In much of San Francisco, you can’t walk 20 feet without seeing a multicolored sign declaring that Black lives matter, kindness is everything and no human being is illegal. Those signs sit in yards zoned for single families, in communities that organize against efforts to add the new homes that would bring those values closer to reality. Poorer families — disproportionately nonwhite and immigrant — are pushed into long commutes, overcrowded housing and homelessness. Those inequalities have turned deadly during the pandemic.
This is from Ezra Klein, “California Is Making Liberals Squirm,” New York Times, February 11, 2021.
I like large parts of this Klein article, which is unusual for me. One thing I’m seeing is that there seems to be an alliance among libertarians, liberals like Ezra, and a few others to reduce government restrictions on housing. Last month I finished a review of Conor Dougherty’s excellent book Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America. It will come out next month in the Spring edition of Regulation. Dougherty delves nicely into some of the somewhat hopeful signs for housing in America.
I don’t endorse everything Klein says in the op/ed, especially on the Central Valley’s middle-speed rail, euphemistically called high-speed rail. But there’s a lot of good stuff in the piece.
By the way, in Pacific Grove, where I live, you can walk 20 feet without seeing the sign he sees, but it’s hard to walk 200 feet without seeing such a sign.
HT2 Glenn Reynolds.
READER COMMENTS
Liam
Feb 11 2021 at 8:33pm
I had nihilist yard signs printed up for Halloween here in Oakland:
In this house, we believe:
Nothing matters
Frank
Feb 11 2021 at 8:37pm
All of this is a problem for many people, yet a benefit to some others. Eventually, cities can be competed away by new cities, or new growth of old cities. Yes, this takes awhile, and yes there will be residual rents. But not so much. 🙂
KevinDC
Feb 12 2021 at 9:30am
It looks like this is actually happening – Scott Sumner pointed out here that lots of high productivity, high wage industries have been leaving places like California to go to places like Florida or Texas. And Klein notes in his article that California has been losing population on net each year – more people want to leave California than want to move or stay there. It’s a series of events that’s happened many times before – a state passes lots of taxes and regulations that make doing business in that state really difficult and expensive, and then acts shocked – shocked! – when people decide to just stop doing business in that state and move elsewhere.
Alan Goldhammer
Feb 12 2021 at 9:15am
I see the same signs in my neighborhood which constantly fights efforts to expand housing and other higher density projects. People of all political persuasions become reactionary when it comes to protecting their own property rights at all levels.
David Henderson
Feb 12 2021 at 10:19am
You wrote:
They aren’t protecting their property rights. They’re denying other people their property rights–their right to build on their own property.
They’re protecting their property prices, a very different proposition.
Your statement is similar to a statement that domestic producers of steel are protecting their property rights by persuading the government to impose tariffs or import quotas on steel.
Jon Murphy
Feb 12 2021 at 11:11am
A statement which, by the way, has been refuted by the Seventh Circuit Court. See Illinois Transportation Trade Association, et al. v. City of Chicago, and Dan Burgess, et. al.
robc
Feb 12 2021 at 11:29am
You can even see mathematically where it is happening.
Under free market circumstances with property rights protected, when structure:land value ratios get under 3, especially in the 1 to 2 range, it becomes very profitable to gentrify. Tear down the old SFH and build condos or apartments or townhouses or whatever, up to as high as a 9:1 ratio.
SF is an extreme example of preventing that from happening. Ratios are well under 1. They are 3 generations out of step. If it went totally free market, people wouldn’t be building the next step – to get to 9:1 would be 3 steps in the normal means of change.
SF should look like Manhattan and Manhattan should look like SF (science fiction).
Spencer
Feb 12 2021 at 5:32pm
Yes, they are.
Their rights in their property include the right to limit the use of the neighboring property. We could get into a semantic quibble over whether that’s a “property right”. And we should have a normative policy/philosophical quibble over whether they should have that right. But those would be empty distractions. They have that right as owner of the property.
