Report shows that ballot measures remain a promising pathway towards enacting bold housing policy solutions at the state and local levels
Washington, D.C. – NLIHC’s nonpartisan Our Homes, Our Votes campaign released today the latest edition of its biennial ballot measures report. The new report, Housing and Homelessness on the Ballot: November 2024, summarizes nearly 100 state and local ballot measures addressing affordable housing and homelessness that were voted upon in the November 2024 elections. The ballot measures are divided into six broad categories: bond measures; measures dealing with the reallocation and preservation of existing resources; taxes and fees; tenant protections; zoning, land use, and other regulations; and punitive policies responding to homelessness. The report also features four case studies focusing on successful ballot measure campaigns in Los Angeles, CA; Hoboken, NJ; New Orleans, LA; and Rhode Island.
“In the 2024 election cycle, voters repeatedly named housing affordability as a priority issue,” said Our Homes, Our Votes Campaign Project Manager Courtney Cooperman, one of the report’s authors. “Voters in every state cast their ballots against the backdrop of a severe housing shortage and high rents, and in dozens of jurisdictions, ballot measures presented voters with the chance to weigh in directly on housing policy decisions. This report shows that ballot measures continue to an important pathway towards enacting innovative housing policy solutions at the state and local levels.”
Bond measures were especially successful in the 2024 elections, as the report reveals. Across the country, voters collectively authorized more than $640 million in bonds for affordable housing and shelter. Where bond measures passed, they did so by wide margins, exceeding 60% of voters’ approval in all cases. Voters also approved every measure to reallocate existing resources to housing and homelessness programs or to permanently enshrine existing programs. In all cases, these measures passed with wide margins. Lodging taxes and real estate transfer taxes were overwhelmingly successful mechanisms for raising revenues as well. Voters approved all eight measures to establish or increase lodging taxes and all three measures to increase or extend real estate transfer taxes.
Tenant protections saw mixed results in the 2024 election cycle. Tenants in Hoboken, NJ, achieved a landslide victory over a harmful rent control referendum, and voters in Berkeley, CA, approved a comprehensive tenant protections measure while defeating a landlord-backed alternative. Meanwhile, manufactured home community members at risk of displacement in Old Orchard Beach, ME, led a successful citizen initiative to cap lot rent increases. Yet some jurisdictions rejected measures to strengthen rent stabilization and other tenant protections – a contrast from the November 2022 elections, when voters approved rent stabilization in every community where they had the opportunity to do so.
Measures to facilitate affordable housing development via zoning and land use changes saw mixed results, as the report shows. State law in California proved a powerful incentive for voters to approve zoning and land use changes to meet their housing targets and in one case to reject a measure that would have blocked proposed affordable housing projects. However, a handful of communities rejected proposals that could have opened more land for affordable homes.
The elections also saw widespread support for two harmful ballot measures – one statewide measure in Arizona and another measure in San Joaquin County, CA – that will punish people experiencing homelessness rather than invest in proven solutions and that will only make it harder to get people stably housed.
Overall, the report demonstrates that by bringing policy questions directly to the voters, advocates and tenant leaders can win significant new resources to increase the supply of affordable homes, keep renters stably housed, and enact proven solutions to homelessness. The passage of two punitive measures, however, should serve as a call to action: policymakers must deliver real solutions for homelessness, or else voters may turn to harmful and ineffective approaches out of frustration with government inaction.
Download the full report here.
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