Liberals and Housing: A Study in Ambivalence

Do political liberals support or oppose zoning changes that allow more market-rate development? I use survey data from California and show that liberals are ambivalent. The ambivalence is explained in part by homeownership, which is associated with opposition to new housing of all kinds, even as it has little influence on attitudes about other policies. Even controlling for ownership, however, I find that self-identified liberals remain ambivalent about new development, never supporting it as much as they support more stereotypically liberal policies, and opposing it outright when reminded that enabling new housing might require less regulation, particularly environmental regulation. In contrast, liberals strongly and consistently support spending on subsidized affordable housing. The results together suggest that in supply-constrained cities with liberal electorates, the political calculus is unfavorable to new housing. Ownership injects some conservatism into development politics; liberal ideology could provide a counterweight to that conservatism, but that counterweight might be blunted if development also requires deregulation.