Hello again -
Wanted to share a few of my recent pieces on the Biden & Klobuchar plans to deal with exclusionary zoning.
-
Biden's innovative idea to tackle rising housing prices - https://www.vox.com/22369761/biden-infrastructure-american-jobs-act-housing-prices-rents-bubble-race-to-the-top
-
What Biden's plan is missing - https://www.vox.com/22373757/biden-housing-prices-transportation-plan-multi-family-housing-exclusionary-zoning
-
The Amy Klobuchar bipartisan plan to build more homes - https://www.vox.com/22382212/housing-prices-supply-klobuchar-portman-senate-grants-biden
Always love to hear from folks if they have thoughts/questions/concerns or new ideas!
"The Ashley Bridge District is the recipient of the inaugural South Carolina Great Places award given by the South Carolina chapter of the American Planning Association. Tune into Tuesday January 12, 2021 City Council meeting to hear more!"
The neighborhood closest to downtown Charleston is apparently being awarded by the state APA chapter... these are the people who make sure that all of the land closest to downtown remains single family with huge lots, large setbacks, and car centric. A homeowner that might request a variance for an ADU would cause at least a dozen aneurysms.
Charleston's geography is the bulk of residents living in a triangle west of the Ashley River (West Ashley) but a lot of major job centers are across the river in the downtown peninsula. All the commuters have to funnel down to the tip of the triangle and across the choke point bridges and this neighborhood, right across the bridges to downtown (hence "Ashley Bridge District"), would be everyone's logical choice to allow smaller lots, narrower setbacks and maybe even a single block of rowhouses or **gasp** an evil apartment building or condominium.
L O L will never happen. It’s one thing for the City Council and Zoning Board to be all about preserving the million+plus detached single family homes and large gardens, but why would a chapter of the American Planning Association be recognizing this filth?!?
Exclusionary zoning seems like the most evil thing we consciously and actively do in American society. In its simplest terms, almost all local governments restrict the construction of new housing far below market demand. This creates an artificial shortage of housing to enrich existing landowners, especially homeowners. The most restricted type of housing is affordable, dense housing, is the most restricted, so the biggest losers from this policy are the poor.
If this simple welfare transfer from poor to middle/upper class weren't bad enough, exclusionary zoning locks the underprivileged out of "good" communities altogether. All the spillover positive effects of being involved in one's neighborhood, school, and even church are limited to one's economic peers. Meanwhile the hardships of poverty: crime, addiction, and violence are concentrated into ”poor communties”. These artificially zoned, affordable areas also have to absorb problems from wealthy areas as well. When an expensive divorce or opiod habit destroys a wealthy American family, the first thing they lose is their expensive house in the suburb. Then troubled children and addicts have to be cared for by the already overburdened institutions of a poor neighborhood.
And that's all before we start to talk about how this practice perpetuates structural racial inequality or actively erodes even the fiction of equality of opportunity in America.
We talk about the evils of zoning as a thing of the past with our emphasis on redlining and eminent-domain-demolishing of thriving black neighborhoods. However, the contemporary city and suburb seems to be almost universally built on the idea of restricting lot-size, height, or blocking multi-family construction. Our institutions are all built to perpetuate this corrupt system. Local governments control zoning. Anywhere that would need to relax zoning has voting rolls dominated by those who benefit from its exclusionary nature. The first thing we do as adults is buy into the system; we take out a giant mortgage in a nice, zoned neighborhood. Almost everyone with enough money to be politically powerful is completely complicit in this practice.
So that came out pretty vitriolic; I'm really struggling to see the other side of this as anything beyond self interest. I have been stuck thinking and reading about this and I just can't see a way to morally justify the foundation of the community I grew up in. I'd love to hear even devil's advocate steel mans of why
... keep reading on reddit ➡Dear neighbors --
I have some concerns that I think you might share. Like you, I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion of politics and the primaries in the fiat thread. I’ve seen a lot of newcomers here. Frankly, I’ve seen a lot of all around shady economics.
Don’t get me wrong, I welcome everyone that wants to come and post here. But when ridiculous eyesore posts fill the fiat thread and the RI comment sections, well, it pushes down the value of the good economics discussion in their midst. It’s a serious problem!
So, in order to preserve the character of our neighborhood, the time has come that we must implement a zoning regime, to be kept in place starting July 20th until further notice (but not past the end of election season).
