minimums

(cross-posted from Twitter)

Parking minimums, a thread. Why? Because this is something many continue to approach from the perspective of "well I drive and so everywhere I go needs to have parking."Warning: This was the subject of my master's thesis, so...

gayness

Lately I've been wondering, "why YIMBY?" As in, why do I not only care so much about cities, but also that others may also share in the experiences that they provide? And why are my blind spots so glaring (and what can I do about them)? A recent write-up by Strong Towns' Chuck Marohn got me thinking about my own place and space, and why I keep coming back to caring about issues of urbanity, livability, sustainability, and opportunity. Why I keep sticking my neck out to argue for more housing, in an environment where that perspective is often treated with hostility.

And one thing keeps standing out for me: it's because I'm gay.

If you'll indulge me a few more paragraphs, I'd like to unpack this a bit.

yimbytown

I got to attend YIMBYtown in Boston this past weekend and wanted to share a few reflections on the experience and the people. As someone who came to this work from a background in transit and land use policy, but who is also fortunate to be a homeowner, and who is also gay, white, male, and cisgendered, I am perhaps not unlike many other "YIMBYs", but this conference left me first and foremost with a single, powerful message that is going to stay top of mind for a long time to come; and it also left a few other impressions.

1. Who are we serving?
This question, and its answer, was the biggest takeaway for me and the conference's most powerful message. Who is all this (almost entirely volunteer) work for? Why give up dozens of hours a week, thousands of hours a year, and basically a second full-time job to this effort? Who am I, and we, trying to serve? It's an important question, because the follow-up to this question is: Are the people we are trying to serve represented in these efforts?

I am male and white and thus have privilege, and my reflection on these characteristics is that "to whom much is given, much is expected." It also means that, if, at the core of my work, I want all people to have an opportunity to be housed safely and equitably, then my voice must also be about empowering others' voices - the voices of those communities that have been in the proverbial trenches, fighting for housing opportunity for longer than have I and in communities for whom the challenges are acute. It's not enough to YIMBY from my own place in life -- I need to be about the work of lifting the voices of others, with whom I may even have fundamental disagreements, in order to build a sustainable movement grounded in a mission of housing opportunity for all.

As someone who has worked in a place where I saw first-hand the direct impact of housing insecurity on a very specific challenge - addressing the impact of HIV/AIDS on low-income communities - there's no doubt in my mind that housing security is at the foundation of addressing many other social ills that are compounded and made much worse by a lack of housing. And so it is that the question of "who are we serving?", offered to me during a session on understanding group and systemic challenges and discrimination, will forever be etched into my consciousness.

2. A movement without cohesion, policies, or a leader
There's no "YIMBY" leader in Congress or in a Governorship or almost any Mayoralty (yes, SF, I see you). Sure, many people accept "YIMBY" as a label unto themselves, but there's not a set of coherent policies established federally or being shared among states that demonstrate a coherent and cohesive movement. Even as a number of activists handed out flyers to YIMBYtown participants, criticizing us for what these activists perceived as our not having racial justice and preventing displacement at the core of our approach, frankly I see YIMBY as more of a set of beliefs than as a movement. And, to that, for many of us racial justice and preventing displacement are very much at the core of our belief systems.

This was the third-ever iteration of this annual conference, with the first attracting 100 people and this one largely drawing its 250 attendees from the local area plus a few major urban metropolitan regions. There's barely been more than a couple years for anyone to find themselves as identifying with the YIMBY label, and already they're being boxed into a category, even as the so-called movement lacks a cohesive strategy, policies, or leader. Indeed, much of the conference's work was local activists sharing experiences, in hopes that perhaps what has worked in one place might also work elsewhere. There was some data-sharing too. I'm all about sharing, but let's not confuse people's sharing of their experiences with a well-organized machine of any kind. Perhaps a decade down the road there'll be a more cohesive strategy and actually organized movement, but for now that fundamentally does not exist broadly, outside of a few pockets.

