Pick Your YIMBY

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free .

It's election day here in D.C., so our lead story looks at the district's mayoral race, where the two leading candidates both talk a good game on building more housing, but also have some anti-supply skeletons in their closets.

Additionally, the newsletter includes stories on:

Yet another church being told its homeless shelter violates the local zoning code

An inventive challenge to city-sponsored affordable housing in Phoenix, Arizona

A new federal bill that would suspend "Buy America" requirements for federally funded housing developments

In the D.C. Mayor's Race, Socialist Democrats and Liberal Democrats Try To Out-YIMBY Each Other

Today, Washington, D.C., voters head to the polls to vote in their respective party primaries.

Given how blue the district is, the Democratic primary might as well be the general election. Most eyes are on the mayoral contest that will pick the likely successor to retiring, three-term Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Rent Free Newsletter by Christian Britschgi. Get more of Christian's urban regulation, development, and zoning coverage.

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The most recent polling shows that D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George has a commanding lead over former councilmember Kenyan McDuffie.

Lewis George is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, who is running to the left of McDuffie, a former councilmember who's generally seen as the status quo successor to Bowser.

That puts plenty of distance between the two candidates on issues of taxation and public safety. On housing, McDuffie and Lewis George are remarkably aligned.

If you scan their housing platforms , both talk about the need to cut entitlement times, build more housing near transit, allow more "missing middle" homes in existing neighborhoods, reduce minimum parking requirements, and pass a more aggressive comprehensive plan.

That's driven a split within the district's wider-tent housing-supply movement that wants to see D.C. build its way to being a more affordable city.

The local D.C. YIMBY chapter and the city's main urbanist policy think tank, Greater Greater Washington , both endorsed Lewis George.

The various real estate trade associations have lined up behind McDuffie, as have some prominent YIMBY commentators like Matt Yglesias.

The pro–Lewis George YIMBYs point to her more ambitious growth targets (she wants D.C. to build 72,000 housing units , as opposed to McDuffie's 12,000) and more full-throated support for zoning reform and other YIMBY housing and transportation policies.

In an op-ed published by Greater Greater Washington , Lewis George herself made sure to cite Austin, Texas, and Minneapolis as models to emulate. The two cities have a good reputation among YIMBYs for upzoning and building more housing.

Her critics argue that her other left-wing commitments on housing undermine her more full-throated embrace of zoning reform. Lewis George voted against a bill aimed at reducing the massive eviction backlog in D.C. courts and reforming its easily exploitable Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act.

McDuffie, in contrast, voted to speed up the clogged eviction process, which was causing a nonpayment crisis for a lot of affordable housing. While he's a little less practiced at urbanist speak, he's also consistently campaigned on the need to cut red tape to ensure that D.C. builds more.

On the flip side, the longtime councilmember has not always been a consistent vote for upzoning and permit streamlining. While he voted in favor of recent reforms to D.C.'s eviction process, he's also supported laws that prevent landlords from screening tenants based on their criminal history.

Contra other big, blue cities, D.C. actually has a decent record of building new housing and staying relatively affordable as a result. A major question in the mayor's race then is who can keep that growth going.

Much of D.C.'s housing growth has been concentrated in formerly industrial and commercial areas in the NoMa and Navy Yard neighborhoods. With those sites now developed, new housing will need to go into existing residential neighborhoods.

Which candidate is going to be better about permitting that infill housing they both say they want?

One could say McDuffie, as the more pro-business candidate, would be better at ensuring that new infill development is financeable and isn't blocked by overgenerous "tenant protections," affordable housing mandates, and other policies Lewis George favors.

On the other hand, McDuffie's base is generally older voters more worried about crime than housing affordability. Perhaps Lewis George, who is backed by younger renters, would be more willing to push through controversial upzonings.

Ultimately, it's a question of trust and bigger-picture priorities.

As Joe Bishop-Henchman, an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in the Eckington neighborhoo…