Abundists Should Hedge Their Bets

remote work buys time for housing reform

Art by ChatGPT

When I worked in government, an experienced colleague told me something that’s stayed with me: “Ever since ancient Rome, politicians who build roads win elections.” It’s an achievement people can see, and impossible for opponents to deny.

Housing reform is the centerpiece of the Abundance agenda, and the theory makes sense: America’s cost-of-living crisis stems from a shortage of housing where people need it, and the solution is to build more.

The problem is, if reforms work and rents only rise 2% instead of 6%, no one will notice. Worse, by the time housing construction translates into rent relief (probably 5 years later), someone with a different agenda will be in power. Either way, “Rents didn’t increase as much as they would have” isn’t a ribbon-cutting moment.

The Visibility Problem

Consider Obama’s stimulus tax cuts.

According to Tax Policy Center estimates, 96.9 percent of households enjoyed a tax cut that averaged almost $1,200. Just one measure—Obama’s Making Work Pay tax credit—put more than $116 billion into people’s pockets in 2009 and 2010. Yet, a Times poll found that fewer than 10 percent of those surveyed had any clue. Remarkably, fully one-third thought their taxes went up—even though the actual number was about zero. ¹

The Obama administration’s theory that spreading tax cuts through withholding would be more effective stimulus than lump-sum checks was probably right on the economics, but politically, it was a disaster. It may have helped Republicans win the House in 2010, even as voters were receiving tax cuts they didn’t know about.

Housing reform faces the same problem. If rents grow 2% instead of 6%, will anyone connect it to a zoning change from eight years earlier? I doubt it.

Housing Reform’s Invisible Results

Minneapolis is the poster child for YIMBY success.

Minneapolis’ success in building new apartments has enabled the city to substantially add to its housing supply and keep rent growth low. From 2017 to 2022, Minneapolis increased its housing stock by 12% while rents grew by just 1%. Over the same period, the rest of Minnesota added only 4% to its housing stock while rents went up by 14%.²

But notice the timeline. The Minneapolis 2040 plan was adopted in late 2018, with major zoning changes taking effect in 2020. The dramatic results took years to materialize, and this is the optimistic case.

Paradoxically, abundance reforms can actually make things worse before they get better. For example, when Chicago implemented targeted up-zoning from 2013-2015, there was no discernible increase in housing construction in the impacted areas. Even more concerning, property values actually increased potentially due to developer anticipation of projects that have yet to materialize.³

Over time, housing reform will make people better off and it’s the right thing to do, but history suggests the median voter will take the results for granted.

Unlocking the Housing Shadow Supply

I heard about a family who recently moved from NYC to Buffalo because they had a remote job situation that enabled it. The median house price there is around $200K⁴ and houses sell for around $100K in certain neighborhoods. Ample underutilized housing exist across the country, but under today’s setup, the commutes are unworkable. Remote work is a structural reform of the housing market. The crisis is a location mismatch, not a lack of housing. Workers are being artificially forced to compete for a limited pool of housing within a commutable radius.

By unbundling work from location, we effectively bring a massive “shadow supply” of housing onto the market. When a worker moves from a high-demand city center to an under-utilized home in a smaller town or a distant suburb, they aren’t just improving their own life; they are de-pressurizing the urban core.

Counter-intuitively, this is the best thing that could happen to “on-site” workers. When the “laptop class” stops outbidding the nurse, the firefighter, and the service worker for the apartment next to the hospital, rents for essential workers actually stand a chance of falling. Remote work relieves rent competition.

The Salience of Remote Work

If the goal of the Abundance movement is to deliver visible improvements to people’s lives on a timeline that matters, we need to look beyond the slow churn of construction. When a worker gains ten hours a week back by skipping a soul-crushing commute, they notice. When a parent no longer has to juggle childcare drop-off, rush to an office miles away, and then pay for extra after-care just to cover time spent sitting in traffic, they feel it. This kind of flexibility is the most immediate housing policy we have. It delivers direct, daily relief to working families in a way new construction cannot, because it changes how people live right now, not years later.

The Real Force Behind Return-to-Office

Return-to-office mandates are often framed as business decisions: executives wanting collaboration, culture, or accountability. But there’s another force at play that rarely gets named: political pressure from city governments.

Cities like New York have built their fiscal models around commuter presence. Commercial property taxes, transit revenue, and downtown retail sales tax all depend on office buildings being full. When remote work emptied those buildings, it didn’t just hurt landlords, it threatened municipal budgets.

City officials have responded by pressuring employers to bring workers back. Former Mayor Adams was explicit about this, calling remote work a problem to be solved and urging companies to return to offices⁵. This isn’t subtle. It’s a policy priority.

Employers, in turn, face a choice. Some genuinely believe in-office work is more productive, and if that’s true, they’ll pay the premium in higher salaries or lost talent and the market will sort it out. But others are responding to political pressure, not business logic. They’re making decisions about where their employees spend 40 hours a week based partly on what city officials are asking of them, and the cost falls most heavily on families.

When a parent is forced back into a commute, that’s hours lost to childcare shuffling, missed dinners, and the logistical grind that remote work briefly relieved. It’s the single parent who now needs extended aftercare. It’s the father who used to do school pickup and no longer can. It’s the couple who moved further out for space and now faces an impossible commute.

These families are being used to plug the holes in a municipal revenue model.

An Opportunity for Pro-Family Politics

Some of the same officials who claim to support working families are actively supporting policies that make family life harder. The same governments that worry about declining birth rates and childcare costs are pressuring employers to impose commutes that exacerbate both problems.

This is an opportunity.

Pro-family advocates should recognize remote work as one of the most tangible, immediate quality-of-life improvements available to working parents. Unlike housing construction, which takes years, or tax credits, which disappear into paychecks unnoticed, flexibility is felt daily. It’s the kind of visible, concrete benefit that builds political loyalty.

A political coalition that positioned itself as defending family time against the demands of city budgets built around commuter dependence would be offering something real. Not a promise of future affordability, but an immediate improvement in daily life.

A City of Choice

As a resident of New York City, I love the density, the community, and the culture of urban life. But a city propped up by captive commuters is a fragile one.

The Abundance agenda should strive for a city of choice. If we stop forcing people to live in NYC just for a desk, we make it possible for the people who actually want to be here to afford it. By allowing the “unwilling participants” to exit the market, we create a more resilient, affordable, and vibrant urban core.

Housing reform is a noble long-term goal, but it needs a political shield. Remote work provides that shield. It delivers the immediate, visible “win” that buys a movement the time it needs to build the future.

1. https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/why-nobody-noticed-obamas-tax-cuts

2. https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2024/01/04/minneapolis-land-use-reforms-offer-a-blueprint-for-housing-affordability

3. https://www.planetizen.com/blogs/102740-can-upzoning-increase-housing-supply-and-affordability

4. https://www.redfin.com/city/2832/NY/Buffalo/housing-market

5. https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/coronavirus/2022/01/04/adams-businesses-office-workers