The new bipartisan Yes In My Back Yard or YIMBY Caucus in Congress is a promising sign that the housing affordability crisis gripping American cities might finally get the national attention it deserves.
Almost no major U.S. city allows housing development sufficient to keep rents and prices from spiraling ever higher. State and local reformers have pocketed some key victories over the last few years — particularly California — but hardly enough to end housing shortfalls. Yet existing federal tools have few clear ways to break down local barriers to denser housing development. Restrictive single-family zoning, minimum lot sizes and off-street parking requirements are all under the purview of local authorities.
In other words, new YIMBY Caucus members have their work cut out for them.
Federal interference has to strike a balance, careful not to alienate locals while also pushing cities to actually change course. One easy place for the YIMBY Caucus to start? Its own backyard, Washington D.C., where the antiquated Height of Buildings Act is stunting new development and needs to be repealed.
Passed by Congress in 1910 in response to outrage over the new Cairo Hotel, the Height Act has capped development across the city at 130 feet, or about a dozen floors. Even after D.C. was granted home rule in 1973, the city retains authority to regulate land use only up to the Height Act’s limit.
In downtown D.C., developers have built right up to the limit on virtually every available parcel. And with no more room to build up, they are instead building out. Research from Brookings last year suggests that on the edges of downtown D.C., the Height Act stifles new housing construction necessary to prevent displacement of existing residents.
But the costs of the Height Act to city residents go further. The pandemic and the growth of remote work hit downtown D.C. very hard. Office vacancy rates are at record highs, depressing foot traffic and depriving local businesses of weekday customers.
Much of the District’s empty office space is prime for conversion to residential apartments or other uses, but such conversions are expensive and rarely pencil out without sky-high rents. One such project opened last year with monthly rent for studio apartments starting at $2,900. Allowing builders to add additional floors would let them spread the fixed costs of converting older office buildings across many more units, enabling lower rents. Without Height Act changes, these projects will continue to be infrequent, slow and expensive.
Members of the YIMBY Caucus or its allies might find common cause with President Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, tasked with reducing the federal government’s headcount and possibly sending some federal agencies out of the city entirely. If DOGE is successful, it could free up older office buildings throughout the city that are prime candidates for conversions to other uses.
Repealing the Height Act need not encroach on the District’s ability to govern itself. Congress already interferes in the city’s local affairs by imposing the limit in the first place — it has forced height limits on the city for five decades, irrespective of the wishes of its local government or market demand. Indeed, Mayor Muriel Bowser has come around on height limit reform post-pandemic and now supports raising it. The mayor’s new “Office to Anything” campaign underscores the local, cross-partisan demand for more private-sector development downtown.
But repealing the Height Act alone would not unleash skyscrapers on our nation’s capital overnight. City government would still have the power to set zoning policy city-wide. Without the Height Act’s limit, the D.C. Zoning Commission would finally be allowed to zone for buildings taller than the existing 130-foot cap. To allay concerns that repealing the Height Act would encroach on historic sites, Congress should retain its limits immediately adjacent to the National Mall. Revitalizing D.C.’s local economy and preserving cherished landmarks are not incompatible.
The YIMBY movement’s success across the country was born from reformers building broad, cross-partisan coalitions to take on entrenched, anti-development interests. The District’s height limit has long imposed higher rents on locals, federal employees and even congressional staff who want to live, work and play in our nation’s capital. As the YIMBY Caucus ponders its first steps, there is no better place to start.
Connor O’Brien is a research and policy analyst at the Economic Innovation Group, a nonpartisan, D.C.-based think tank.
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