Principles for Achieving Abundance
Key concepts Abundance should borrow from YIMBYism (Part 1)
My most obnoxious friend recently asked me, “Ok, but what does abundance actually mean? Like I get the complaints against government inaction, I get the goal of having things and doing things. But what are you actually proposing?”
You know the top-line for most Abundance-minded folks: it ought to be easier for the private and public sectors alike to create houses, jobs, infrastructure and everything else that we need as a society. But bad process is dragging us down, creating shortages, blocking infrastructure and generally stifling the economy. It puts a damper on growth, grinds down working people, drives up costs, and keeps us from the future we know is extremely possible. We are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
But how do we separate the bad process from the good? I obviously love the answer Abundance is YIMBY for everything. But what does that mean exactly?
As one of the co-hosting organizations of next week’s Abundance 2025 conference, I’m excited about all the smart people and organizations working to flesh that out:
As one of the co-founders of the YIMBY movement, I’ve spent the past ten years cutting away at the net of bad policies that hold back housing production. As we have fought for housing production, there are principles that I believe will probably be necessary to import into other advocacy pillars in order to achieve most abundance goals.
So, here in Part 1 are three principles from YIMBY policymaking that I think could apply to a variety of other sectors.
State Capacity Can be Squandered in Endless Bureaucratic Cold Wars
The Rule of Law Unlocks Investment
Fees are, in fact, Taxes
My hope is that by adopting these principles into the everyday work of legislating, Abundance-minded elected officials and advocates can put into practice their burgeoning desire to get shit done, allowing our government and our economy to grow.
1) State Capacity Can be Squandered In Endless Bureaucratic Cold Wars
The Abundance movement is drawing critical attention to the need for greater state capacity and administrative capacity. (The premiere thought-leader on the need for state capacity is
who has a great collection of work at the Niskanen Center on the subject.)And in many cases greater bureaucratic capacity is absolutely necessary. But, as someone who spends much of my advocacy enmeshed in the world of local governments, I’m more focused on the waste I see in state capacity. I want to say “yes and” to adding state capacity: While we increase the workforce-power of our government, we should also spend state capacity more wisely. Don’t pour that more down the drain.
Too often state capacity is spent in all the wrong places. An incalculable number of staff hours are wasted on cold wars between levels of government. When a state agency wants a local government to follow a law, often many cities will spend a lot of their local state capacity trying to figure out how to evade compliance. And then the state government spends capacity trying to get them to comply. And so on. Abundance minded policymakers have to take a critical eye to the question of “Where do our laws create endless, wasteful back-and-forth negotiations between various government agencies?”
As I’ve been debating with Chuck from Strong towns, local governments have fought for a lot of local control. State legislators trying to write pro-housing laws often end up giving local governments a lot of flexibility to maintain the maximum amount of local control while attempting to meet ambitious statewide goals. This “local flexibility” can end up being extremely costly in state capacity, as it asks a local city council to adopt a policy that may be unpopular locally. Staff hours are eaten up as they attempt to placate local NIMBYs or create local programs. Sometimes a town spends their staff hours trying to declare themselves a mountain lion sanctuary instead of doing literally anything else with their time.
How much state capacity (let alone political capital) has to be spent herding the wildcats? If you allow local programs, how many staff-hours does it take at the state level to evaluate them? Does the agency have clear authority if they find local programs lacking? Is there an appeals process? How many reports have to be generated to appeal an appeal? And on and on.
Of course I’m burned by living under the RHNA process in California, which, though I have no measuring stick, I believe has to be the worst bureaucratic back-and-forth drain on state capacity nationwide. But it’s a cautionary tale that Abundance-minded policymakers should look upon with horror as they contemplate their own versions of state housing goals, “fair share” doctrines and other policy areas of increased state leadership.
As we write outcome-oriented legislation, we have to be aware that when we push-off the “how” to agencies and local governments, they can frequently tie themselves in knots. State capacity is a fungible resource that can be poorly spent. Abundance minded policymaking requires making sure that bureaucrats’ working hours are not eaten up by dumb fights.
2) The Rule of Law Unlocks Investment
You should have rules. They should be clear and easy to interpret. They should be universally applied without a lot of case-by-case decision-making.
It’s a little like deterring any crime — people should know what the law is, know what the consequences are for breaking it, and have a sense that law-breakers will be caught. Housing law should be like any other kind of law: not a mysterious negotiation. For example, cities should know that they’ll get caught if they break laws that say they have to approve new housing. (Our legal arm, YIMBY Law, has been referred to as the “housing cops,” and I don’t hate it.)
