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Politico
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Politico
The fight that could doom San Francisco's moderate coalition
Presented by MODS AT ODDS — A dispute over an urban park is threatening to fracture San Francisco's coalition of moderate Democrats, who've successfully wrested control of city politics from more progressive forces in recent years. San Francisco voters approved a ballot measure last year to close a 2-mile portion of a major roadway, the Great Highway, and convert it into a beachfront promenade for residents and tourists at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. While the ballot initiative passed with 55 percent of the citywide vote, the loss of a major arterial to a park has enraged many homeowners on the city's more suburban west side. Those homeowners in the Sunset and Richmond neighborhoods, many of them Chinese Americans, are part of one of the city's most powerful blocs of moderate voters. And they weren't just grumbling about traffic headaches. Unrest over the road closure and the park, renamed Sunset Dunes, has propelled a campaign to recall Supervisor Joel Engardio, who championed putting the question on the ballot. The divide speaks to simmering tensions within the city's coalition of moderates, between so-called urbanists — who want to build a denser city that prioritizes pedestrian spaces, mass transit and apartment towers — and single-family homeowners, many of whom want to keep streets open to car traffic and preserve the suburban feel of more neighborhoods. Both forces have largely put aside their differences in recent election cycles as they focused on common priorities like combating crime, reducing homelessness and improving the city's troubled school district. But as San Francisco has improved in those areas and urbanists flex their political muscle, the fight over housing and transportation policy is taking center stage. The schism is amplified by Engardio's looming Sept. 16 recall election, which his detractors recently qualified for the ballot. It hasn't helped him that the city recently released a proposal to upzone much of the west side that would allow taller apartment buildings along commercial and transit corridors — further angering homeowners in the area. Some urbanist leaders — many of whom are followers of the 'abundance' or YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard) pro-housing movements — say the split shows they need to form a new coalition of San Francisco voters who are in favor of denser development and expect the city to provide clean and safe streets. 'I like to say San Francisco is the most progressive city that hates change,' Engardio quipped during an interview at a coffee shop down the street from Sunset Dunes. 'We need to let each new generation define for themselves what they want the city to be. We can't freeze the city in amber on the day that we arrived.' But Engardio likely faces an uphill battle to keep his seat. Some deep-pocketed moderate political advocacy groups that backed him in the past aren't pitching in to defend him now — and it's unclear if the county Democratic Party will even oppose the recall. One of the groups staying out of the fray is Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, the city's wealthiest moderate advocacy group. Jay Cheng, its executive director, says he supports Engardio. But, he argues, the fight over the Great Highway and denser housing shows that urbanists often overlook or even 'demonize' single-family homeowners, including parents with young children for whom driving is part of their daily routines. 'They're often talking past those voters, and even worse they're often demonizing those voters,' Cheng said. 'The moderate coalition as a whole will lose if we keep going down that path.' Nancy Tung, chair of the county Democratic Party, shares the sentiment. She said many Chinese voters on the west side resent that their community wasn't brought to the negotiating table when Engardio and four other supervisors decided to put the issue on the ballot for voters. Urbanists, she said, need to be less 'heavy-handed' in their tactics to avoid voter backlash. GOOD MORNING. Happy Thursday. Thanks for waking up with Playbook. Like what you're reading? Sign up to get California Playbook in your inbox, and forward it to a friend. You can also text us at 916-562-0685 — save it as 'CA Playbook' in your contacts. Or drop us a line at dgardiner@ and bjones@ or on X — @DustinGardiner and @jonesblakej. WHERE'S GAVIN? Nothing official announced. Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Attorney General Pam Bondi plan to visit Alcatraz before it opens for tours this morning, KQED reports. The administration wants to reopen it as a federal prison. CA vs. TRUMP HIGH-SPEED SLOWDOWN — President Donald Trump announced Wednesday his administration had eliminated federal funding for California's high-speed rail project, making good on his promise to end government support for the project, our colleagues Seb Starcevic and Alex Nieves report. The development came after the Transportation Department issued a scathing report last month slamming the ambitious development for 'missed deadlines, budget shortfalls, and overrepresentation of projected ridership.' NEWSOMLAND GERRYMANDERING FEVER — Gavin Newsom suddenly can't stop talking about Texas gerrymandering — and a provocative idea to counter it in California, our Jeremy B. White and Nicholas Wu write. On podcasts and social media, the California governor has threatened that if Texas follows President Donald Trump's advice and redraws its congressional districts to shore up the GOP's slender House majority, California should throw out its own maps to boost Democrats, circumventing or overhauling the state's voter-approved redistricting commission. The proposal, however, is a long shot. And reactions have been … mixed. — 'Trying to save democracy by destroying democracy is dangerous and foolish,' said Assemblymember Alex Lee, the head of the state Legislature's progressive caucus. 'By legitimizing the race to the bottom of gerrymandering, Democrats will ultimately lose.' — 'The idea of taking away the power from the citizens and giving it back to the politicians — the optics of that is horrendous and indefensible,' said one Democratic political consultant granted anonymity to speak freely. 'That's insane. That's a crazy hill to die on.' Read more from the piece here. UNION TOWN SERVING COMPLAINTS — The hospitality union UNITE HERE Local 11 is accusing a defunct restaurant owned by billionaire Rick Caruso of violating labor law by laying off its entire staff without offering severance packages. The union asked the state labor commissioner in a letter Wednesday to investigate. It also filed an unfair labor practice charge accusing managers of Tony P's Dockside Grill in Marina del Rey of failing to provide employees legally guaranteed breaks and requiring them to take a survey, unpaid, outside work hours. 