Why Should Delaware Care?
With Delaware recently ranking as the best state for retirees, the First State is seeing a significant building boom and population increase in the post-COVID period. That growth will lead to strains on infrastructure, roads and workforce if not properly planned, and the next governor will wield significant resources to address that challenge.
Delaware has seen a significant population growth since the COVID pandemic, led primarily by a wave of retirees migrating to the state for a lower tax climate and, or, a beach lifestyle.
With more than 25,000 homes now in the state’s planning pipeline, concerns are being raised by residents over proper preparation for that growth, including in infrastructure, roads, environmental impacts and more.
We asked the candidates for their opinions on several hot topics related to land use, and the three Democrats – Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer and former chief environmental regulator Collin O’Mara – responded directly to our questions, while Republicans Mike Ramone, Jerry Price and Bobby Williamson did not. We have compiled their relevant comments from other interviews on the campaign trail.
Below you’ll find a quick breakdown on each topic along with abridged versions of each candidate’s answers for context. They are ordered alphabetically by last name.
Is Delaware developing too quickly to keep pace with needed complementary infrastructure? If so, should infrastructure at, and leading to, new developments be paid entirely by developers?
Hall-Long
Moving and growing our economy forward has to be balanced with ensuring our good quality of life, preserving natural resources and providing the necessary infrastructure and utilities. It is through consistent collaboration, communication, and strong leadership that we can maintain this balance. Delaware took several important steps in the past to pre-identify growth zones, as well as those areas that would not necessarily support growth or have the adequate infrastructure, and also with the development of Transportation Improvement Districts, which includes financial input from developers for infrastructure.
We also established a Farmland Preservation Fund to restrict development on agricultural lands by purchasing development rights. To date, we have permanently preserved more than 150,000 acres of farmland from development.
This balance is what keeps our state moving forward in a responsible way. We have to assess and expand on ideas like the Transportation Improvement Districts or providing incentives to projects in opportunity zones or areas of redevelopment. It is not one fee or one process that will keep this balance. Everyone should share in that solution. We have to work together as responsible partners to promote smart growth and improve our infrastructure while protecting our environment and our way of life.
Meyer
Yes. Delaware is developing too quickly. It takes leadership to continue moving our state forward, expanding job opportunities, leading a vibrant economy, while preserving Delaware’s quality of life. That means often standing up and saying “No” to developers, and requiring infrastructure that keeps pace with development. The cost of new traffic and schools and sewers and public safety must not be paid for by neighboring residents but by the developers themselves.
O’Mara
Yes, land use decision-making is a disaster in both Sussex County and New Castle County. We’ve effectively allowed legalized bribery in the form of campaign contributions to encourage decisions that destroy open space, allow unwieldy sprawl, promote warehouses opposed by communities, and decimate of any semblance of smart growth—and the state’s few land use laws are completely feckless.
Allowing parcel after parcel to be rezoned also makes a mockery of even having a comprehensive plan and wastes the time of the thousands of residents who contribute to those plans.
My development priorities are to support building affordable housing through infill development that is near existing infrastructure and jobs, support placemaking in communities across the state, and bolstering our climate resilience and conserving as much open space as possible. We should focus state and federal infrastructure dollars in existing communities and not facilitate more sprawl. Development in exurban Level 4 should be discouraged and developers who build in these areas should be required to pay for their own infrastructure, including schools.
How do you plan to address the lack of affordable housing throughout Delaware?
Hall-Long
The Hall-Long Administration will govern with communities, not around them. Developing a long-term housing strategy will require involving all stakeholders. Homes are not built overnight, so long-term planning is essential.
We are facing real difficulties right now. Working families can’t afford to live near the places they work. Teachers can’t afford to live near the schools where they teach, nurses can’t afford to live near the hospitals they work in. We will achieve this by establishing dedicated funding streams for affordable housing development, increasing state investments, and expanding Delaware State Housing Authority programs, such as down payment assistance and targeted assistance programs for high-needs workforce.
My administration will meet with and encourage local governments to be part of this solution to the housing crisis. We will work to incentivize zoning reforms, promote land use reforms, and foster mixed housing options and consider exemptions from some of the impact and permit fees for developers to build affordable housing.
Lastly, renters in our state, especially those with low incomes, face an extreme cost burden. The state is short roughly 19,000 affordable housing units for people making between 0% and 50% of the area’s median income. While producing more affordable rental units is the long-term goal, other ways exist to help low-income renters.
