 189–208 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41309-022-00159-y

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