'There's a lot of workers that have been working 10-plus years,' said Lolita Olivarez, a server who was involved in the unionization efforts at the restaurant who was laid off when it closed. 'We didn't want to leave just with the pat on the back.' This is just the latest time UNITE HERE has tangled with Caruso, who could run for governor or again for Los Angeles mayor, after his failed campaign against labor-backed Karen Bass in 2022. The union unsuccessfully this year pushed the California Coastal Commission to block expansion of a Caruso-owned resort because it would place affordable housing in a flood-prone area. 'Billionaire Rick Caruso talks a lot about helping families but closing a restaurant that he owns and tossing workers out on the curb after they had the courage to organize their union and then failing to pay a penny of severance to them speaks volumes about his concern for working people,' UNITE HERE Local 11 Co-President Kurt Petersen said in a statement. 'Los Angeles needs a leader who will protect Angeleno working families and not a billionaire's bottom-line.' Restaurant leaders announced they'd be closing up shop in April, which UNITE HERE officials said was after workers had announced their intent to unionize. But a spokesperson for restaurateur Tony Palermo disputed that claim and said management provided job placement resources to help laid off workers find jobs in the hospitality industry as the grill closed its doors in June. 'The dedicated employees took great pride in working at Tony P's – a fixture in the community and known for its family-oriented culture since the '90's,' the spokesperson said in a statement. 'The allegations by the Union, which did not represent workers until after Tony and Danny announced their decision to retire, are not accurate and contrast sharply with the culture that was developed over nearly three decades of operating Tony P's.' CAMPAIGN YEAR(S) FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: BAINS' MAINS — Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains racked up a slew of endorsements from fellow Democrats on the first day of her campaign against Republican Rep. David Valadao. They include Central Valley state Sen. Melissa Hurtado and seven members of California's congressional delegation: Reps. Luz Rivas, Laura Friedman, Dave Min, Judy Chu, Ami Bera, Julia Brownley, Norma Torres and Adam Gray. 'I know what it takes to win tough races in the Central Valley — and I know Jasmeet Bains has what it takes to do it too,' Gray, who flipped a Republican House seat in the region last fall, said in a statement. Consolidating support on her side of the aisle will be key for Bains, who is up against a more progressive Democratic challenger, Visalia school board member Randy Villegas. Also giving Bains the nod were IBEW Local 428, the Kern County electrical workers union and SEIU California, which has like her been pushing Valadao over Medicaid cuts. 'Dr. Jasmeet Bains is SEIU members' choice for Congress because she's fighting for our lives, our kids' healthcare, and home care our seniors need to thrive,' the Democrat-aligned labor powerhouse said in a statement. BADGE OF APPROVAL — The Deputy Sheriffs' Association of San Diego County is the latest law enforcement group to throw its support behind Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco's gubernatorial campaign. 'California is facing a number of issues that must be addressed — public safety chief among them,' said Michael O'Deane, president of the association. 'The deputies who keep San Diego County safe know that there's only one candidate in this race who will do what's needed to protect our communities and get things done. We are proud to stand with Sheriff Bianco.' The pro-Trump sheriff from Southern California who had success on the campaign trail for Prop 36 has coalesced a large group of more than 30 county sheriffs, several district attorneys and multiple sheriffs' associations. But an architect of the tough-on-crime ballot initiative — Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig — has endorsed Bianco's most serious Republican opponent, Steve Hilton. STATE CAPITOL PUTTING OUT FIRES — Incoming Assembly Republican Caucus Chair Heath Flora wants you to know even though he's not on the front line anymore, he's still ready to fight fires. After a few picked up seats and legislative wins, Flora, a former firefighter, hopes to build off of the work done by outgoing caucus Chair James Gallagher by staying focused on what he says are 'non-partisan' issues like homelessness, public safety and the cost of living. 'We're not going to chase rabbits down rabbit holes. You want to stay focused on what the electorate cares about,' he told Playbook. Flora says he is also excited to 'lean in on' SB 54 and CEQA reform, something he says they have been making noise on for some time. Opting for a milder style than some of his current and former colleagues, Flora said, 'I want to be a part of being an effective elected official that can be a calming voice [in] sort of a chaotic political climate that we have.' As for those firebrand Republicans, Flora admits that he understands their appeal to voters in conservative districts. Just expect him to be cheering them on from a distance. 'It's just not my style or my personality,' he said. IN THE COURTS RAID FALLOUT — A U.S. citizen who was detained for three days by immigration agents after a raid at a cannabis farm last week in California said he plans to sue the federal government over the incident. 'I hope they learn,' George Retes, a 25-year-old Army veteran and security guard at Glass House Farms, told reporters Wednesday. 'The only way they will learn is through a lawsuit.' Retes said he was pepper sprayed and handcuffed when he showed up for his shift at the Camarillo farm July 10 but was given no explanation of the charges against him. Another person, 57-year-old Jaime Alanís Garcia, fatally fell from a greenhouse roof while fleeing federal agents during a pair of raids at Glass House locations in California the same day. Retes said he missed his daughter's birthday while in custody and was placed on suicide watch. He said Immigration and Customs Enforcement previously visited the facility, but he stopped them from entering. 