内容来源：美国政治新闻网站Politico，原文链接见文末
翻译整理：石曼卿，陈杰
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CHICAGO — Democrats want to build more housing — from the window to the walls.
Political party conventions are rarely policy-heavy. The star-studded convention in Chicago, which featured a rendition by Lil Jon of his hit song “Get Low” during the state roll call, has been no different.
But there was a surprisingly consistent, substantive theme that cropped up on both the mainstage and the sidelines: construction of new housing.
President Barack Obama, in his keynote speech Tuesday, said Vice President Kamala Harris knows “if we want to make it easier for more young people to buy a home, we need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people in this country.”
“That is a priority,” he added. “And she’s put out a bold new plan to do just that.”
Activists I talked to saw it as a watershed moment that lack of housing supply was cited by both the former president and the current president as a central issue. (“Folks, they’ll make housing more affordable, building 3 million new homes,” Joe Biden said in his own primetime speech.) Harris herself is sure to follow in her own speech on Thursday.
The rhetoric is striking partially because housing hasn’t been a prominent campaign issue since the 1990s, when the party pushed hard to increase the rate of homeownership. What Harris is proposing is different — bringing down costs by building more units, whether you want to buy or not.
Adrianne Todman, who leads the Department of Housing and Urban Development, told me in an interview at the CNN-POLITICO Grill here that the reference from Obama was “phenomenal.”
“But not unsurprising because it is something that is polling well,” she added. “It is an important issue for Americans across the country.”
Despite the obvious importance of the issue, it’s hard to message: Many of the policy issues that affect home prices and availability are complex financial rules. It’s also historically been seen as most salient for lower-income people, who may be less likely to vote. And affluent homeowners have historically recoiled from housing-supply policies that involve changing zoning laws,a sentiment Donald Trump has rallied by casting such efforts as a threat to the suburban way of life.
But lack of affordable housing is now no longer confined to coastal cities and is increasingly affecting middle-class Americans — with many smaller cities suddenly seeing an influx of people from larger metropolises. That’s why we’ve heard leaders in rural red states like Montana and Utah calling for new housing policy, too.
It’s commonly cited as a top issue among, well, many regular people I talk to, with the potential to bring in more votes. Analilia Mejia, co-director of grassroots activist organization Center for Popular Democracy, told me that renters are 25 percent of eligible voters, and many of them are still on the sidelines of the election.
That dynamic has now created an opening for a simple, tangible message — which also happens to be an actual thing that needs doing: Build, baby, build.
That message doesn’t fit neatly into other Democratic economic policy themes: boosting worker power and fighting Big Business. There are intersections, certainly — there’s still vilification of big corporate landlords, and both Biden and Harris have embraced policies aimed at restricting their ability to raise rents — but the notion of building more housing is a bipartisan one that is supported by policy wonks of all stripes.
Of course, the broad umbrella of “more housing” masks deeper questions about the extent to which we need more housing, period, versus housing that is specifically designed to be affordable to the most disadvantaged people.Different localities would have different answers.
Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat with a top spot on the House Financial Services Committee, told a room of activists on the sidelines of the convention that having more housing isn’t enough if people can’t afford it.
“When I go into L.A. every weekend, I drive by all of the new units that are being built that are supposed to be affordable for rentals,” she said at the event, hosted by CPD. “Nobody’s there.”
That view from Waters is not the one we’ve heard from the primetime speakers so far. The louder message from Democrats here has focused on the topline: build more.
Still, getting more units constructed is easier said than done, particularly because of restrictions at the local level like zoning and permitting that make it difficult to build denser housing, as Obama referenced. The federal government cannot simply override those municipal regulations.
Harris herself name-checked that problem in her economic policy speech last Friday — another striking victory for the movement to build more housing.
“As president, I will work in partnership with industry to build the housing we need, both to rent and to buy,” she said in North Carolina. “We will take down barriers and cut red tape, including at the state and local levels.”
In the meantime, Harris is also proposing a subsidy for first-time homebuyers, building off a similar push by Biden. The idea has raised concerns among experts that boosting demand for homes in this way will simply push prices up further — unless specifically directed to places where there aren’t significant barriers to construction.
In a briefing for reporters hosted by Bloomberg News, campaign adviser Brian Nelson waved off those worries, noting that the proposal is only geared toward people buying their first house. “We have a good sense of what that universe is, and [we’re] doing that in the context of this four-year push to build these 3 million houses,” he said.
Figuring out the balance is perhaps a conversation for if she wins the election.
“Nobody thinks the Senate is poised to pass a $40 billion subsidy package yet,” said Alex Armlovich, a senior housing policy analyst at the center-right Niskanen Center. “The current package is a popular, feel-good signal for Democrats that communicates pro-housing energy. But it is ultimately still ‘campaign poetry’ that will need to be translated into ‘governing prose.’”
