First look: Third Way leans into "Abundance" with housing plan
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Third Way, a prominent center-left think tank, unveiled a proposal Thursday calling on Democrats to build 12 million new homes through deregulation, removing tariffs and deploying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help with the construction.
Why it matters: The proposal is a reflection of the growing "Abundance" movement, inspired by the bestselling book, that urges Democrats to remove red tape and focus on building things if they want to win more elections.
- The rising popularity of the Abundance movement has drawn a backlash among some in the party's left wing, who see it as merely a rebrand of the corporate, deregulatory side of the party that they argue has driven away some working-class voters.
"Simply put, we need to build a lot more," writes Gabe Horwitz, Third Way's senior vice president for economic development.
- He added: "And if we think tinkering around with another targeted tax credit or demonstration grant program is going to fundamentally change the supply of housing and lower prices in this country, we're delusional."
Zoom in: The plan has five major components:
- Leverage federal grants to force localities to get rid of exclusionary zoning rules.
- Permit housing to be built on more federal land and unused military bases.
- Declare a housing emergency in order to deploy the National Guard and the Corps of Engineers to assist in the building.
- Eliminate tariffs on building materials such as lumber and aluminum.
- Implement a grant program to help convert less-used commercial office space into residential space.
What they're saying: Horwitz told Axios that Third Way is trying to help spur the policy debate going into the 2028 elections.
- "I reject the notion that moderate ideas have to be small. Moderates have just as many transformative ideas as the far left," he said.
- Third Way also put out another paper arguing that Democrats need to develop proposals to handle the costs of elderly care, child care, college and health care, in addition to housing.
The other side: Many in the Democratic Party's left wing agree that there's an affordability crisis, but they have different, government-centric proposals to address it rather than the center-left's business-friendly policies.
- New York City's Democratic nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani, made housing affordability a key part of his campaign that topped former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary. (Cuomo's now running against Mamdani as an independent in the November election.)
- Mamdani's plan called for freezing the rent on rent-stabilized apartments, doubling the funds to preserve public housing, and building 200,000 new rent-stabilized units with union labor.