'The way they're going about this entire deportation process is completely wrong,' he said. CLIMATE AND ENERGY IT ISSUES — Lawmakers are looking to extend their push for affordability to the AI boom, with efforts to shield ratepayers from the potential costs of data centers. The tech industry is fighting back. Read last night's California Climate for more on the changes that lawmakers are hoping will win over techies. Top Talkers SUPERSTAR STATUS — The San Francisco and San José regions are artificial intelligence 'superstars,' meaning that the areas are well-prepared for AI system development, according to a report by the Brookings Institution. San Francisco, San José and Los Angeles are among the top 10 areas for AI. AUTHORITY EXPANSION — ICE is sharply expanding its authority to detain far more people by using a legal authority to jail anyone who entered the U.S. illegally without allowing them a bond hearing, The Associated Press reports. ICE's acting Director Todd Lyons wrote in a memo to workers that the agency was revisiting its authority to detain people and, effective immediately, people would be ineligible for a bond hearing before an immigration judge. They cannot be released unless DHS makes an exception, the report said. AROUND THE STATE — Cannabis industry leaders are figuring out how to react as immigration raids on Southern California cannabis facilities sow fear in workers. (San Francisco Chronicle) — California almond growers are set to have their second-largest harvest in history. (Fresno Bee) — Berkeley's Homeless Response Team could improve its transparency, create stronger coordination practices and enhance its data collection, a City Auditor's report finds. (The Mercury News) Compiled by Juliann Ventura PLAYBOOKERS PEOPLE MOVES — Andrew Kehoe, former communications director for Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, joined UC Davis Health as government and community relations manager. — Lila Mirrashidi became Newsom's chief deputy cabinet secretary earlier this year as Gina Da Silva, the governor's top immigration adviser, stepped back from chief deputy duties to focus on immigration in Trump's second term. Mirrashidi is a Brown administration alum and former deputy secretary at the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. WANT A SHOUT-OUT FEATURED? — Send us a birthday, career move or another special occasion to include in POLITICO's California Playbook. You can now submit a shout-out using this Google form.
Vox
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Vox
The left's misguided critique of abundance liberalism
is a senior correspondent at Vox. He covers a wide range of political and policy issues with a special focus on questions that internally divide the American left and right. Before coming to Vox in 2024, he wrote a column on politics and economics for New York Magazine. When a Democrat contemplates their nation's biggest problems today, minimum lot sizes in suburban housing codes probably don't rank very high on the list. But a new book asks Democrats to do precisely that. In Abundance, journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson catalog American liberalism's failures to deliver material plenty — the housing shortages that plague blue cities, the green infrastructure that congressional Democrats funded but then failed to actually build, the high-speed rail system that California promised but never delivered. Klein and Thompson argue that these disappointments have a common source: Since the 1970s, American liberals have been more concerned with obstructing harmful economic development than promoting the beneficial kind. Democrats have prioritized process over outcomes and favored stasis over growth, most notably through their support for zoning restrictions, stringent environmental laws, and attaching costly conditions to public infrastructure spending. Related This is why Kamala Harris really lost To revitalize American progressivism, they sketch an 'abundance agenda': a series of regulatory reforms and public investment programs aimed at facilitating higher rates of housing development, infrastructure construction, and technological progress. Klein and Thompson speak for a broader faction of 'abundance liberals,' which encompasses the Yes in My Backyard (YIMBY) movement, various pro-innovation think tanks, and scores of commentators. In addition to Abundance, the faction has recently produced two other books outlining its critique of American liberalism's evolution since the 1970s, Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman and Stuck by Yoni Appelbaum. It is surely true that blue states' governance failures are not this moment's most pressing crisis. But Democratic areas' inability to avert cost-of-living crises — or to build infrastructure on time and budget — is a political liability for the party. Such mismanagement has not only called liberals' competence into question, but also chased millions of people out of large blue states and into red ones over the past 10 years. California and New York have been shrinking while Florida and Texas have been growing — trends that will make it much harder for Democrats to win the Electoral College or Congress after the 2030 census. Disempowering an increasingly authoritarian GOP should be Democrats' top priority in 2025. But bringing abundant housing, energy, and infrastructure to blue states is conducive to that task. This makes Klein and Thompson's analysis politically relevant. Nevertheless, not everyone on the left buys what they're selling. And Abundance has some real flaws. In their concern with winning over progressive skeptics, Klein and Thompson sometimes elide the genuine tradeoffs between their vision and progressive ideology. For example, while they lament the stifling impact of various environmental regulations on housing and clean energy construction, they're cagey about precisely how, and how much, they want to change such laws. Rather than stating plainly that they're willing to reduce regulatory obstacles to fossil fuel infrastructure for the sake of abetting the build-out of renewables — a position Klein has endorsed in his New York Times column — they argue that going into details about how environmental laws should be amended would be beside the point, since 'no individual law' would solve all the problems they identify and 'What is needed here is a change in political culture, not just legislation.' Such slipperiness may make Abundance more palatable to progressives, but also invites distrust. This said, much of the left's criticism of abundance liberalism is off-base and unfair. One especially prominent charge is that the abundance agenda entails a retreat from the progressive movement's commitments to economic justice and equality. In this account, Klein and Thompson want Democrats to stop catering to the particular needs of poor and working-class Americans — through expansions of social welfare programs or labor regulations — and start concentrating on maximizing economic growth. The New Yorker's Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes that the abundance movement views stagnation as a 'national emergency' that requires 'liberals to sideline their quest for a Scandinavian-style social democracy.' And he fears that the pursuit of Klein and Thompson's vision could yield a less equitable society. Wallace-Wells nevertheless endorses some aspects of