Does This Laundry Look 'Historic' to You?

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free, where we cover the trials and tribulations of YIMBY reforms. This week's stories include:

• A weird bipartisan mix of Arizona legislators passed a far-reaching bill to make owner-occupied "starter homes" easier to build. It's anyone's guess if the governor will sign it.
• On housing, President Joe Biden says "build, build, build." Does he mean it?
• Massachusetts sues the town of Milton to enforce state upzoning law.

But first! A word about this week's lead story.

Longtime followers of YIMBY/NIMBY battles will recall the case of San Francisco man Robert Tillman trying to redevelop his laundromat over the objections of activists who wanted to landmark the allegedly historic structure. Amazingly, another city is now wrestling with whether to landmark its own historic laundry.

Phoenix Says Aging Industrial Laundry's Ceiling Too Nice to Demolish

The city of Phoenix is in the process of landmarking an old, industrial laundry complex to protect its wooden ceiling architecture, over the objections of the property owners who say bringing the 100-year-old buildings up to code would cost millions and legally preserving the structures would destroy the value of the land.

"We've never asked for any tax abatements, we never asked for asked for historical [landmarking], we never wanted it registered," says Marylin Milum who, along with her husband Craig, has been trying to demolish the old buildings and sell off the property to a developer. "This is our retirement."

When the Milum family acquired the property in the 1950s, a commercial laundry had already operated on the site for 30 years, reports The Real Deal. The septuagenarian Milums closed down the laundry on-site in 2020, around the time when they decided they wanted to sell the land.

In October 2023, the couple applied for demolition permits to raze the laundry buildings, which they hoped would make the site more attractive to a developer-buyer.

As a pro forma part of reviewing the demolition permit of such an old building, Phoenix Historic Preservation staff researched the property and found it an obvious candidate for historic preservation.

City reports praise the buildings' "outstanding" 20th-century brick commercial architecture, "Streamline Moderne" design, and, particularly, its vaulted lamella roofs as architectural features worth preserving.

The fact that a laundry has operated on the site for roughly a century connects the buildings to the theme of early Phoenix commerce, which also makes it a good candidate for preservation, says Helena Ruter, a historic preservation officer with the city.

In November, the city's Historic Preservation Commission initiated the process of applying historic preservation zoning protections to the property. That same month, they also denied the Milums' demolition permit applications.

The Milums appealed that denial, claiming an economic hardship.

Letters submitted to city preservation officers by the Milums' real estate broker cite an engineer who'd surveyed the property quote of $10 million as the cost it would take to bring the laundry buildings up to code.

The broker also says that the chance that the structures would be historically preserved has made the building impossible to sell, even at a steep discount, writing in one letter that "at this moment and certainly for the foreseeable future, we are finding that there is not any interested parties at any price."

The Historic Preservation Commission and the City Council both rejected the couple's appeals.

The aggregate, rough cost estimates and insurance bills the Milums produced didn't provide the kind of detail the city required to grant an exemption, says Ruter.

The Milums complain that the expense of getting itemized costs of what it would take to repair their buildings was a major expense by themselves.

"Certainly, I understand the Milums' reticence to hire someone to do the analysis that would be required to make that [economic hardship] argument. Not having that documentation left the hearing bodies without the basis for making that determination," Ruter tells Reason, saying this is "a situation of not providing in the documentation."

The Milums' appeals of their rejected demolition permits are now exhausted. The city council will hold a hearing on rezoning the property to include historic preservation protections in May.

The couple tells Reason they are considering a lawsuit to challenge any landmarking of their property. If the city wants to preserve the property so badly, they say, they could buy it.

"This isn't equitable. This is our property," says Marylin. "We keep saying [the city] can buy it from us, and they have no interest."

Arizona Lawmakers Pass Bipartisan Starter Homes Act. Now, Gov. Katie Hobbs Mulls a Veto.

This past Wednesday, the Arizona Senate voted H.B. 2570—otherwise known as the Arizona Starter Homes Act—which preempts a long list of local regulations on new single-family homes.

The bill would ban localities from requiring new housing to be covered by homeowners' associations (HOA), as well as any shared amenities that would require an HOA. Cities would also be unable to enforce purely aesthetic design features. Larger cities would be prohibited from requiring that new single-family subdivisions have minimum lot sizes larger than 1,500 square feet or setbacks of more than five feet.

All told, it's a pretty far-reaching YIMBY reform aimed at making new, single-family housing easier and cheaper to build. The bill's prime sponsor was the House Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci (R–Lake Havasu), but progressive Democrats championed them throughout the process.