美国民主党正在大力推动一项政策：建房，建房，再建房
2024年8月22日
住房供应问题在总统政治中已经几十年未曾成为焦点。然而，本周在芝加哥的情况改变了这一局面。
芝加哥——民主党希望建造更多住房——从窗户到墙壁。
政党大会通常不会重视政策内容。本次在芝加哥举行的星光熠熠的大会也不例外，会上Lil Jon还演唱了他的热门歌曲《Get Low》中的一段。然而，有一个出人意料的、一致的实质性主题在主舞台和边线活动中反复出现：新住房的建设。
前美国总统巴拉克·奥巴马在周二的主旨演讲中表示，副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯知道“如果我们想让更多年轻人更容易购房，我们需要建造更多住房单元，并清除那些让普通工人难以买房的过时法律和法规。”
“这是一个优先事项，”他补充道，“而她已经提出了一个大胆的新计划来实现这一目标。”
与我交谈的活动人士认为这是一个重要的转折点，缺乏住房供应问题被前总统和现任总统都视为核心问题。（乔·拜登在他自己的黄金时段演讲中说道：“各位，他们将通过建造300万套新住房来让住房变得更加可负担。”）哈里斯本人肯定会在她周四的演讲中跟进这一议题。
这一言论之所以引人注目，部分原因是自上世纪90年代以来，住房问题在竞选中并未占据重要地位，当时民主党大力推动提高住房自有率。哈里斯提出的建议与众不同——通过建造更多的住房单元来降低成本，无论你是否想要购房。
负责住房和城市发展部（HUD）的阿德里安·托德曼在CNN-POLITICO烧烤会上接受我采访时表示，奥巴马的这一提及是“了不起的”。
“但并不令人意外，因为它在民调中表现良好，”她补充道。“这是全国各地的美国人关注的重要问题。”
尽管这个问题显然非常重要，但传达这一信息并不容易：许多影响房价和房源供应的政策问题都涉及复杂的金融规则。此外，这个问题历史上被认为与低收入群体最为相关，而这些群体可能投票的可能性较小。而富裕的房主历来对涉及更改功能分区法的住房供应政策持反感态度，这种情绪被唐纳德·特朗普利用，他将这些努力描绘为对郊区生活方式的威胁。
然而，现在住房可负担性问题不仅仅局限于沿海城市，它正日益影响中产阶级美国人——许多较小城市突然间涌入了来自大都市的人口。这就是为什么我们听到蒙大拿州和犹他州等农村红州的领导人也在呼吁新的住房政策。
这通常被我接触的许多普通人视为一个头等大事，并有可能吸引更多选票。民众民主中心的基层活动组织联合主任Analilia Mejia告诉我，租房者占了合格选民的25%，其中许多人仍然在选举的边缘徘徊。
这种动态现在为一个简单、具体的信息创造了机会——而这也是一件实际需要做的事情：建房，建房，再建房。
这一信息并不完全适合其他民主党的经济政策主题：增强工人权力和打击大企业。毫无疑问，两者之间有交集——例如，仍有对大企业房东的批评，拜登和哈里斯都支持限制他们提高房租的政策——但建造更多住房的理念是两党共识，得到了各类政策专家的支持。
当然，“更多住房”这一广泛的口号掩盖了更深层次的问题：我们是需要更多的住房，还是需要专门为最弱势群体设计的可支付住房？不同地方对此有不同的答案。
加利福尼亚州的民主党议员麦克辛·沃特斯在众议院金融服务委员会担任重要职务，她在大会边线上对活动人士说，仅仅拥有更多住房是不够的，如果人们负担不起这些住房的话。
“每个周末当我回到洛杉矶时，我都会经过那些正在建造的新单位，这些单位本应是可负担租赁的，”她在民众民主中心主办的活动中说道。“但没有人住在那里。”
沃特斯的观点并不是我们在黄金时段演讲中听到的。迄今为止，民主党的主要信息集中在头条新闻上：建造更多的住房。
然而，建造更多单位说起来容易做起来难，尤其是在地方层面存在的功能分区和许可限制，使得建造密集型住房变得困难，正如奥巴马所提到的。联邦政府无法简单地推翻这些市政规定。
哈里斯本人在上周五的经济政策演讲中点名提到了这个问题——这对于推动更多住房建设的运动来说是一个引人注目的胜利。
“作为总统，我将与行业合作，建造我们所需的住房，无论是租赁还是购买，”她在北卡罗来纳州表示。“我们将消除障碍并削减繁文缛节，包括在州和地方层面。”
与此同时，哈里斯还提议为首次购房者提供补贴，这一措施是基于拜登此前的类似推动。然而，这一想法引起了专家们的担忧，他们认为，如果在房源不足的情况下提升购房需求，可能只会进一步推高房价。
在彭博新闻主持的记者简报会上，竞选顾问布莱恩·纳尔逊对此担忧不以为然，指出这一提议仅面向首次购房者。“我们对这个群体有一个很好的了解，并在建设这300万套房屋的四年推动中实施这一措施，”他说。
如果她赢得选举，如何平衡这一问题或许将是一个需要讨论的话题。
“没有人认为参议院已经准备好通过一项400亿美元的补贴方案，”中右派尼斯卡宁中心的高级住房政策分析师亚历克斯·阿姆洛维奇说道。“目前的方案是民主党人表达支持住房建设的流行、令人愉快的信号，但它最终仍然是‘竞选诗歌’，需要转化为‘治理散文’。”