the abundance agenda. Other critics are less measured. Dylan Gyauch-Lewis argues in the American Prospect that abundance liberals prize 'growth above all,' and that their ideology is merely a repackaging of 'free-market dogma.' Likewise, The Baffler's Alex Bronzini-Vender derides the abundance agenda as a 'Koch-funded initiative' aimed at 'reversing the Democratic Party's skepticism of neoliberal orthodoxy.' These criticisms are off-base in more ways than one. First, it's simply not true that Klein and Thompson call on liberals to abandon welfare state expansion or to pursue growth at all costs. They explicitly state that 'redistribution is important' — their argument isn't that expanding the safety net is undesirable, but rather, that doing so is insufficient for maximizing ordinary Americans' living standards. Further, Abundance argues that the federal government should play a larger role in managing the economy, so as to accelerate the development of socially valuable technologies and steer economic growth in an ecologically friendly direction. To say that Klein, Thompson, and other abundance liberals are free market dogmatists because they oppose some regulations is a bit like saying Joe Manchin is a Stalinist because he opposes Medicare cuts. But those who critique the abundance agenda on egalitarian grounds are making a more fundamental analytical error: Combating regulatory obstacles to housing construction, infrastructure, and energy production is not just compatible with prioritizing the interests of working-class Americans; it is synonymous with that task. An economic system biased toward scarcity and stagnation is one that serves the already comfortable better than the disadvantaged. The left's suspicions of abundance liberalism are understandable. On a variety of fronts, Klein and Thompson call for paring back rules and regulations that are coded as progressive, in the name of abetting faster economic development. The left is used to denouncing this general proposition. Yet abundance liberals are not calling on Democrats to forsake genuinely progressive restrictions on production, such as the Clean Air Act or minimum wage, for the sake of maximizing GDP. Rather, they are imploring their party to judge regulations on the basis of results rather than vibes. Rules that ostensibly subordinate free markets to the public good — but actually undermine ordinary Americans' living standards — are not worth defending. Related The surprising theory that explains modern American life Why Democrats should make priority-setting a priority Such regulations fall into a few broad categories. One consists of seemingly progressive — but ultimately counterproductive — mandates appended to public spending. In recent decades, liberals have gotten accustomed to using government-funded projects as vehicles for delivering 'wins' (however minor or symbolic) to their coalition's myriad stakeholders. Yet as Democratic legislators multiply the number of different causes a discrete project is supposed to serve, they often undermine their policy's core purpose. San Francisco's approach to public housing is one of Abundance's signature examples of this phenomenon. The Golden Gate City suffers from one of the highest homelessness rates in the United States. Increasing the supply of publicly subsidized housing should therefore be one of its government's priorities. Yet the city's public housing policy is not designed to maximize the number of affordable homes in San Francisco — but rather, to build some affordable homes, while promoting small businesses, signaling concern for disabled people, improving the aesthetic quality of the city's architecture, increasing employment among local construction workers, and furthering a wide array of other liberal causes. The rules that San Francisco has attached to its affordable housing program may sound progressive on their face. The city reserves publicly subsidized housing contracts for small builders, in a bid to combat the power of big developers. It also requires public housing projects to pass a review by the Mayor's Office of Disability and the San Francisco Arts Commission, hire locally, buy power from the city's public utility, and meet a panoply of other criteria. But each of these provisions increases the costs of construction. Prohibiting large contractors from building affordable homes leads to delays, as there are only so many small construction companies in the Bay Area and each has limited capacity, by definition. Ensuring that housing is accessible for the disabled is surely vital. Yet all housing projects in the United States must already be compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act; mandating an additional review by the San Francisco Mayor's Office just adds a redundant layer of bureaucratic processing. And while pretty buildings are preferable to the alternative, when thousands of San Franciscans are going unhoused, architectural aesthetics should take a backseat to rapidly growing the affordable housing stock. Taken together, these little rules add tens of millions of dollars to the price of every affordable housing project in the city. The typical publicly subsidized apartment building in San Francisco takes more than 6 years to build and costs more than $600,000 per unit. By contrast, a private philanthropy in the city recently erected 145 studio apartments for the chronically homeless in three years, at a cost of just $400,000 per unit. This efficiency is derived largely from the fact that privately funded housing projects don't need to comply with as many requirements as public projects do. Saying that San Francisco should cut red tape in its affordable housing program may sound like a conservative sentiment. But in its actual effects, that red tape is reducing the supply of affordable housing while reinforcing the impression that the government cannot build things as competently as the private sector. These do not seem like progressive outcomes. The progressive case for a freer housing market Abundance liberals tell a similar story about zoning restrictions. American municipalities in general — and Democratic ones in particular — heavily restrict the types of housing that the private sector can build. It is illegal to construct anything but a detached single-family home on roughly 75 percent of America's residential land. Local laws add various other cost-increasing limitations on housing development, from large minimum lot sizes to parking mandates to design requirements. The progressive case against restrictive zoning is straightforward: Affluent suburbs use single-family zoning to keep out working-class families, who might be able to afford an apartment in their municipalities but can't shoulder the expense of a large house with a yard. More broadly, making it illegal to build multi-family housing in most of the country ensures scarcity. According to some