We will work to prevent evictions with state funding to the DSHA emergency rental assistance program on top of the temporary federal funds that currently fund the program. We will provide discrimination protections for unhoused individuals seeking housing, and we will fund emergency utility assistance programs for renters.
Meyer
Housing is a human right; to guarantee that right, we must provide affordable, quality, and safe shelter to every Delawarean. For most Delawareans and most Americans, the purchase of a home is the foundation for the American Dream, a pathway to the middle class, and an opportunity to create long-term financial stability and wealth for you and your family. To make housing affordable to everyone, we need to build a lot more of it. We need homes of all types, from affordable “starter homes” for first-time buyers to workforce housing in Eastern Sussex and affordable senior housing for those on fixed incomes. We also need more multi-family buildings, rentals, and housing help for families facing eviction. Because, right now, there’s no bigger challenge today than the availability of housing that is affordable.
As governor, I will seek to boost the construction of new homes for all income levels: individuals and families, seniors, and veterans. I will address the regulatory barriers that keep housing prices high and create new programs to finance the construction of housing that meets the needs of our community. I will roll out a strategy to prevent homelessness and end functional child homelessness in our state. I will open up new opportunities for homeownership and bring hope to those who have been priced out of the market. To address the lack of affordable housing, we need:
Zoning Reform:
● Make way for higher-density housing construction and mixed-income neighborhoods.
● Spur the creation of affordable Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs): smaller, independent residential dwelling units on the same lot as a single-family home, such as a “grandma apartment” or “in- law suite.” Enact flexible regulations to allow for new models of shared housing for young families.
Aiding First-Time Homebuyers:
● Extend funding for first-time homebuyer programs to help working families bridge the gap to homeownership.
Controlling Construction Costs:
● Relax regulations for affordable housing to make it easier to build more units.
● Pursue building code reforms that can bring down the cost of housing without sacrificing safety.
● Promote energy efficiency upgrades in homes to save on utility costs and provide energy efficiency rebates to homeowners.
Subsidizing Affordability:
● Create a New Housing Production Fund to provide low-cost financing and get affordable homes built without having to rely on federal subsidies.
Assisting Seniors:
● Enact a property tax “circuit breaker,” in which property tax bills for seniors are indexed to income and capped so that property tax bills for income-eligible seniors will not exceed 30% of income.
● Direct the state housing authority to create financing programs for developers of affordable senior housing.
Ensure Access to Affordable Housing for People with Disabilities:
● Systemize data tracking within the Division of Developmental Disabilities Services to understand the scale of homelessness and housing insecurity.
● Conduct a comprehensive housing needs survey to anticipate future requirements for community living for individuals with disabilities.
● Supporting further research to explore the connections between housing and health outcomes for individuals with disabilities.
Preventing Homelessness:
● Replicate the Hope Center and Pallet Village models across the state.
● Enact Good-Cause Eviction legislation to protect tenants’ rights.
● Provide emergency rental assistance for tenants struggling to pay their rent.
● Ensure a right to representation for people facing eviction.
● Prohibit landlords from turning away rental applicants simply because they use vouchers or were formerly unhoused.
● Enforce the State’s fair housing laws to protect tenants from discrimination.
● Establish a landlord mitigation program for accepting voucher-holding tenants.
● Continue working with housing authorities across the state to streamline the voucher programs, create a single unified state-wide waiting list, expedite inspections, and offer incentives to landlords.
O’Mara
Right now, more than 109,000 families in Delaware are experiencing high cost-burdens from housing, including 49% of renters and 29% of homeowners. To create more affordable housing, we must address three challenges simultaneously:
● Reduce regulatory barriers to affordable housing production
● Expand predictable access to low-cost capital
● Recognize changing ownership patterns.
We need to make it easier to build dense, infill development near existing infrastructure, jobs, and transit than it is to build sprawling suburban subdivisions that destroy open space and increase traffic congestion. This requires removing many antiquated zoning restrictions and regulatory barriers that make affordable housing nearly impossible both legally and financially, such as density restrictions, parking requirement, minimum lot sizes, etc. (some important first steps were passed this year as part of State Sen. Russ Huxtable’s affordable housing package).
Second, we need to create an Affordable Housing Production Fund with a dedicated portion of Realty Transfer Tax that would provide $30 million to $40 million annually of predictable revenue for construction.