Here’s how things will work:
We will have one sticky, the Single Family Homes Sticky, zoned so that anyone can post in it, provided their post is about economics. And when I say economics, I mean actual legitimate good economics -- not hot takes and ideology masquerading as the real deal. All eyesore posts in that thread will be torn down by our very own legion of builders and destroyers. If your post feels like a historically out of place shed, a fence just above regulation height, or a boat parked on a lawn for 3 nights in a row or more -- if it’s like that, it’s gone.
The other sticky, the Mixed Use Development Sticky, will be zoned to be a bit more permissive… but only if you have a permit to post there. With a permit, you can post about things more loosely related to economics and topical political developments, albeit with some limitations on pure shitposting and the like.
How do you get a permit to post in the Mixed Use Development sticky? You can do any of the following:
- Post an RI that we grade as sufficient -- meaning it must contain references to the economic literature, or some other high quality work of your own with theory and data
- Post a policy proposal for the r/BadEconomics platform that we grade as sufficient (it doesn’t necessarily have to be accepted into the platform) -- sufficiency standards are similar here to an RI
- Contribute to the REN FAQ
- Provide a number of well thought out answers to questions on r/AskEconomics (and message modmail pointing them out)
- Make a number of helpful contributions on r/Economics (and message modmail pointing them out)
- Win one of the periodic r/BadEconomics contests
Once you do one or more of the above, we’ll issue you a permit to post outside just t
... keep reading on reddit ➡The housing crisis is a big problem in the United States, especially in California where cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Berkeley have a shortage of housing leading to higher rents.
Many of these higher rents are due to 'NIMBY' (Not in my backyard) policies that price out lower-income residents. These policies include but are not limited to restrictive zoning, onerous environmental regulations, and just a general pain to get a building started. Many of the articles linked above refer to these restrictions if you would like more info on them.
However, it is not just California, across the country you can see housing problems being apparent.
Many people in local elections have made housing one of their campaign planks. For instance, the new San Francisco mayor is generally more pro-housing saying “We have to build more housing. We have to build more housing. We have to build more housing.”. Also, California state senator Scott Weiner introduced a bill to increase housing near public transit (SB 827) - it got shot down in committee.
With all that background, some federal politicians have taken interest at the housing crisis. Kamala Harris introduced a bill to give federal aid to those with high rents; however, the plan was criticized as simply being a subsidy for bad housing policy and landowners.
Booker introduced federal legislation—the Housing, Opportunity, Mobility and Equity (HOME) Act which gives 3.3 billion in a block grant for public infrastructure and housing. It also would force cities and states to develop strategies to reduce barriers to housing development and increase the supply of housing. It would also encourage governments to reduce restrictions on lot sizes and increase housing density. Ther
... keep reading on reddit ➡Here's my shot.
1: State and local laws which prohibit the direct-sale of vehicles without dealerships.
2: Federal copyright laws which set the duration of copyright protection seventy years longer than the lifetime of the author.
3: FOSTA "anti-sex trafficking" (really just anti-sex work) law which effectively censors the internet (breaking the "safe harbor" rule) and harms the safety of sex workers by abolishing their ability to remotely advertise to and screen clients.
4: Federal law which prohibits foreign airliners from setting up American subsidiaries and conducting domestic flights. This law is protectionist, increasing costs for consumers, stifling competition and hampering innovation.
5: Federal law which prohibits commercial supersonic flights overland.
6: Federal law known as the Jones Act which requires shipping between U.S ports to be conducted on entirely American-made, owned, crewed, and operated ships. This law is also protectionist, increases transportation costs for consumers, increases traffic congestion, stifles competition and hampers innovation. It particularly harms Puerto Rico and Hawaii most of all.
7: Immigration restrictions against anybody who isn't an escaped convict.
7: State laws which outlaw labeling meat alternatives as "meat"
8: Laws which artificially limit food trucks.
9: State and local laws which directly or indirectly criminalize sex work.
10: Federal, state and local laws which criminalize the sale and consumption of cannabis, hallucinogens and other relatively soft drugs including e-cigarrettes.
11: State and local "obscenity laws", including Alabama's law against selling sex toys.
12: Laws which criminalize teens sexting nude pictures of themselves as "sex offenders".
13: State marriage laws which allow minors to be legally married via exceptions to the minimum age requirement (e.g parental consent, judicial cons
... keep reading on reddit ➡