estimates, America has 4.5 million fewer homes than its people require. This shortage increases the value of our nation's existing housing stock — which is good for homeowners and landlords but bad for renters. A policy that benefits those who own property at the expense of those who don't is regressive by any definition. Many progressives have accepted the force of this argument. But some further to the left still disdain the push to liberalize zoning laws. And their aversion to that project is not difficult to understand. The idea that one of America's biggest economic problems can be mitigated by loosening restrictions on free enterprise is ideologically unpalatable for many. Bronzini-Vender's essay in The Baffler well illustrates many leftists' allergy to this argument. In it, he argues that abundance liberals are selling the public a fiction: Unleashing homebuilders from 'zoning regulations' would increase Americans' living standards, since the 'private sector would supply more goods at lower costs—if only it could.' He suggests this simply is not plausible and 'betrays a deep misunderstanding of capitalist production': Firms do not want prices to fall as that would erode their profit margins, so they will choke off production long before it starts substantially increasing affordability. There are a few problems with this reasoning. The first is empirical. Capitalist production has, in fact, routinely yielded more goods at lower costs. Since 2000, the prices of durable consumer goods in the US have fallen by roughly 25 percent. And in the realm of housing specifically, zoning reforms have led to increased production and greater affordability. In Minneapolis, the lifting of various zoning restrictions in 2018 was followed by a surge in housing construction and a decline in the city's median rent: Adjusted for local earnings, a home in Minneapolis was 20 percent cheaper in 2023 than it had been in 2017. In New Zealand, the city of Auckland's experiment with zoning liberalization yielded similar results. The second problem with Bronzini-Vender's argument is theoretical. It assumes that the only way capitalist competition can yield lower prices is by forcing companies to accept lower profit margins. And since developers do not want their profits to fall, he reasons that they will tacitly collude to limit housing production, irrespective of zoning laws. This is not a sound economic analysis. If you reduce how much it costs to produce a unit of housing — by legalizing apartment buildings or eliminating expensive regulatory requirements — then developers can charge lower prices while keeping their margins constant. Further, firms can outcompete each other on price — without forfeiting profitability — if they increase their productivity. Durable goods have not become cheaper over the past quarter century because manufacturers and retailers have become more altruistic or less profitable, but rather because they've increased the amount of stuff they can supply per worker hour. (Some of this productivity increase is the result of outsourcing production to low-wage countries, but much of it is from innovations in production and logistics.) One surprising thing The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires the federal government to draft statements analyzing the environmental impacts of its decisions. When the law was first enacted, these statements were as short as 10 pages. Today, the average one is 600 pages long. As Klein and Thompson note, between 1935 and 1970, construction productivity steadily rose in the US. But over the past half-century, it has actually fallen. Zoning reform could plausibly reverse that trend by making it easier to mass produce sections of housing in factories, a process known as modular construction; as is, in order to conform with housing regulations, builders typically need to construct homes almost entirely onsite. Mere deregulation will not ensure universal housing affordability. It will never be profitable to provide housing to low-income people, in the absence of public subsidies. And the private sector is liable to underproduce housing for middle-income people as well. The government can help fill in these gaps by creating public developers, which build market-rate housing and then reinvest their proceeds into new construction (the left flank of the abundance movement has been popularizing the public developer model for years now). Nevertheless, the private sector could produce far more housing than it does, were it not for regulatory restrictions. A freer housing market would therefore make America richer and more equal. This fact may make some progressives uncomfortable. But defending our favorite ideological abstractions should not take precedence over improving people's lives. Related The housing movement is divided against itself Not all environmental regulations are worth defending Most controversially, abundance liberals argue that some environmental regulations are undermining shared prosperity, trust in government, and the green transition. Their complaint is not with environmental laws that directly constrain pollution, such as the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act. The issue lies primarily with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its state-level equivalents. NEPA does not actually ban any pollutant or set any specific constraints on industrial production. Rather, the law mandates a process: Federal bureaucracies need to consider the environmental impact of their decisions, and draft statements outlining those impacts. As Dunkelman explains, the law was intended merely to encourage government agencies to contemplate ecological concerns before greenlighting various projects, not to reduce their autonomy over such decisions. But activist lawyers took an expansive interpretation of the statute: In their view, if the government's environmental impact statement underestimated the ecological implications of a given project, then private citizens and community groups could sue to block that project in court. And a series of judicial rulings enshrined this interpretation of the law. Many states proceeded to draft their own versions of NEPA, some of which applied its requirements to private projects as well as public ones. The effect was to render economic development of all kinds slower and more expensive. To ward off litigation, governments were forced to make their environmental impact statements lengthy and exhaustive: When the law was first enacted, those statements were as short as 10 pages. In 2022, the average one ran 600 pages long and took four and a half years to complete. And once completed, those statements still need to make it through a legal gauntlet before the ground on a given project can actually be broken. All this has made building infrastructure in the US radically more expensive. