The Symbolic Politics of Housing

Voter support for anti-development policies contributes to America's acute housing shortage. Prevailing theories of support for anti-development policies emphasize NIMBYism (opposition to housing nearby) and homeowners' self-interest. We offer an additional explanation drawing on symbolic politics theory. This theory argues that voters have positive or negative affect towards various symbols, often developed early in life; later, they evaluate policies based on their affect towards relevant symbols. In line with the theory, we show that affect towards salient symbols powerfully explain anti-development preferences. First, homeowner-renter gaps in support for increasing density in cities are negligible, but affect towards cities powerfully predicts support for density. Next, experiments show that affect towards developers, government entities, and new housing's residents also explain anti-development preferences when policies make these symbols visible; homeownership and NIMBYism often fail to predict patterns we find. Finally, consistent with a role for socialization, historical public opinion data suggests that birth cohort helps explain affect towards cities.