"It provides the opportunity for folks to have more choices for the kinds of housing that meet their needs," says Kirin Goff of the Arizona Neighborhood Project, which drafted the bill.

The House and Senate votes passing the bill were both bipartisan, with the "yes" and "no" sides including Republicans and Democrats. It's an unusual coalition of votes in Arizona's otherwise polarized, Republican-controlled Legislature.

"We had very progressives like myself partnering with very strong conservatives, who saw this as a proper rights issue, whereas people like myself look at it as a basic equal opportunity issue," says Rep. Analise Ortiz (D–Glendale).

The primary opposition came from local governments whose regulatory powers are being preempted and the Arizona League of Cities and Towns, a taxpayer-funded association representing municipal governments in the Legislature.

Their opposition is now leaving the bill's fate in question as it goes to Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat.

Traditionally, state preemption laws have been a tool used by the state's dominant Republicans to override liberal regulations passed by Democratic-controlled cities. If Hobbs were to sign the bill, she would upset a traditional Arizona Democratic base of support.

Hobbs herself told The Center Square that she's undecided on whether she will sign the bill, saying that she would have preferred any housing bill have resulted from a compromise with local jurisdictions.

Yet the League of Cities and Towns has been dead-set against H.B. 2570 from day one. Ortiz tells Reason that the League refused to negotiate on the bill while it was working its way through the legislature and ignored lawmakers who proactively reached out about proposed amendments they might have.

"I hope the governor will stay true to her campaign promise to deliver on housing solutions by signing this bill," says Ortiz.

Is Biden Serious When He Says 'Build, Build, Build'?

On Monday, President Joe Biden spoke at the National League of Cities conference in Washington, D.C. The president's remarks were mostly a rehash of his State of the Union address last week.

State-level leagues of cities are typically stalwart opponents of any state legislation that puts limits on cities' abilities to restrict housing production however they please.

Biden deserves some credit then for striking a YIMBY note in the housing portion of his speech, when he said, "The bottom line is we have to build, build, build.  That's how we bring housing costs down for good."

As far as rhetoric goes, the president is on point when he identifies a dearth of housing supply as the reason for the country's high housing costs and high rates of homelessness.

On actual policy, the administration's proposals leave a lot to be desired. At the League conference, Biden namechecked creating tax credits for homebuyers, cracking down on landlords' "price-fixing" through the use of third-party algorithms that recommend rent levels, and cutting "red tape on federal housing financing programs."

A factsheet released by the White House Monday also highlighted his administration's call to increase funding for a recently created grant program that is supposed to pay localities that liberalize their zoning laws.

The demand-side incentives Biden is proposing, like mortgage tax credits, could be counterproductive by increasing buyers' demand for supply-constrained housing. The odds are that the subsidy will just get eaten up by higher home costs.

I've argued before that the various attempts the White House has made to incentivize zoning reform from Washington are also poorly designed for that purpose. Funding increases won't solve that problem.

Massachusetts Attorney General Sues Boston Suburb for Floating State Upzoning Law

A couple of weeks ago, Rent Free covered the voters of Milton, Massachusetts, adjacent to Boston, voting to reject zoning changes that would have allowed multi-family housing near the town's train stations.

That upzoning is a requirement of the state's MBTA Communities Law, which mandates that municipalities across the state allow apartments near transit stops. Most cities have been quietly complying. But in Milton, anti-density activists opted for rebellion instead.

In the run-up of the vote, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell warned Milton voters the town could face legal consequences if they approved the repeal of the zoning changes. They did, and now it is.

Campbell's lawsuit asks for an injunction requiring the town to pass the required zoning changes. If the town ignores that injunction, Campbell's lawsuit asks the courts to prevent Milton from enforcing any zoning restrictions that don't comply with the MBTA Communities Law.

Quick Links

• U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge is stepping down.
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom preemptively streamlines the inevitable environmental lawsuits that will target a downtown Los Angeles mixed-use, megadevelopment.
• Bloomberg, The Atlantic, and The New York Times all spotlight the influx of conservatives into the YIMBY movement, and the unease some liberal and left-wing YIMBYs feel at winning friends and influencing people.
• New York State Senators are proposing the revival of a public benefit corporation that would build housing on state-owned land, reports The New York Times.
• Some New York NIMBYs fight a rearguard action against throwing their trash in public trash bins.
• Washington state passes the narrowest of all parking reform bills, waiving mandated parking requirements when they would result in chopped-down trees.