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the cost of building a mile of interstate highway in America tripled. Mass transit was similarly impacted. It cost New York $2.6 billion to construct each mile of its Second Avenue Subway. By contrast, at around the same time, social democratic Copenhagen built a rail line for just $323 million per mile, and Paris built one for $320 million per mile. NEPA and its state-level equivalents also inhibit housing construction: In Berkeley, California, locals delayed the building of new undergraduate dorms through a three-year-long lawsuit, in which they argued that the project violated the California Environmental Quality Act, since enabling more college students to live in Berkeley would increase noise pollution. This state of affairs undermines trust in the public sector's competence, while making infrastructure and housing more expensive, raising tax burdens, and slowing economic growth. The Democratic Party's complacency about these outcomes bespeaks an insensitivity to working-class priorities and interests. According to some leftwing narratives, Democrats took an ideological turn in the 1970s, one that led them to sacrifice the interests of blue-collar Americans to the pursuit of 'growth at all costs.' But on some policy fronts, this gets the story backward. Democrats became less committed to economic growth in the seventies, largely because they started prioritizing educated middle-class people's ideological and quality-of-life concerns over the material interests of working people. The environmental movement of the 1970s was overwhelmingly comprised of economically comfortable college graduates, many of whom regarded economic growth as undesirable and unsustainable, a position rejected by the vast majority of working-class voters. As political scientist Ronald Inglehart showed, blue-collar Americans were much less likely than their more affluent compatriots to prioritize environmental concerns over economic ones. And working-class voters' priorities were well-founded: The costs of a regulatory system biased toward stasis and scarcity are more burdensome for those who do not yet enjoy material security than for those who do. As civil rights icon and trade unionist Bayard Rustin lamented in 1976, 'the vanguard of the environmental movement, themselves members largely of the upper classes, have often sought policies that are clearly detrimental, and in some cases—the growth controversy being the most significant example—destructive to the needs of those less better off.' Many of the environmental movement's achievements were laudable, and greatly improved and extended the lives of ordinary Americans. And the harms of NEPA aren't all attributable to earnest environmentalists: Well-heeled interests have exploited the law to obstruct all manner of economic development. Yet refusing to pare back the scope of NEPA and similar laws in light of such abuse was a choice — one that constrained economic opportunity and diminished the federal government's capacity to build public works. What makes NEPA and its ilk particularly perverse in the present moment, however, is that they are making America's greatest ecological challenge — climate change — more difficult to meet. The reason for this is simple: Building a clean energy economy requires constructing gargantuan amounts of new infrastructure (vast solar installations, wind farms, transmission lines, and geothermal plants, among other things). Maintaining a carbon economy, by contrast, requires building scarcely any, since the existing energy system is built around the needs and capacities of fossil fuels. A regulatory regime that favors the status quo is therefore one that favors fossil fuels. As of 2021, NEPA reviews were holding up twice as many green projects as carbon energy ones. According to an analysis cited by Klein and Thompson, 95 percent of energy projects that are looking to connect to the grid — but which are as yet obstructed by permitting — consist of solar, battery storage, or wind power. The abundance agenda is a starting point Pro-growth deregulatory policies are not sufficient for achieving shared prosperity. Indeed, such proposals aren't even adequate for realizing Klein and Thompson's vision for 'abundance,' which also entails increasing government funding for technological development, among other things. But loosening some regulatory restrictions on housing and infrastructure development would directly advance many progressive economic goals — while indirectly making it easier to expand the social welfare state. After all, higher economic growth translates into higher government revenues, which can then be redistributed to the economically disadvantaged. The abundance agenda is also compatible with increasing workers' bargaining power through sectoral bargaining (even as there exist some genuine conflicts between the narrow interests of discrete unions and the achievement of material plenty). Abundance is directed at a progressive audience and aimed at winning an argument internal to blue America. In the current moment, this may strike some readers as myopic. Even if all progressives decided tomorrow to prioritize making it easier for the federal government to do big things, Elon Musk would still be gutting its capacity to execute its most basic functions. Even if permitting issues weren't stymying the green transition, Donald Trump would be. And Klein and Thompson do not fully grapple with the challenge that the GOP's radicalization poses to their ambitions. Much of the abundance agenda is aimed at increasing the administrative state's power, at the expense of the judiciary's. This strikes me as indispensable for realizing liberalism's long-term goals. But today, it would entail giving Trump and Musk an even freer hand to reshape government to their reactionary whims. Nevertheless, abundance liberalism remains relevant. The MAGA movement is not the reason why New York can't build enough housing, California can't build high-speed rail, and Massachusetts can't build a transmission line between its cities and Quebec's hydropower plants. Democrats have full control of government in some of America's largest and wealthiest states. They have the power to prove that they can deliver rising living standards and falling costs for ordinary people. There are many reasons why blue states have had such limited success on these fronts. But one is that progressives have not mounted a unified front against zoning restrictions that help landlords gouge tenants, environmental laws that enable rich NIMBYs to block renewable energy, and liberal policies that seek to advance so many disparate priorities that they end up achieving none. With any luck, Abundance will bring us a little closer to such a consensus.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Business
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Missing Middle, What Is It Good For?
