postscript

Last night's public comment, committee debate, and subsequent vote 6-4 (including several abstentions) against SB 827 was a perfect encapsulation of California's daily housing debate. It is the reason that we are in this mess. Anyone who's been to even just one hearing on a proposed housing project - let alone myriad hearings - was surprised neither by the debate nor by its ultimate outcome.

Why not? Consider...

For starters, you had the predictable scorched-earth opponents of change -- people concerned about their views, traffic, parking, etc. People offering the usual tropes such as "[fill-in-the-blank] is in the pocket of greedy developers;" people otherizing YIMBYs as people who don't really *live* here or are just passing through; and people complaining about wealthy folks who live near transit who would still end up owning cars and driving (without acknowledging that these same folks are also likely to use their cars less, if they have them, than those who don't live near transit). Every single housing project hearing will be attended by scorched-earth opponents of change, who will typically open all of their comments with the number of years (or generations) they've lived within inches of the proposed project. Implicit but left unsaid in these assertions of validity owing to decades of homeownership is being a beneficiary of wealth-accumulation policies at all levels of government (e.g. mortgage interest deduction, Prop 13, etc.) that makes folks in this group simultaneously politically powerful and inordinately wealthier than any other city denizens.

On another hand, you had the proponents of equitable development who are also generally opponents of new market-rate housing -- people concerned primarily with the impacts of displacement and gentrification and allied here [for better or worse] with and giving cover for the above-referenced scorched-earth opponents of change, whose decades of opposition to any housing are the very reason for wholesale gentrification of places that were once the primary domain of lower-income communities and communities of color. These opponents of new market-rate housing often correlate displacement with transit expansion, and generally, though not entirely, remain wholly silent on scorched-earth opponents of change and direct their ire instead on... YIMBYs. If proponents of equitable development are present at a local hearing, it's usually to ask for more inclusionary affordable housing in a large project. Rarely will you hear unvarnished support for a project, and especially not for something that wasn't already big enough to have the resources to offer some inclusionary affordable housing.

And on yet another hand, you had the YIMBYs, decried by their opponents as being both well-funded/-organized and also so new to the conversation as to not understand its nuance. YIMBYs ask for more housing on a broad scale, sometimes appearing to lack sympathy for those folks caught in the middle when a project could result in some folks losing their homes. So, YIMBYs offer an array of ideas to shore up concerns about displacement and gentrification while decrying scorched-earth opponents of change and the racialized history (and often present reality) of homeownership that continues to benefit and enrich the scorched-earthers. When YIMBYs are present at a housing project hearing, they'll be in the minority, they will get booed and hissed, and they will generally be ignored by the adjudicators of said hearing, since they'll be perceived as representing the same proportional minority of population as present at said hearing. They'll be too "academic," "new," or "affluent" to influence the debate (never mind that affluence associated with homeownership is actually the very thing that has defined the housing debate and constrained the creation of new housing in California for decades).

And, finally, you had the elected officials, bemoaning the affordability crisis, speaking in high-minded platitudes about the need for change, desperate to do something but not... this thing. This thing is the worst thing, or just not quite the right thing. This thing needs to be tweaked a little here or a little there, but there's nothing to do about it now. This thing is good, but it's not "perfect." This thing is what we want, but, oh darn, we just can't support it because you didn't talk to me or X constituent, or you didn't address Y problem in precisely the manner that I would prescribe. So enough officials oppose it that it dies today. In the case of many housing projects, enough folks oppose it with the levers available to them, that if it comes back later, it does so in a much smaller form -- shorter, with more parking, with less affordable housing (cuz, let's face it, the progressive opponents of housing often have about as much real power as the YIMBYs) -- reaffirming the preeminence and superiority of the scorched-earth opponents of change over all else.

And, yes, something like SB 827 be back. Why? Because in the months to come, housing will just continue to get that much more unaffordable. Still the people with the most, real power in all of this will remain the wealthy, mostly white homeowners. Not the tenants activist groups. Not the progressive opponents of new housing. Not even the big greedy developers. And also not the YIMBYs. Which is not to say that a bit more shoe-leather, a lot more organizing, a lot more coalition-building, and a lot more work supporting electeds on board with this effort and opposing those against it won't also work. All of that will be necessary. But it is to say that, like with the countless housing projects that have been and will continue to be downsized owing primarily to the power of scorched-earth opponents of change, so too will SB 827 be pressed to continue to move in that direction, even though it will be back.

In the meantime, tens of thousands more people will leave California. Myriad more businesses will depart for cheaper accommodations and lower wages and more affordable housing prices in places like Texas, or Georgia, or Florida -- resulting in worse greenhouse gas emissions nationwide and worse housing outcomes there and here. Thousands more will be displaced, kicked out of their homes through the Ellis Act or allowed to live in rotting buildings that are unfit for human habitation. And millions of homeowners will continue to reap benefits far and away exceeding what they would earn in a professional job -- just for owning a home.

What we witnessed in the State Senate yesterday was simply a much grander scale of the same, daily local debates that take place across California every day, all the time. The players were essentially the same, and the dynamics virtually unchanged after decades of these very issues getting us to this point. Our failure to recognize the familiarity, and our repetition of the same roles and outcomes, is disheartening and maddeningly familiar.

If California is ever going to dig itself out of the crisis into which we placed ourselves through decades of no- and slow-growth policies, it's going to take even more resolve, even more collaboration, and even more vision. SB 827's one and only hearing showed for all the world what many of us have seen and experienced regularly at the local level for years. The question now is whether we have finally had enough and can make this the last time that we let these dynamics bedevil us. We better, because the future of this amazing state is at stake.