Jersey City's Mayor on How the City Built So Much Housing

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

Been covering a little local politics these days, Tracy. It's not our normal beat, but sometimes there's a little intersection.

Tracy Alloway (0:30)

We're going local, not macro, micro.

Joe Weisenthal (0:33)

We're going micro. So it's interesting because we did a recent episode, listeners may remember, with one of the candidates for the mayorship here in New York City, Zeran Mamdani, and he sort of talked about his vision for affordability. Actually, backing up for a second, it feels like housing affordability is suddenly swapping everything is the issue almost regardless of your perspective that is on top of many people's minds these days.

Tracy Alloway (0:59)

Well, also, we've talked about this before, but it also seems like a bipartisan issue, right? And you don't get a lot of bipartisan things nowadays. I'll just put it that way.

Joe Weisenthal (1:09)

No, but it's interesting. Well, at one point, it was like health care and sometimes climate. Other times, right now, it just feels like there's so much anxiety about housing affordability and all this stuff, and it feels like it's a nation-wide thing. Within the Democratic Party, there are different wings of how people talk about it. So we obviously talk to the socialist candidate for mayor. There's also what people would call the more liberal, abundance view that the answer is just, we just need more and use whatever levers to pull to get more in some way. So even within one party, though, although everyone agrees on rent and affordability, not a lot of consensus on the path there.

Tracy Alloway (1:48)

Yeah. So the overall goal is very clear, but I guess the levers that you're going to pull to get there are very complicated. And I have to say, that's one thing that I struggle with in this topic. It just seems like there are so many different things that you could do, and all of them seem very bureaucratic, very technical. Tax abatements, all these incentives, rent control. And it's interesting to me how you choose between them about what's going to be most effective.

Joe Weisenthal (2:16)

Can I just say, by the way, I think a lot of these debates are very, part of the reason they exist is because the media is very heavily represented in New York and San Francisco. I mean, I don't think there's an affordability crisis in like Davenport, Iowa to the same degree. And I think that's important to acknowledge. I also think like New York and San Francisco are some of the best places in the world. So I get why people pay a lot of money for them. Anyway, it turns out one of the best cities over the last several years in the entire country for housing production is our neighbor Jersey City, right across the water. I really like Jersey City. I've spent a little bit of time there. And their mayor, Steven Fulop, is running for governor in the Democratic primary right now. So we have the perfect guest to talk about Jersey City housing production.

Steven Fulop, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Steven Fulop (3:01)

Thanks for having me. I appreciate being here.

Joe Weisenthal (3:03)

For those people who don't know, you've been the mayor of Jersey City for how long? I think I saw it was like in the last 10 years, housing stock has increased by like 25%, something like that.

Steven Fulop (3:11)

Yeah, I mean, we used to be maybe 2% of the state's building permits. We're upwards of 10% now. I mean, we've been the backbone economically of the state of New Jersey. I've been the mayor there for 12 years. I've been unapologetically very, very pro-growth. You could see the skyline change across the river. So, it's been a good story and we're growing and I'm very proud of the changes that have happened.

Tracy Alloway (3:32)

What's the biggest choke point or hurdle when it comes to building more affordable housing? Because everyone seems to have a different answer to this and different things that they would put emphasis on. But in your view, what's number one?

Steven Fulop (3:44)

What do other people say out of curiosity?

Tracy Alloway (3:46)

Well, people say like zoning and things like that, incentivizing the developers to build something other than luxury high rises, that sort of thing.

Steven Fulop (3:55)

I'd point to a couple of things. I mean, in New Jersey, we have definitely have an incentive program that is complicated. We have obviously zoning with home rules. So you have a lot of municipalities, 564 municipalities, which is problematic and home rule. So how do you overcome that, which I think we have some solutions for. And I think that generally speaking, across the country, you have kind of the NIMBY sentiment monopolizing the conversation. And how do you wrestle that away from them is different in each city or state. But in New Jersey, I think we've done a pretty good job of kind of creating a dynamic where the people that are pro-growth can also have a voice there.