Happy Tuesday and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. Government rules on new home construction make routine real estate development more difficult and expensive than it needs to be. Overly restrictive land use regulations also make it difficult to provide housing in more extreme circumstances. This week's stories cover a couple of examples of the latter phenomenon, including: Los Angeles looks to use the latest fires as a reason to exempt itself from state-level zoning reform bills. A Reason report from last week found that the island of Maui has managed to rebuild just three homes 18 months after the devastating wildfires on the island in August 2023. In Ohio, a pastor has been convicted of criminal violations of the fire code for sheltering people in his commercially zoned church. But first, the newsletter covers a slew of "missing middle" reforms being introduced this year, and what they can and can't do for housing supply, choice, and affordability. Few cities get more plaudits from Yes in My Backyard (YIMBY) zoning reformers than Austin, Texas. It's a rare boomtown that's adding jobs, people, and housing while also seeing rents fall. It's also one of the cities in the country that has adopted signature YIMBY "missing middle" reforms. In December 2023, the city approved HOME I reforms that allow three units to be built on residential lots where previously single-family-only zoning had allowed one primary dwelling. A natural assumption to make is that Austin's high construction rates are partially explainable by its abolition of single-family-only zoning. This would be a mistake. Late last year, the city released data on the first six months of the HOME I reforms. From when they went into effect in February through August, builders have submitted 159 applications to build duplexes, triplexes, and two-home detached projects under the city's new HOME I rules, potentially resulting in 300 new dwelling units, according to the report. Of those applications, 99 projects totaling 220 units have already been approved by the city. That's not nothing. But it's also a small sliver of Austin's total housing production. In 2024, Austin permitted 8,179 units, according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Assuming builders filed applications for HOME permits at the same rate from August through the end of the year, the HOME reforms are responsible for about 5 percent of the city's overall housing production. Again, that's not nothing. Local builders note that the increased construction of new HOME-enabled units is coming at a time when rents, home prices, and construction rates are all cooling fast. Austin's housing production in 2024 is down some 40 percent from its peak in 2021. "300 [units] doesn't sound like a lot but in the worst real estate market in decades here, that's saying something," says Scott Turner, an Austin infill developer. Modest Missing Middle Results The past few years have seen YIMBY zoning reformers train their fire on single-family-only zoning that blankets most residential land in most American cities—and for good reason. Zoning rules that allow just one home per property, and that often come paired with large minimum lot sizes, are the most restrictive (or exclusive, if you prefer) form of residential zoning. They keep apartments and businesses out of neighborhoods where there might otherwise be a lot of demand for them. In many cities, single-family zoning was also adopted with the explicit intent of excluding racial minorities and working-class people from town. And yet, wherever cities and states have replaced single-family-only zoning with more permissive missing middle regulations that allow small multi-unit developments, the impact on overall supply and construction rates has been exceedingly modest. In 2022, Spokane, Washington, enacted code changes that allowed up to four units of housing to be built in single-family neighborhoods and eliminated residential parking minimums. Those reforms served as a model for Washington's statewide middle housing reforms that passed in 2023. Spokane made them permanent in November 2023 with code changes that technically allow an unlimited number of units in low-density areas (although bulk and height restrictions impose practical limits on how many units will be built.) Spencer Gardner, director of Spokane's Department of Planning Services, tells Reason that 80 units were built as a result of the city's interim code reforms—which amounts to about 5 percent of the city's overall housing production. Since the missing middle and parking reforms have been made permanent, Gardner says that the city has continued to see a "significant increase" in townhome and duplex development, but this newly allowed infill development is still only around 5 percent of the city's overall residential construction. It's the same story in Portland, Oregon, and Minneapolis. Missing middle reforms have netted, at best, a few hundred additional units per year in cities that build a few thousand annually. Short Supply In one sense, that's to be expected. Middle housing reforms are pitched to an often skeptical public on the promise that they will only result in modest changes to existing neighborhoods. These reforms pair the legalization of more units per lot with small increases in the amount of floor space that can be added to each lot. These incremental increases in density are what's politically realistic in most places. But the results in terms of new supply are also consequently incremental. "Altogether, HOME was an incremental reform—and it is having an incremental effect, as advertised," says Ryan Puzycki, a member of Austin's Zoning and Platting Commission, of his city's reforms. The temptation might be to dismiss middle housing reforms as ultimately inconsequential to the YIMBY goal of ending a nationwide housing shortage of millions of units. If every jurisdiction in the country adopted Austin's missing middle reforms and got Austin's results, America would see maybe another 50,000 or 60,000 units a year. That doesn't go very far to closing a housing shortage that low-end estimates peg at a few million units. More Choice But dismissing even modestly productive missing middle reforms as unimportant would be a mistake. Raw numbers of new units produced and lower per-unit prices are not the only metrics of successful zoning reform. Free markets aren't just about maximizing total production. They're also about the efficient satisfaction of preferences. Expanding the types of housing available and affordable to people in more neighborhoods is still a worthy goal of reform. On that front, middle housing reforms offer a lot of promise. There are plenty of people who could comfortably afford a new single-family home on the edge of town or a small condo downtown but not an older home in a closer-in neighborhood of their choice. Under single-family-only zoning, the only thing that's going to be built in that neighborhood is another single-family home—and that'll have to be a more expensive home in order to justify the redevelopment costs. Missing middle reforms allow developers the option of constructing smaller, more affordable housing types in those neighborhoods as well. A few hundred duplexes and townhomes aren't going to push down citywide rents. They might not even lower the amount of rent any one family pays. But they will give a few hundred house hunters the option of living in a location that better suits their preferences. An