It’s a pure Coasean problem, and Coase himself showed why it’s hard. The bargaining costs are (extremely) nontrivial, and the wealth effect of a change is (extremely) nontrivial.
Jon Murphy
Feb 12 2021 at 9:27pm
Generally speaking, no. Only if there is an action that infringes on the use of their property. But that’s not what NIMBY is about. NIMBY is about property values, which one does not have a right to (see the case I cite above).
Jon Murphy
Feb 12 2021 at 9:32pm
To expand on my point above, I can only limit your use of your property if it infringes upon a legitimate use of my property. If you were doing donuts on my lawn with your car, that affects the use of my lawn, so the state can limit the use of your car in that case. But, if you use your car to listen to music while doing lawn chores on your property, then I cannot limit that.
Coase’s point is not that property rights limit use of neighbor’s property. He explicitly says otherwise (that’s the point about reciprocity). Rather, what he says is when property rights are well-defined, nuisances can be bargained away. Defining property rights allow for the transaction to take place, not that one has any inherent right to limit another’s property.
KevinDC
Feb 12 2021 at 9:53am
I saw this article by Klein yesterday, and I had a couple of different reactions to it.
He notes that the California government is thoroughly dominated by the Democratic party, which is of course true, and by the very “progressive” wing of the Democratic party at that. But he also notes that California is also uniquely bad at actually achieving the goals progressives espouse, and this troubles him greatly. As he puts it towards the end of his article:
And his analysis of the specific policy failures is also pretty solid. He even notes how many of these policy failures “reflect old processes and laws that interest groups or existing communities have perverted for their own ends,” along with some examples of exactly that happening. It was at this point I wanted to grab some books from my bookshelf that talk about things like “public choice” and “regulatory capture” and start bludgeoning Klein with them while maniacally cackling “GEE WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING??? IT’S JUST TOO BAD THERE ISN’T AN ENTIRE FIELD OF ACADEMIC SCHOLARSHIP THAT WOULD HAVE PREDICTED THAT THIS IS EXACTLY HOW LAWS LIKE THIS WILL END UP BEING USED ONCE YOU PASS THEM!!!! THERE’S JUST NO WAY ANYONE COULD HAVE KNOWN!!!”
Then, after having another cup of coffee and restoring my brain to full function, I realized that Klein at least deserves credit because he’s actually noticing that these things are occurring and highlighting them as a problem – and that simple fact alone puts him way ahead of the pack among progressives.
So I guess my point is, hold off reading political articles if I’m running low on coffee.
Brandon
Feb 12 2021 at 2:23pm
My problem with the Klein article was that he tries to construe most of the examples of California failures as problems with progressives rather than fundamental problems with progressive policies. So, he did weird rationalizing acrobatics to make the claim that progressive policies failed because progressives acted “too Conservative” on a personal level when it came to actually letting the policies take hold in their neighborhoods. While this is certainly true, it seems like Klein is unable to admit that some of these policies are maybe also failing because they are inherently bad ideas (either unsustainable, too expensive, not actually what people want, not actually helping the problem, creating perverse incentives, and so on…). So kudos to him for recognizing that California has major public policy problems, but shame on him for insinuating that it’s solely because progressives are “talking the talk, but not walking the walk”. It’s that and MUCH more.
Mark Z
Feb 12 2021 at 10:10pm
Right, in some areas Klein’s interpretation is the opposite of correct, e.g., the problem is not that wealthy progressive Californians want to find good schools for their kids; the problem is their pursuit of policies that make it harder for others to do the same. They should, in that case, make their beliefs more consistent with their actions, not the other way around.
Tom Means
Feb 12 2021 at 4:45pm
The problem with progressives is that most are not truly progressive. Klein is just pointing out the obvious. Progressives claim they support inclusionary policies to provide “affordable” housing ( aka subsidized, price controlled housing) in their city. Of course they want new development (which means new residents) to pay for it, which makes housing more expensive. And of course they do not want this type of multi-family housing located anywhere near their single-family zoned residences.
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