Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

While there are federal housing programs such as the Housing Choice Voucher Program (colloquially called Section 8 housing) and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), many affordable housing policies are the domain of local governments. While subnational housing policies can be used to increase racial and economic segregation (Rothstein, 2017; Trounstine, 2018) they can also protect renters (Hatch, 2017), and thus are not without controversy. Local affordable housing policies include inclusive zoning, rent control, short term rental regulation, and source of income anti-discrimination. Often, although not exclusively, it is larger, more politically liberal cities that adopt these affordable housing policies. However, starting in the 1980s, states began to preempt these local laws, preventing their cities from adopting affordable housing policies. The number of affordable housing policy preemptions follow a temporal and geographic configuration that suggests preemption may follow diffusion patterns typical of policy adoption. We ask why states choose to preempt one or more of these four affordable housing policies. The common explanation for state preemption of city laws is partisanship, and in particular preemption is most likely to occur when more conservative states preempt policies enacted by their liberal cities (Swindell, Stenberg, & Svara, 2017). Other authors also emphasize the role of powerful interest groups (Riverstone-Newell, 2017), such as the real estate industry, which uses their political capital to lobby against particular policies. Using an event history model (Boehmke, 2009), we find evidence that affordable housing preemption follows a diffusion model. Preliminary results suggest more conservative legislatures, urban populations, and non-white residents increase the likelihood of preemption, while higher housing prices and more renters decreases the likelihood of preemption. Contrary to expectations, interest group density is not a significant predictor of preemption. To test the effects of partisanship on preemption diffusion, we also divide our analysis into three political epochs: the Reagan Era of the 1980s until 1994, the Republican Revolution (and aftermath) era between 1994 and 2010, and the current era of 2010 to 2016. Our preliminary results find ideology to be particularly influential in the Republic Revolution era, but unrelated to preemption in the other two time periods. The results of this analysis indicate partisanship is an important predictor in the preemption of local affordable housing laws, with the role of partisanship and political polarization changing over time. For advocates and policymakers concerned with increasing affordable housing in their jurisdictions, these results raise unease about the ability to further an affordable housing agenda at the local level, particularly in more conservative political environments. In an era of rising state preemptions, these policies may be of limited success if enacted at a local government level, and instead affordable housing may need to return to the purview of the federal government.