Abundance of Options America's housing shortage could conceivably be fixed by building nothing but exurban, auto-oriented subdivisions. It could be solved by building block after block of high-density social housing. But that's not the only thing people want, and it's not the only thing free markets would produce. This point is easy to grasp outside of the housing context. The point of allowing more restaurants to open in town isn't just that the aggregate price of food goes down. The point is that people have more variety and convenience about what to eat and where. Indeed, missing middle reforms might offer the most promise in cities where housing is already relatively affordable but the types of housing available are constrained by overly prescriptive zoning rules. None of this is to say that zoning reforms to single-family neighborhoods couldn't make a more meaningful impact on overall housing supply. The more units and floor space that middle housing reforms allow, the more they'll add both supply and choice. The libertarian ideal would be to have no legal limits on residential density so developers could build the housing people want where they want it at whatever price the market will bear. (It's worth noting that cities like Austin and Portland have adopted both missing middle reforms and restrictions on large single-family home development, so they aren't totally unambiguous wins for choice themselves.) Sadly, that libertarian ideal is not the world we live in now. It's probably not the world that politically realistic land use reforms will get us to any time soon. Where they've been adopted, middle housing reforms haven't solved any city's dire housing insufficiency. But they do provide more choices for more people. That's a worthwhile outcome even if it's not a silver bullet. In the aftermath of this month's devastating fires in Los Angeles, state and local officials have issued or are considering policies to speed up the building process. Gov. Gavin Newsom invoked his emergency powers to waive environmental review and coastal zone regulations for people rebuilding their fire-damaged properties. City of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has likewise ordered the expedited issuance of permits for fire rebuilds. Today, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will consider a resolution that would create a fast-track permitting process for people rebuilding "like-for-like" structures damaged by the fire. All these streamlining policies come with a major catch, however. They only apply to people rebuilding more or less exactly the same structure, and not a single unit more. Newsom's order only waives regulations for rebuilds that are up to 110 percent as large as whatever was destroyed by the fires. Bass' order has the same limitation and also prevents any change of use—so a fire-damaged home can't be rebuilt as a business or vice versa. The resolution that Los Angeles County will consider today hopes to be even more restrictive. It calls for sending a letter to the governor and the area's legislative delegation asking for a suspension of a slew of state housing laws. Some of the requested suspensions around laws requiring solar panel installations and public hearings would conceivably speed up development. Many of the requested suspensions would not. The county is asking the state to suspend laws that restrict downzoning, limit public hearing requirements, waive parking requirements, require the expedited issuance of accessory dwelling unit permits, and more. Fast-track permitting for "like-for-like" rebuilds seems reasonable but could slow down projects that add more units to Los Angeles' housing stock. Waiving state rules that themselves waive local regulations would seem to actively sabotage not just rebuilding efforts but building efforts generally in the county. The Hawaiian island of Maui offers a cautionary example of trying to rebuild from wildfires while keeping burdensome building regulations in place. As I reported last week, it's been 18 months since wildfires devastated the island of Maui in August 2023, and yet only three homes have been completely rebuilt. That means almost all of the 2,000 or so residential properties damaged by the fires have yet to be rebuilt. Reasons abound for why it's taking so long to get homes and businesses rebuilt. Maui's ultraregulated land use regime (which was slow to approve projects and issue permits even before the disaster) isn't helping. As I wrote: Permit fees can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a rebuild. County permitting data show that some applicants have had to wait over a year for permits to rebuild single-family homes and wait times of six months are not atypical. … Tightened zoning regulations have also made many structures on Maui "non-conforming" before the fire. County zoning law requires that buildings that have been at least 50 percent destroyed must be rebuilt under newer, more restrictive zoning codes. Since many of Lahaina's buildings were "non-conforming" structures before the fires, they can't be rebuilt as they once were. The new rules require that some damaged apartments would have to be rebuilt with fewer units, for example. The county's establishment of a privately operated permitting center is helping to get building permits out the door. Another 228 building permits for wildfire reconstruction have been issued, and 112 homes are currently under construction. Nevertheless, a lot more regulatory reform could be done to get the island rebuilt to its pre-fire state. Last week, Chris Avell, a pastor of Dad's Place in Bryan, Ohio, was convicted of criminal violations of the fire code for allowing people to stay in his church's building overnight. Avell has been in a year-long legal fight with Bryan officials over what the city considers an illegal residential use of his commercially zoned church building. Avell has consistently argued that he is well within his rights to keep his church doors open 24 hours a day and let people rest inside overnight. "We will appeal today's decision that found Pastor Chris Avell guilty of criminal charges for providing temporary shelter to those seeking to escape the frigid temperatures," said Ryan Gardner, an attorney with the First Liberty Institute, which is representing Avell. "It is a ludicrous argument to say these people are safer in the sub-zero temperatures on the street than inside the warmth of the church." "No decision has been made to prevent Dad's Place from operating as a church. However, the residential operations of the facility must cease until proper building and fire code applications are filed and approved by the State of Ohio," said Bryan Mayor Carrie Schlade in a press release. You can read Reason's past coverage of the case here, here, and here. The Los Angeles Times reports on how price-gouging rules in Los Angeles that bar people from renting out units for over $10,000 a month are keeping units off the market and exacerbating the city's post-fire housing crunch. President Donald Trump wants to prevent the California Coastal Commission from kneecapping the city's wildfire rebuilding efforts. As it turns out, there's a bill for that. San Francisco takes nearly two years to approve new detached accessory dwelling units, according to a new analysis. Why construction costs for affordable housing are ballooning in Chicago And why insurance costs are ballooning everywhere The post Missing Middle, What Is It Good For? appeared first on