Finally, we need to acknowledge that the changing ownership patterns with nearly 25% of all housing units being bought in Delaware by investors, not owner-occupants. This is distorting the market as investors seek to maximize profit through higher rents, especially short-term rentals, and minimize costs through a lack of maintenance, while constraining the overall supply of year-round housing options. This is especially true in the coastal communities and around universities. We will need to learn from the states that have passed legislation and ordinances to ensure safe housing options and stabilize rent increases, so they are reasonable, predictable, and not predatory.
Price
Farmers who’ve been here 40 or 50, years are now faced with money out there for them to sell their property. I want to negotiate a good deal for the property … and make that low-income housing or first responders and veterans, at first. Then I want to open up statewide.
After World War II, they built the Levittown housing for our soldiers coming back – three bedrooms and two bathrooms on a concrete slab. Beautiful homes. I can’t see why Delaware can’t do the same for these people.
The state can hold on to the mortgage. We’ll get the interest rates will be a low-cost mortgage. We’re not looking to become rich off of that. We’re looking to make people happy with housing. And this will also get people into the state for work, because we need teachers, we need police officers, we need correctional officers across the board. We need people, and housing is a good incentive.
Ramone
[Government needs to] get out of the way. It shouldn’t take two years for me to be able to open a business on a new property … because people have to go to three or four different places to fill out the applications. That needs to be focused on the fastest way that we can get out of the way of businesses being able to come Delaware grow and be responsible in that growth to help Delaware facilitate more jobs, more people, more housing.
We have so many regulations on a poor homebuilder, and what are they going to do? They’re not going to absorb it. They’re going to pass it on.
So the more we regulate and the more houses go up, and then everybody who just did all those regulations and passed all those bills go and say, ‘But we don’t have any affordable housing.’ No kidding. You have density restrictions, you don’t have any smart growth going on in our state anymore.
I would start with some sort of a small village concept that they do in many other states. Little tiny starter houses on dense lots … so [workers] can get to an area that they could never get to unless we do something like this.
Williamson
I think we need to support the local towns and communities and give it back to the counties to help take in the needs of their community, because the needs of one community is going to be so vast different than the needs of a different community depending on the location.
So each area needs its own special requirements to help out those that are needing affordable housing.
Business leaders have long criticized Delaware’s permitting process as too lengthy and onerous, do you agree? If so, what would you do to reform it?
Hall-Long
Yes. I hear this criticism regularly from developers and businesses that are trying to follow our rules, only to be met with unnecessary delays and lengthy review processes. We will work with the development community to ensure that the work that began with “Ready in 6” initiatives are fully implemented and continue to review processes to see where the state can make adjustments and where we can work together with local jurisdictions. We have an obligation to protect our environment and ensure that projects meet rigorous standards for infrastructure, safety and other critical measures. But, a longer review process does not necessarily mean a better process.
State agencies must work more efficiently to review and respond to permit applications while continuing to be good stewards of the state’s resources. This starts with building a culture of excellence throughout state government, eliminating waste and expecting responsiveness and good customer service. We can meet this challenge and be a business-friendly state that still protects our natural resources and ensures we grow in a smart, responsible manner.
Meyer
Yes, we will take historic steps to expedite Delaware’s permitting process. Too often, inter-governmental delays – DelDOT, DNREC, local land use, fire marshal – cause projects to take too long and put Delaware at a competitive disadvantage.
We further will work to create incentives to expedite permitting and reduce the cost of building certain desired community needs, such as affordable housing. We must do so while continuing to protect you. Regulations exist for a reason. We must implement them efficiently and intelligently so our communities are both safe and sustainable.
O’Mara
I agree and I support the Ready in 6 initiative. We can be both robust in our review and efficient in processing simultaneously. It takes far too long to obtain permits through local, county, and state agencies.
When I was Secretary of DNREC, we decreased the time it took to get through the brownfields program from over three years to under nine months without forsaking any health or safety standards. I believe that we can uphold our health and environmental justice commitments, while also making decisions efficiently.
Changing this culture of inefficiency statewide is going to require an executive who understands the permitting processes and the importance of environmental and public health, will appoint a cabinet who a can achieve results, and holds people accountable. There are huge opportunities for efficiencies through technology and artificial intelligence and we also need to create a one-stop shop across all levels of government to ensure applicants know exactly what is needed for every permit and clear contacts for ensuring timely discussion and review.
