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It should be really easy to make the case for building housing. And to underscore just how easy it should be, Oregon’s Governor Tina Kotek used Legos to explain housing supply and demand like her audience was a bunch of six-year-olds.
(Watch the video here.)
This video got more than 400,000 views — a lot more more than her housing-focused Pi Day post.
Or her recap of the housing production bill that at the time was in the statehouse. (Watch video here.)
Kotek’s social media focuses on a simple message: People want to live here, they just can’t afford to. Building more housing helps to solve this.
Kotek doesn’t get stuck in the details of what’s in the housing package she wanted approved, like a $75 million revolving loan fund to help cities build affordable housing, or $131 million for Project Turnkey to buy hotels and turn them into emergency housing. Do most people know what a revolving loan fund is? If people stop and think about whether cities should buy hotels and turn them into emergency housing, would they be for in favor of it? Kotek not only stays on message, but stays on the simple message.
Because as much as we may want local government’s housing social media to be informative, there are downsides of too much information, with too little entertainment. For example, Boston Plans came up with an important video about commercial-to-residential conversions featuring Arthur Jemison, who one could argue is the best chief of planning working for any city at the moment. (Watch the video here.)
But with waiting room music and phrases like “the program offers a 75 percent 29-year tax abatement. Applicants must meet the new 20 percent inclusionary zoning requirement, as well as a new stretch code…” Sorry I fell asleep before he got to the end of that sentence.
In all seriousness, the video was informative, but it didn’t leave me convinced that Boston is working as urgently as possible to deal with its major housing affordability issues. Maybe Boston’s planning department can get the city’s department of transportation’s video team to help them with the next video, as they nailed the perfect mix of information and nerdiness in this best in class video for an RFP announcement.
Something you’ll notice gives energy to these last two videos is the fact that they’re actually out there in the city! As cute as Kotek’s Legos are, they don’t show the conditions on the street.
This is the trouble with a lot of the housing content politicians put out. For example, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens has done admirable work to keep building more housing in the city, housing the homeless, and converting commercial real estate to affordable housing. But his latest housing-focused video falls flat because it relies so heavily on speaking at a podium and montages, when housing is a street-level issue. (Watch video here.)
Which brings us to the master class in this niche of politician housing social media: New York City Council Member, Chi Ossé, who at 26 is about half as old as everyone I’ve critiqued thus far.
Since the start of 2024, I’ve been watching how Ossé began a series of videos about housing walking around his district and other parts of New York City. In a 1-minute video, he covers the housing supply issue in New York City, and also puts forward a pretty concrete idea about how to solve it: Build more housing on underused land. (Watch video here.)
And because Ossé is able to make a very and fun captivating video (that gets hundreds of thousands of views), he can move beyond the basics of housing supply and demand with his audience. His next topic: urging his followers to reach out to the state rep to pass “good cause” eviction legislation. (Watch video here.)
This ongoing discussion about the need for many tools to address the housing crisis in NYC made it easy and reasonable to ask for support for his next bill, the FARE Act, which would require whoever hires the broker for an apartment rental to pay the broker’s fee. (Watch video here.)
Most recently Ossé has taken to talking about displacement and his support of the Homes Now, Homes for Generation campaign, which according to a press release: “aims to quadruple the City’s investment in affordable homeownership (through investing in NYC Department of Housing & Preservation Development’s (HPD) Open Door program) and make good on the City’s promise from 2018 to prevent the displacement of tenants by preserving 7,000 rent-stabilized units (through revitalizing HPD’s Neighborhood Pillars Program).” (Watch video here.)
I love these videos because Ossé’s clearly enjoying them, the video editing and taste in music are great, and the videos make housing an approachable, even cool issue. Because it’s a topic that Ossé’s built an audience around, he can raise the level of the discussion. Ossé established his YIMBY bona fides in the first video, but acknowledged there needs to be other ways of addressing housing needs in subsequent videos.
Whether or not I agree with or support all of Ossé’s housing ideas, I love the way he’s enriching the housing dialogue on social media — something that’s pretty rare among electeds. A lot of other smart urban leaders could get a lesson here on how to inform their stakeholders and advance their programs as well.