Reno mayor fights housing prices and cuts red tape

• Nevada is facing soaring home prices.
• Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve says the city should eliminate regulations that discourage construction.
• Federal funding for affordable housing and a focus on reducing homelessness are also key.

The mayor of Reno, Nevada, says the best thing city leaders can do to solve one of the nation’s worst housing problems is to loosen housing regulations.

In recent years, Mayor Hillary Schieve has launched a multi-pronged approach to achieve this goal.

“Sometimes the government needs to get out of the way,” she told Business Insider in a recent interview. There is no quick fix, says Shiv, who is not a member of either major party and has made housing and homelessness a top priority.

As the election approaches, Nevada voters refer to economics as among their main concerns. Rising home prices and rents, which have hit the Sunbelt State particularly hard, play a big role in this. Since January 2017, home prices in Nevada have risen 90% and rents have risen 53%, far outpacing the national growth rate, Alex Horowitz, director of the Pew Housing Policy Project, told Business Insider.

Wheel lubrication for housing

Nevada has had one of the highest home foreclosure rates in the country since the 2008 financial crisis. its economy dependent on tourism and the severe housing bubble burst. In subsequent years, the state has used low taxes and other business-friendly policies to attract large employers such as Amazon, Apple and Tesla. New jobs helped attract hundreds of thousands of new residents.

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The pandemic and the rise of remote work have accelerated this trend. WITH influx of new residentsThe demand for housing – and, as a result, its cost – has increased sharply. In Reno, the average price of a single-family home has increased. more than 40% since 2019.

As mayor, Schieve celebrated new jobs and the development of arts and culture in Reno and the surrounding area. But she is also concerned about the housing shortage and increase in homelessness. When it comes to affordable housing development, she pointed to cutting red tape and making construction easier, including by loosening zoning laws and onerous environmental regulations.

Under Shiva, Reno has loosened some regulations, allowing higher housing densities, reducing parking requirements and lowering fees. The city says it has waived $11 million in sewer connection fees and $700,000 in building permit fees since 2019 to help bring more than 2,000 affordable housing units to market.

Under a program called 1,000 Homes in 120 Days, the city deferred sewer fees and permits for market-rate housing for five years, which the city says helped build more than 500 new homes between its implementation in late 2019. year and the beginning of this year. .

Shive, a former chair of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said Reno’s rules regarding affordable housing development are relatively lax. However, she argued that some county and state regulations are slowing home construction by increasing costs and discouraging new construction.

She specifically took issue with county health department regulations that have lengthy review processes. “Most developers borrow money,” she said. “So time is money.” Schiewe’s chief of staff noted that building pools, including in apartment complexes and hotels, “requires an incredible amount of time and an incredible amount of money” to get department approval.

Reno has also made some progress in the construction of emergency and temporary housing. Shiva received national attention for reducing the number of homeless people living on the streets of Reno by nearly 60% between 2022 and 2023. The reduction was largely due to the construction of the Nevada Cares Campus, a temporary shelter that can house up to 600 people in sleeping pods and a large tent.

Nevada’s housing issues take center stage in presidential election

President Joe Biden has visited Nevada several times talk about housingand his administration’s policies helped strengthen state housing efforts.

Shive called the housing funding Reno received through the 2021 American Rescue Plan a “godsend.” And she praised the Biden administration for its accessibility and responsiveness to her city’s housing needs. “We can pick up the phone and I can call my HUD secretary, I can call somebody at the White House,” Shive said. Acting HUD Secretary Adrianne Todman has visited Reno twice in the past year.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign also focused on housing issues in Nevada, focusing on a proposal to deport millions of immigrants to free up housing. “We must build more homes and deport illegal immigrants so that American homes can go to American citizens,” Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance. told a crowd in Las Vegas in October.

Shiv rejected this offer. “We have to be realistic about housing,” she said. “This won’t solve anything.”

There are aspects of housing policy that Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris seem to agree on, including opening of federal land for additional houses. Nevada was the focus of this particular decision because 85% of the state’s land area is owned by the federal government.

Shiv says the issue of opening up public lands is a complex one. This depends on factors such as the cost of new infrastructure, including roads and water supply, expansion of services such as law enforcement, and environmental concerns. She supports limiting home construction in environmentally sensitive areas, including wetlands and flood-prone regions.

Overall, she wants cities like Reno to invest in revitalizing their urban centers and increasing density rather than sprawl.

“There’s still a lot of disease out there,” she said. “Cities still have a lot of work to do to build, not destroy.”