AF-CA Spotlight: Keeping the Promise of the American Dream
Ironically, it is at an exclusive club in Orange County, CA, that the egalitarian ideas of past generations are finding purchase. Housing needs to be built — full stop.
In his 1928 campaign, President Herbert Hoover’s opponents criticized him, falsely attributing from a campaign ad that he was promising Americans “a chicken in every pot, and two cars in every garage.” These opponents gave an enduring legacy to an idea, deeply rooted in American history and identity – property is sacrosanct and all those laboring in the country ought to be able to purchase or access it. T
The American Dream was a promise that the country’s abundance was to be shared. Today, it is under attack by the vile snares of kafkaesque bureaucracy, NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) activists with time and building projects to kill in city meetings, and through the weapons of the state – eminent domain and zoning, historically racist and ultimately designed to undermine property rights.
But it is events like this one, and books like Nowhere to Live, the subject of discussion for the evening, where people may better learn how these tools developed and how, together, we can resist and disarm them.
Organized by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) with support from America’s Future and CA YIMBY, Nowhere to Live offered a vibrant discussion about returning property rights to property owners, with the deep knowledge of speakers, James S. Burling (PLF), Nolan Gray (CA-YIMBY), and Steven D. Anderson (PLF) on full display.
“Today, everyone feels some compulsion to your property and how you use it — from governments to non-profits,” Burling says. No matter how well-meaning they might be, the result has been both excessive zoning and exclusion. The dearth of housing has resulted in leading large swaths of the population to put life milestones on hold, from family planning to home ownership.
Nolan Gray, an urban planner, YIMBY activist, and author of Arbitrary Lines discussed zoning. “California still has some of the slowest permitting in the country,” Gray said, pointing to reforms in Texas and Tennessee that offer hope and new ideas for how to shortcut permitting and speed up the process of building.
The light for activists in favor of urban infill, new development, and equity through opportunity not legislation comes through greatly increasing the supply of housing. The issue of housing becoming so great that building it is no longer partisan, while implementation is.
“Rent control discourages the process of new building,” Burling said, citing research conducted in 2016 and discussed heavily by the Pacific Legal Foundation at the time. “Rent control is a specter that is a disincentive for new construction.” But it is not rent control alone that stymies new growth. Other forms of regulation slow down construction, make it more expensive, and are killing entrepreneurship, the small landlords, some of whom, including my own, are more willing to work with their tenants.
“The small mom-and-pop landlord will soon be a thing of the past. Corporate landlords will think they can make their way through it [restrictive laws on tenant history and failure to pay],” says Burling. However, Burling and his team at the Pacific Legal Foundation, alongside organizations such as CA-YIMBY are fighting to undo the damage in courtrooms across the country.
Through zoning reform and defanging historically anti-development agencies, they hope to correct America’s trajectory towards one of more equitable pricing, made so by the market, not any uncertain promises by the government that largely led us here in the first place.
Nolan addresses that in California, taking up California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) reform is a major opportunity for speeding up construction, especially in coastal and dense urban cities in the state. Currently, it is exemptions of projects from CEQA that offer the most promise for more development. For instance,“in Washington, many urban infill projects are now exempt from environmental oversight because the assumption is that building in the middle of a neighborhood or commercial area is likely not going to produce or increase environmental impacts that don’t already exist in the area,” Gray said, referencing one way by which the state of California could more quickly allow housing to be developed.
“The way out of this mess is not more government interference. The way out is a bottom-up approach that empowers individuals to determine how to use their property…more freedom for individuals to build housing. We need regulations where they’re necessary, not where they are going to slow development down.” says Burling.
Burling is not the architect of skyscrapers but of ideas and solutions to our housing crisis, which he lays out at the end of Nowhere to Live. And in the Q&A, Burling and Gray shine. They offer insight into how through letter writing, public events, and coordination, in our turn, we can pull our communities together to start the fight. Report overreach of your HOAs, stir up the public against overzealous and oftentimes stubborn urban planners committed to the ideas of a different time and continue to advocate for housing and reform against all its enemies.
Amidst another record-breaking summer of heat in much of California’s hinterlands, the final question of the evening about accessibility led to the perfect conclusion. “I like Bakersfield, I’ve been there. There are beautiful homes and neighborhoods,” Burling said, “but that doesn’t mean people should all have to drive 3 hours to access the coast or be deprived of affordable housing along it.”