By U.S. Sen. John Kennedy
R-Louisiana
In “How Mamdani and Cea Weaver Plan to End Private Housing” (Life Science, Jan. 12), Allysia Finley explains how rent controls could destroy private housing in New York.
Mamdani is duly elected, and it’s his prerogative to destroy the Big Apple’s housing supply as he sees fit. But it would be stupid for the federal government to continue sending housing development grants to the city while Mamdani and Weaver are steering the ship.
Many federal housing programs today, however, fail to hold cities accountable for bad policies. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG), for example, distributes billions of dollars to help develop American cities. Local officials have broad discretion to use these grants to improve anything from public safety infrastructure to residential structures.
The federal government takes a hands-off approach to these grants for good reason. A housing strategy that works in New Orleans may not work in New York. But the no-strings-attached approach isn’t working, either. Too many cities are collecting CDBG funds while actively impeding new home construction, and it’s crushing American families.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and I introduced the Build Now Act to incentivize new home construction by tying each city’s CDBG funding to their rate of homebuilding. If a city fails to build more new housing units than the median rate of home construction nationwide, it will lose 10% of its CDBG funding. HUD would then reallocate those funds to cities that exceeded the national median rate of home building. It’s a carrot and a stick.
We can build our way out of America’s housing crisis, but we need local officials to get serious about eliminating excessive housing regulations that hinder construction. The Build Now Act has received bipartisan support in the Senate, but it has yet to receive a vote in the House. President Trump has made the housing crisis a priority. Congress must make it a priority, too.
Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, and it will fail in New York, too. Mamdani should face financial consequences when his particular recipe of warm collectivism inevitably results in fewer homes for New Yorkers. The Build Now Act’s reduction in CDBG funding may be the push New York needs to embrace the cold, hard truth about socialism and clear the way for more housing.
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