3. Cities are fun
One presenter commented that cities are supposed to be "fun." Which may be true in some sense, although the lived experience for many is oftentimes something much more difficult. Still, the underpinning of this assessment was that cities have existed in human civilizations for millenia because we require social interaction to survive. Loneliness is deadly, and our desire for human interaction is owing in part to our desire to have fun - which is also often the impetus for creativity and invention. There's a reason that "laughter is the best medicine," and cities provide the social interaction without which human beings literally die.

4. Land use and transportation are intrinsically linked
As someone whose eyes were opened by an undergraduate course in transportation and land use policy many years ago, this has since been readily apparent to me. However, for all the talk of housing policy at YIMBYtown, the crucial underpinning was the relationship between housing and access. Access to services, to employment, to education -- basically the things that provide opportunity and that are so often denied by virtue of being, literally, inaccessible. The people attending YIMBYtown got that, even though no session dove directly into the subject of housing's relationship to mobility and access. Still, this linkage lives at the heart of whatever ideology or approach that is YIMBY, and it was a frequent subject of conversation throughout the entire weekend.

5. Boston is lovely
(As a white man I know many people will dismiss out of hand my assertion of Boston's loveliness. Just hear me out for a moment, please, and we can and should still acknowledge that the city's history and even much of its present remain problematic on a number of levels.)
I got to take the "T" every day, including trains and buses, and they worked, were easy to use, and came frequently enough that I didn't ever worry about a schedule. There were bike lanes - including many that were protected - on many streets, and most roads were 25 MPH, although a couple were faster. The city's role in our nation's founding is ever-present and pretty cool to see in person, particularly for someone whose home city of LA has had a very different role in our nation's history. And everyone I met in town, from people I only met briefly to those I got to spend more time with, was an absolute delight. It may be a while before I return, but I'm so glad that I got this opportunity and made sure to not just attend the conference but to spend a little time (albeit still brief) exploring the city.

And, finally, hope...
Mostly, I left YIMBYtown feeling hope. Why? Because I saw people willing to explore the underpinnings of their interest in this subject matter and to acknowledge that our nascent "movement" has a very long way to go to truly understanding and representing the complex and difficult issue of housing affordability. While many people may have recently come to this work as housing prices have escalated to the point of increasingly putting the crunch on wealthier groups, the work that must be done requires all of us to be willing to accept our differences, to learn from each other, and to give this important issue the time and effort it will require for years to come if we are ever to truly provide housing opportunity for all. And this YIMBYtown recognized that challenge and dove straight into it. For that, I am hopeful, because there will always remain those people who say I and others don't have a right to or a voice in this work, but what I saw was a willingness by YIMBYs to listen, to share, and to learn. If we are ever going to see a time when housing opportunity for all is a reality in this country, which has done so much damage to so many people on account of who they are, then that work will necessarily require the ongoing introspection and the commitment that I witnessed firsthand at YIMBYtown in Boston.

Thank you to the organizers at A Better Cambridge for putting on an amazing conference, and thank you to those who came, shared their stories, and re-committed to this important work.

puto

Spoiler alert: I'm gay. And, frankly, I've basically known this since I hit puberty and realized that I was different. That era - 25 years ago (gasp!) - was not especially kind to young gay men in sports. I remember being thoroughly intimidated by and afraid of the locker room. I had been ridiculed for years as a kid for not being manly enough. It's why I chose individual over team sports, why I stopped playing a musical instrument that wasn't masculine enough, and why I took great pains for years to "pass" as something other than gay. 

This used to scare the heck out of me.

It should come as little surprise, then, that it took a long time for me to warm up to sports. The typical "guy" thing of being into some mainstream sporting event, and all the comes with it, is something I only started to feel comfortable with in college where, as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, I watched our football team snag a national championship in my freshman year. From there, I branched out into other sporting spectating, like basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, and ice hockey. I even played team sports for a split second!

But, even with all that Michigan has meant to me in the decades since, I've found it difficult to invest in other teams. Until now. 

bizarre

Could California's Proposition 13 undermine the Democrats' chances to retake the US House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections? Let's hope not, but it's possible.

The polls have closed in California, and the outcome is not yet certain, but the state's "jungle primary" could mean voters in some swing Congressional districts have no Democrats on their ballots in November. So why do we even have a jungle primary in California?