Classic deterrence theory says people weigh three main things before committing a crime:
Certainty: How likely they think it is they’ll get caught and punished.
Severity: How harsh the punishment would be.
Celerity (or swiftness): How quickly punishment follows the crime.
In housing law, governments frequently fail on all three fronts. Cities create little certainty about what the rules are. When they violate laws, there is often little chance they’ll get caught (developers hate to sue, which is why we created YIMBY Law). The severity of punishment is often close to zero, especially for the actual decision-makers. And taking cities to court when they violate housing laws takes years, so decision-makers may be long gone by the time the courts find them guilty.
The failure to maintain a rule of law culture creates instead a normalization of perpetual negotiation, which, in turn, stymies so many housing proposals. Instead of clear legal rules, many cities have a discretionary permitting process, especially for larger projects. Whether or not a proposed project will be built is at the discretion of a planning commission or city council, which can make whatever decision it wants. A project can follow all of the written rules, but if somebody wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, they could vote against it for any or no reason. The research is clear that discretionary processes add delays, uncertainty, costs, and corruption.
Investment dries up when the rules are unclear. Corruption abounds and countless hours are wasted in obscure hearings and smoky back rooms. Whether it’s a city negotiating to avoid a state regulation or a city negotiating with a developer, the negotiations are endless. They eat up state capacity and erode trust in government. Ad hoc decision-making clogs up the system with side-deals, permit expeditors, lobbyists, grandstanding elected officials, and variances upon variances upon variances.
Abundance-minded policymakers need to prioritize clear laws with clear enforcement - even if it means taking a smaller bite of the apple. Legalizing Accessory Dwelling Units are a great example of a successful, popular half-loaf for YIMBY groups. Backyard cottages can feel like small potatoes, but when the rules are clear across an entire state, magic can strike. When there is certainty, clarity, and swiftness, non-experts decide they can build, investors create new ADU companies, and a whole new industry pops up!
3) Fees Are Taxes
In the same way that Trump says “other countries will pay tariffs,” policymakers like to think that putting “fees” on housing development is somehow not a tax. They don’t think impact fees or inclusionary fees will get passed to consumers or stifle production. Fee-culture is rampant in local and state policy-making, because it’s a way to raise taxes that appears invisible to the average citizen. It’s the perfect way to hide the ball from current voters and pass the on costs to future residents.
This may sound obvious, but a fee is a tax. Taxes are necessary but, as most economists believe, should follow two principles:
Be Progressive: those with the greatest ability to pay are paying more.
Avoid distorting the economy: avoid diverting activity away from our most productive and necessary activities
Governments have a habit of taxing heavily something that we need, to pay for something they also need, and then acting Surprised Pikachu when they get less of both. This is an entirely predictable outcome.
In most places, housing proposals will face any number of fees for very-nice-sounding-things. Park fees. School fees. Transit fees. On and on and on. And these one-time fees on building housing are a completely insane way to fund parks, schools, or transit. All residents should pay taxes that don’t create terrible disincentives for things that we need.
Increasing fees on new housing construction will always push down the production of new housing. When we put high taxes on cigarettes, we’re adopting a policy designed to get fewer smokers. If we put high tax on housing production, we get fewer homes.
Seattle is one of a handful of cities actually producing housing right now, in part because they have basically no impact fees. Meanwhile, in Atlanta, the city council considered a major increase in the fees that the city charges when developers cut down trees. And while I love an urban canopy, the question of “at what cost?” was frequently dismissed. As one member of the Atlanta Tree Conservation Commission wrote in an op-ed, “The new tree protection ordinance will save Atlanta’s trees, will not increase the cost of housing.” Sure, Jan.
Inclusionary housing policies are the most politically fraught of these political conversations. Subsidized affordable housing is badly needed and underfunded. It’s an important use of government money to invest in building a lot more housing for those who need it most. But if we try to pay for that investment by heavily taxing the thing we’re already having a shortage in, we’re gonna have a bad time. (Read more about this by Jeremy Levine.)
Abundance-minded policymakers ought to treat fees like the thing they are: taxes. Governments ought to make their budgets in a straightforward way. Tax and spend on the things they want to tax and spend on, rather through one-off fees. Let’s be clear. Taxes are great. We need them. But every tax should be designed to minimize the drag on the economy.
Part 2 will drop Monday! And come say hi at the Abundance 2025 conference in Washington D.C. on September 4 and 5 or at YIMBYtown in Connecticut.