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The housing emergency and the second Trump term
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveill ance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/11/nimby-yimby-fimby/#home-team-advantage
Postmortems and blame for the 2024 elections are thick on the ground, but amidst all those theories and pointed fingers, one explanation looms large and credible: the American housing emergency. If the system can't put a roof over your head, that system needs to go.
American housing has been in crisis for decades, of course, but it keeps getting worseβ¦and worseβ¦and worse. Americans pay more for worse housing than at any time in their history. Homelessness is at a peak that is soul-crushing to witness and maddening to experience. We turned housing β a human necessity second only to air, food and water β into an asset governed almost entirely by market forces, and so created a crisis that has consumed the nation.
The Trump administration has no plan to deal with housing. Or rather, they do have plans, but strictly of the "bad ideas only" variety. Trump wants to deport 11m undocumented immigrants, and their families, including citizens and Green Card holders (otherwise, that would be "family separation" and that's cruel). Even if you are the kind of monster who can set aside the ghoulishness of solving your housing problems by throwing someone in a concentration camp at gunpoint and then deporting them to a country where they legitimately fear for their lives, this still doesn't solve the housing emergency, and will leave America several million homes short.
Their other solution? Deregulation and tax cuts. We've seen this movie before, and it's an R-rated horror flick. Financial deregulation created the speculative mortgage markets that led to the 2008 housing crisis, which created a seemingly permanent incapacity to build new homes in America, as skilled tradespeople retired or changed careers and housebuilding firms left the market. Handing giant tax cuts to the monopolists who gobbled up the remains of these bankrupt small companies minted a dozen new housing billionaires who preside over companies that make more money than ever by building fewer homes:
https://www.fastcompany.com/91198443/housing-market-wall-streets-big-housing-market-bet-has-created-12-new-billionaires
This isn't working. Homelessness is ballooning. The only answer Trump and his regime have for our homeless neighbors is to just make it a crime to be homeless, sweeping up homeless encampments and busting homeless people for "loitering" (that is, existing in space). There is no universe in which this reduces homelessness. People who lose their homes aren't going to dig holes, crawl inside, and pull the dirt down on top of themselves. If anything, sweeps and arrests will make homelessness worse, by destroying the possessions, medication and stability that homeless people need if they are to become housed.
Today, The American Prospect published an excellent package on the housing emergency, looking at its causes and the road-tested solutions that can work even when the federal government is doing everything it can to make the problem worse:
https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-tackling-the-housing-crisis/
The Harris campaign ran on Biden's economic record, insisting that he had tamed inflation. It's true that the Biden admin took action against monopolists and greedflation, including criminal price-fixing companies like Realpage, which helps landlords coordinate illegal conspiracies to rig rents. Realpage sets the rents for the majority of homes in major metros, like Phoenix:
https://www.azag.gov/press-release/attorney-general-mayes-sues-realpage-and-residential-landlords-illegal-price-fixing
Of course, reducing inflation isn't the same as bringing prices down β it just means prices are going up more slowly. And sure, inflation is way down in many categories, but not in housing. In housing, inflation is accelerating:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-03-08/inflation-housing-shortage-economy-cpi-fed-interest-rate
The housing emergency makes everything else worse. Blue states are in danger of losing Congressional seats because people are leaving big cities: not because they want to, but because they literally can't afford to keep a roof over their heads. LGBTQ people fleeing fascist red state legislatures and their policies on trans and gay rights can't afford to move to the states where they will be allowed to simply live:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/business/economy/lgbtq-moving-cost.html
So what are the roots of this problem, and what can we do about it? The housing emergency doesn't have a unitary cause, but among the most important factors is fuckery that led to the Great Financial Crisis and the fuckery that followed on from it, as Ryan Cooper writes:
https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-housing-industry-never-recovered-great-recession/
The Glass-Steagall Act was a 1933 banking regulation created to prevent Great Depression-style market crashes. It was killed in 1999 by Bill Clinton, who declared, "the GlassβSteagall law is no longer appropriate." Nine years later, the global economy melted down in a Great Depression-style market crash fueled by reckless speculation of the sort that Glass-Steagall had prohibited.
If you're a Californian, call your state senator TODAY and tell them to support SB 79! It's a bill that would legalize dense multifamily housing near public transit. It's having its final concurrence vote in the Senate this weekend before being sent to Newsom's desk. This is one of the most impactful pro-housing bills California has ever seen. Let's get it through!
SB 79 will make it faster and easier to build multi-family housing near transit stops, like train and rapid bus lines, by making it legal fo
In 1776:
Thomas Jefferson was 33 years old (Primary author of the Declaration of Independence)
James Madison was 25 years old (Father of the Constitution, though more active post-1776)
Alexander Hamilton was 21 years old (Later key author of the Federalist Papers and first Secretary of the Treasury)
John Adams was 40 years old (Defended the Declaration, served on drafting committee)
Thomas Paine was 39 years old (Authored influential media at the start of the Revolution, inspiring colonial era patriots to declare independence)
------------------
Rosa Luxemburg was 35 when she wrote The Mass Strike
Che Guevara was 28 at the Granma Landing, and Fidel was 30
Bill Gates was 19 when he created Microsoft and 31 when it went Public
Martin Luther King Jr. was 26 when he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott and 39 when he was assassinated
Malcom X was 39 when he was assassinated
And you WILL show up to vote against fascism under new Democratic leadership. Or else go put on the red hat TODAY, cynical rightoid, and join the other bigots and misogynists and crooks, you are made of the same stuff deep down.

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I think part of the problem with the walkable cities discourse is that it's a broad group of people, so you get these bizarre positions that sneak in. It reminds me of the ACAB discourse where some people use the phrase for police reform while others actually want to ban the police from existing.
The walkable cities discourse seems to have a similar thing. Where there are some people who want to reform and deregulate zoning laws. (And to be fair I have seen these people on twitter.) And then you also have people in this movement who want to ban cars for some reason. It's a shame because the former is something that can be practically achieved. While the latter is just plain unhinged.
So as a result, you get this weird mixed message because you have different people in this discourse who want to use it for different things.
Kansas City, before and after it was destroyed for cars (x)
disappointingly the ao3 tag for "public transportation" is 90% anime boy gets his shit rocked on a train instead of like real neurodivergent world building about the trains in half-life 2
no i don't CARE about jimin bts having like a handjob in a public bus or whatever i want to know the routes for all the trains in fallout 3