Bizarrely, we can thank Prop 13. Yes, that voter-approved initiative, which famously froze property taxes and likely has a role in the state's current housing affordability crisis, also required a two-thirds vote to approve any state budget that increased taxes.

Flash back to the summer of 2009: Arnold Schwarzenegger was Governor. The economy was in free-fall. Barack Obama was just sworn into office months ago, but the stimulus was only getting underway. California's state budget was swimming in red ink, forcing some difficult choices in cutting spending and increasing taxes. And State lawmakers were in safely-gerrymandered seats, offering little incentive to break with party ranks (the state's redistricting laws had only just been changed to eliminate gerrymandering by the legislature, and those impacts were not yet felt).

Enter State Senator Abel Maldonado. In the State Senate, Democrats needed a single GOP vote to pass the budget bill to cross the Prop 13-mandated two-thirds threshold. Maldonado was from a rare evenly-partisan district, and his over-riding concern was being able to emerge relatively unscathed from the primary in order to win in a general election. So, in order to provide his vote for the budget bill, he asked for one thing: a Statewide ballot measure to create a "jungle primary" system.

In exchange for Senator Maldonado's vote on the budget, Democrats did agree to put a ballot measure before the voters in the following fall 2010 election. That measure, Prop 14, passed 53-47. And, thus, the jungle primary was born.

So, if Democrats fail to break into the top two tonight in any of the Republican-held Congressional seats in California House Districts won in 2016 by Hillary Clinton, we can all thank Prop 13, Senator Maldonado, and a State legislature desperate to pass a single year's budget nine years ago.

rent

This year, Californians will get to vote to repeal Costa-Hawkins, a 20 year-old bill that placed a couple significant restrictions on what cities can do with rent control. [I won't go into the details on that - check it out yourself here.]

Full disclosure: I support the repeal of Costa-Hawkins. Cities should have the ability to provide greater housing stability to renters. However, I disagree that repealing Costa-Hawkins is an affordable housing prescription.

On its face, repealing Costa-Hawkins would seem to simply create more opportunities to provide for housing affordability. In reality, giving cities the ability to extend rent control to newer and, even, unbuilt housing, as well as establishing vacancy controls, would be a radical departure from existing policies that could have significant implications that we must consider if we are to have an honest conversation about this ballot measure.

There are two key areas that warrant further evaluation:

1. California's existing rent controls have never applied to housing that has not yet been built. We have little idea what this change might do to new housing construction.
2. Simply broadening rent control to newer or unbuilt housing is not actually a very good mechanism for guaranteeing affordable housing for those most in need.

Let's consider these in order.

FIRST
Rent control (or stabilization) in California has only ever existed retrospectively, for buildings constructed before 1980. Given this, the number of apartments that qualified for rent control started at its highest possible number and has decreased over time. In 1980, California's population was 23.7 million people, and today it is nearly 40 million. So, while rent control applied to nearly every multiple dwelling unit available in 1980, and it accommodated a large swath of the state's population at that time, both the share of population in rent controlled units and the absolute number of rent-controlled units has declined significantly in the interceding four decades.

One question then arises: what would be the impact of extending rent controls to unbuilt housing?

We have no direct experience telling us what the impact would be if rent control were extended to unbuilt housing. We can, however, make an educated guess. A decent corollary on this is the impact of Prop 13 on the housing supply in California. [I won't go into explaining Prop 13, but you can get more information here.]

For cities and counties, Prop 13 upended their entire revenue structure. Where they once depended largely on property taxes for income, they have since come to rely much more heavily on sales and income taxes, which come largely from commercial and retail property. Additionally, while turnover of existing homes might have once meant very little difference in the overall generation of property taxes, now it is the only mechanism through which a new assessment is triggered, and the only way that the amount of property taxes collected on a residence increases substantially. These factors are a double-whammy to the construction of new housing, which (a) is less lucrative than new commercial and retail space and (b) undermines how much additional property taxes can be realized in existing housing by reducing turnover in existing housing stock. Not only can cities limit the demand on their infrastructure by restricting the ability of new residents to call them home, but they can realize additional property tax revenues by forcing more turnover - and, thus, reassessments - in a constrained housing supply.

