The Symbolic Politics of Housing

Voter opposition to development contributes to America’s housing shortage. Prevailing explanations emphasize NIMBYism (opposition to housing nearby) and homeowners’ self-interest. However, homeownership often fails to predict housing policy views, while NIMBYism offers little insight into support for policies that do not concern specific proposed housing projects—the focus of much recent policymaking. Drawing on symbolic politics theory, we argue that voters’ affect toward groups that housing policies make salient powerfully shapes their judgments about housing policies. We present evidence supporting this theory. Experiments show that affect toward developers and investors who build housing, government actors who approve it, and residents who move into it explain anti-development preferences when policies make these groups salient. Providing further causal evidence, short-form videos that manipulate affect toward developers have meaningful downstream effects on support for new development and permitting reforms. Ironically, voter dislike of the very actors who could ameliorate the housing shortage further exacerbates it.