Mark Warner Asks Experts How Congress Can 'Incent' Localities To Improve And Reform Zoning Rules

2 hours ago

During a Senate Banking Committee hearing last week, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) spoke about how Congress can pressure local authorities to reform and improve zoning regulations to increase the housing supply.

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Transcript

00:00Senator Warner. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding this

00:03hearing and to the panel and the mayor. I'm gonna incorporate by

00:10reference what everybody has said about housing shortage and all the things we

00:13need to do. I want to quickly go through so I can get to questions, my litany of

00:18some of the tools, Mr. Mayor, that I think and almost all these are

00:21bipartisan. New market tax credit extension with Senator Daines,

00:26Neighborhood Home Investment Act. This is the fill-in opportunity from the

00:31Dallas's to almost every community. We've got to make sure that if there's aging

00:35properties, they can be filled in at a cost-effective basis. Historic tax credit

00:39in terms of rural applications and the traditional tax order as well and I know

00:47CDFI tax credit and I'm going to come to that with Ms. Willis in a moment. I also

00:51want to advertise for my Republican colleagues something we put together

00:56last year called the Lift Act, which will be focused on first-generation,

01:01first-time homebuyers, which by definition ends up being two-thirds

01:04people of color and the subsidy comes in the form and I'm going to come to you,

01:07Mr. Glazer, on this one that says, in addition to some of the other tools, if

01:13you qualify, you would get a, you'd pay a 30-year rate but you get a 20-year

01:19mortgage. So, you double the amount of equity you get in the first 10 years and

01:24I think the ranking members already mentioned this, something I've been doing

01:28on CDFI is about trying to make sure we get a secondary market. So, why don't I start,

01:31Mr. Glazer, with you on, no, actually on Lift, I was going to go to Mr. Gelman.

01:38Could you speak to that idea of how we can try to deal with, not just

01:44racial wealth gap, but the ability for first-time homebuyers to build up

01:47equity with something innovative like the Lift program? Senator Warner,

01:51thank you for the question. I am a little familiar with the Lift Act and I

01:54understand exactly as you explained it, where the consumer would get the

01:58benefit of a 30-year rate but essentially have the ability to build

02:01equity as if it was a 20-year mortgage. You know, I think we would really like to

02:06dig into this with you and it's products like this that get us excited,

02:09you know, that again, whether it's a product like this or something

02:13else, it's delivered without, you know, increasing risk or ability to repay,

02:16which this doesn't do either of those, and gets people on that path of

02:21achieving the American dream and getting that equity in their homes. I would love

02:24to explore further, but yeah, we would definitely support something like that.

02:26And I will go to Mr. Glazer, which is that I think, again, lots of people have

02:31talked about the need to have more incentives for localities to improve

02:37their zoning rules. You know, I've got two notional ideas and I do think

02:42potentially the CDG grants having a carrot to maybe even increase those if

02:48you would, you know, limit your zoning requirements. One is, you know, commercial

02:55to residential. There's not a community in America that doesn't have an aging

02:58strip mall of one form or another. I don't think they're ever going to come

03:01back. You've already got infrastructure built in. How we could use that tool, but

03:05to really incent those conversions, number one, and then number two, and I

03:11think some other folks may have raised this, but how we can actually work with

03:16religions institutions. I mean, lots of churches, synagogues, mosques who have

03:20lots of available land. You know, I've got in Northern Virginia church that's been

03:26trying for five years to put a multifamily unit, and it would not

03:29disrupt the neighborhood, but it's, you know, five years is way too long and

03:34they've not moved a shovel of dirt. So can you talk about, beyond CDBG, what

03:39other tools we might use to try to give incentives to localities that change

03:43their zoning restrictions? These are great questions, Senator, and let

03:47me just join with you in a profound desire to see those single-use

03:52zoning rules that were imposed throughout America in starting in the

03:551920s, see them repealed back. Now, they have to be repealed back at the local

04:00level, not at the federal level, but this is a tremendous curse, and it's a curse

04:03for cities that are trying to reinvent themselves post-COVID, especially those

04:06cities that have huge individual office markets. It's a curse for suburban areas

04:10that have strip malls that were once the cutting edge of retail and are now not

04:14not there anymore. So I think thinking about this is great. Again, I would

04:20probably push on something which is sort of, again, using some form of carrots and

04:24sticks with federal funding to just nudge more production, but, you know,

04:28maybe a specific discussion of how great it would be to sort of allow

04:31different uses of land. I think that would be very helpful. Well, and I did,

04:34again, to my colleagues on both sides, there is a, we're doing some of this in

04:39Virginia, but need to do much more. There are so many religious institutions, and

04:43you, with that contribution, you take out the cost of the underlying land. So

04:46it's, there's a win-win here, and I think an interesting partnership, as well as

04:51in the last couple seconds. CDFIs, you and I visited on this in the past, you,

04:57important niche, we need to give these additional benefits. We actually, frankly,

05:01need more. We, under the last administration, we got 12 billion dollars

05:05in Tier 1 equity and grants, but we need more deposits. So can you talk for a few

05:11seconds about the CDFI? Sure. Thank you, Senator. So CDFIs are important. They

05:17offer flexible loans to build and preserve affordable housing for rental

05:22homes, for health care clinics, grocery stores, things that the communities

05:26need, schools, and so forth. But they also play an important role in expanding

05:31economic opportunity and development in distressed communities. And, you know, they

05:37they offer interest rates that are flexible, that are better, that have a

05:42better reach for underserved communities, as well. And with, through the Capital

05:48Magnet Fund, CDFIs were, they financed over 83,000 affordable homes. So it's

05:55extremely important, the role that CDFIs play. Good. Thank you. Senator Moreno. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mark Warner Asks Experts How Congress Can 'Incent' Localities To Improve And Reform Zoning Rules

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