Where cities once saw the construction of new housing as a revenue generator, it now compares much less favorably to other uses. And how is this relevant to rent control? Consider this chart:

Credit: Shane Phillips, Abundant Housing LA

Of note, Prop 13 passed in 1978, and immediately afterward the amount of housing being constructed in the City of LA declined. Since 1990, the average number of homes built each decade is less than half the average of what was built in each of the decades leading up to Prop 13's passage. If housing were as financially appealing to cities today, they'd be more likely to support its construction. Instead, a new review of cities' compliance with their own housing goals showed 97% failing to meet their (sometimes laughable) goals.

So, the imposition of an artificial limit on the revenue that a city can receive for a specific type of land use might be incentivizing cities to curtail their desire for more of that type of land use. Why would we expect anything different with the application of artificial limits on rent revenue that developers could realize (through rent controls) to unbuilt housing? If an artificial constraint is placed on the amount of rent that future housing could return to investors who lend financing to that project's construction, the only logical outcomes are either (a) less new housing construction and/or (b) developers seeking ways to further push up rents to finance their projects. Applying rent controls to unbuilt housing could have serious implications, and our history with Prop 13 tells us we have reason to be wary of the impact of this kind of measure on housing affordability.

SECOND
Rent control is not a policy prescription to provide affordable housing to those who need it most.

Our current rent control programs apply to housing stock that is at least 40 years old and with is often (though not always) substandard to new construction in meaningful ways. This connection between rent-control policy and the age and condition of the buildings to which it applies feeds into a common perception that rent control equals (relatively) affordable housing, since older housing will almost always rent for less than newer housing with more amenities and more stringent construction standards.

Standard rent-stabilized buildings in LA

Typical newer apartment building in LA

This connection between a building being old and its being rent-controlled colors our discussion of rent control. When we consider extending rent control to newer apartments, we're generally talking about apartments that have more amenities and more stringent construction standards and thus cost more up front. These newer apartments will, generally, be less affordable than older apartments. Does rent control make housing more consistently priced over the long-term for a tenant? Sure. However, does it make an apartment more affordable? Not necessarily. We have to decouple the idea of rent control from building age in any discussion of extending these types of provisions or newer or unbuilt housing, and that has a direct correlation to affordability.

Further, rent-controlled housing is available to anyone, regardless of income. Unlike designated low-income housing, which uses a means test to determine eligibility, rent control is simply a mechanism to lock in an agreed-upon rent, with limited increases over time. Not advocating here for a means test for rent control; just pointing out that rent control is not a mechanism for directing affordable housing to those who need affordable housing the most.

Still further, if a city were to institute vacancy controls, that would just create an issue with scarcity. Vacancy control, while limiting housing price increases, does nothing to address housing scarcity overall, and it would create fierce competition that would still likely result in those with the most means beating out those with the least. Short of additional means-testing-type measures to give a leg up to those with less income, vacancy controls would only create more challenges for both the lessee and the lessor. This is particularly true if cities continue to do little to address housing shortages overall.

----

WRAPPING IT UP
We can and should repeal Costa-Hawkins. If for no other reason, renters deserve the same year-over-year protections that Prop 13 extends to homeowners, creating consistency that enables a more stable community.

Still, our affordable housing policy cannot amount to "get into a place and don't move." Nor should we mistake repeal of this bill as creating affordable housing, even if rent control does provide some stability. We should be wary of the effects that extending these protections to housing not yet built could have on our ability to supply housing for our growing region.

Repeal of Costa-Hawkins is not an affordable housing solution, at least not in the way that is directed toward those most in need. We need to take a hard, long look in the mirror to make difficult choices to create real, meaningful change. This will require being open to supporting the creation of a lot more housing, even in our own neighborhoods. It will require supporting many housing projects that could impact our views, traffic, etc. And it will require demanding that our elected leaders create ways for permanent supportive housing and housing projects with designated affordable units to move quickly through the planning process from rendering to ribbon-cutting.

I welcome thoughts from others and thank y'all for hearing me out.

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.