Sociology Ruins Housing

Home is a universal concept. It's a place to rest our head. It acts as a shelter from the elements. It's a place to grow up, a place to share with friends and family. As sociologist Matthew Desmond said Quote, we say that at home we can be ourselves. Everywhere else we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks. A home is something that everyone needs, something that everyone deserves. But in the US, there aren't enough homes for everyone.

Here's some sound bites from MPR over the past year. All over the US, the small towns, the rural areas, the big coastal cities, home prices are going up and up. And there's a simple reason. There just aren't enough homes for everyone who wants one. It is tough to buy a house right now. The country is nearly four million homes short of demand.

And it's especially tight in that corner of the market that once launched the American Dream, the starter home. In twenty twenty, the number of starter homes built was less than a fifth of the yearly average of the early eighties. But it's not just starter homes. In fact, some would say this focus on building only single-family homes is part of the problem. The U.S. needs more affordable housing to match population growth and demand. We need medium to high density projects, apartments,

Duplexes, condos, townhomes, maybe a neighborhood of those cool tiny houses that are environmentally sustainable? So what's preventing us from building more housing? It's complicated, and some of the issues vary by region. I'm Matt Sedlar, and today's sociology is gonna ruin the very tricky issue of housing. In this episode, I'm gonna take you to California. Hmm. Maybe we can hang out here for a second. You know, take some deep breaths. Count one on the in-breath. Two on the outbreath.

Oh, okay. That's more like the California I know. California has been struggling with an affordable housing shortage for quite some time. A twenty eighteen report by the California Department of Housing and Community Development found the state needs to build one hundred eighty thousand homes annually in order to keep up with estimated population growth.

Then Lieutenant Governor and now Governor Gavin Newsom estimated that the state would need to build three point five million homes by twenty twenty five. So how has California done since 2018? Well according to census data, between February 2018, when the report was published, and October 2021, the state authorized an average of less than 10,000 building permits for private housing per month.

That represents the total number of building permits for all structure types, which include one unit, two unit, three unit, four unit, and five unit structures, and more. I'll do the math for you. That's a little over four hundred and twenty two thousand permits over the span of almost four years. So what's going on? Well besides the whole pandemic thing.

First, there's a pretty simple concept in economics called supply and demand. It's probably the one concept all of us who aren't economists understand. When demand outpaces supply, prices go up. When supply is greater than demand, prices go down. Neither situation is great for everyone. In the case of housing, high prices are bad for buyers, low prices are bad for sellers.

So there's something called the equilibrium price. You guessed it. This is where supply matches demand. Okay, so supply isn't meeting demand. Build more houses. Supply matches demand. Nobody loses. Problem solved. Oh sweet summer child. Maybe we should talk to someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about this issue. I am Connor Dorty. I'm a reporter at the New York Times and author of Golden Gates, The Housing Crisis and a Reckoning for the American Dream.

Uh, which is a book about California's housing crisis, how it happened, how we got here, what people are doing to try to fix it. But I think that the book is really trying to talk about the entire nation. and using California as an example of what's coming to every city or every prosperous city, as we have seen time and time again in Pick your place, Austin, Seattle, whatever.

So you literally wrote the book on the housing issue in California. My my takeaway is that there's not one single issue that causes a housing shortage, but if you had to summarize the causes, what are the main drivers of the shortage? If I had to really say what I thought in a in the highest possible sense I would say that we drove ourselves into this suburban development scheme in the post war period. We became a suburban nation.

post World War Two. We built lots of freeways, we built single family homes, we erected entire housing finance system around really a p a particular kind of housing, right? And our entire financial system. I mean if you just look at a bank, right? A lot of what a bank has is mortgages. Uh so whether it's our you know, city planning or our financial system or sort of how we've structured our society and our schools. the whole thing kind of revolves around this suburban paradigm.

And I think once you're locked into that, it's extremely hard to get out of it because it's it's basically the structure of our entire society economically, socially, and otherwise. And what's happened is we sort of like run out of room. to continue growing that way. You know, you could there are environmental reasons, there are other reasons, but I think that if we had like a car that could go five hundred miles an hour

None of that would have been an issue. I mean, it would have been an issue like people would have been talking about it, but it wouldn't have stopped anything. You know, like i in some theoretical world in which we had a car that could go five hundred miles an hour. we would have just sprawled as far as you could sprawl, right? And I and so I know that sounds like a very high saluting answer, but I just this is why it's such a national problem is like we do things the same way everywhere.

And so inevitably once you run out of space and you start hitting that like commute barrier, the same problems invite themselves. Now, obviously in my uh well so so that would be my answer to you. NIMBYism and fights over development and fights over keeping your town the same, those are all just flowing. from that kind of this is how we l build, this is how we live, this is what a proper American neighborhood sort of is, right?

And I I just think so that I think if I really had to say what it is, it's that vision that was laid out and has become the foundation of kind of everything in our society. And it's it's what inspires people to protect single family neighborhoods'cause it's what they like and what they know. It's what inspires people to want to move to sprawl where they can get that same vision. It's what inspires people to move to other states because well I can't get like a particular kind of life.

which is usually a single family home, kind of spacious life in California. So I moved to Texas. I think it just all flows from that kind of ideal.

Before I continue talking to Connor, I want to touch on NIMBYism, and that starts with homeowners. As you can imagine, homeowners are very invested in the equity built up in their property. And also being a consistent tax base and voting block in many communities, they're extremely vocal when it comes to proposed changes at the local and county government level.

Some of these groups believe increased housing and density would lead to lower property values. They also argue that medium to high density housing developments would increase traffic, pollution, crime, etc. This is a general overview of the NIMBY argument, NIMBY meaning not in my backyard. As you can imagine, this stance creates wealthy enclaves where people who are basically not affluent are priced out of the community. And in California, there are a lot of these communities.

One example is Lafayette. Lafayette California comes up a lot in Connor's book. But first, let me set the scene. When you drive from North Oakland to Lafayette for the first time, you have to pass through the Caldicot Tunnel, which burrows deep below the surrounding Berkeley Hills. After what seems like forever underground, you emerge surrounded by Green Hills and Mount Diablo off in the distance.

It's surreal. And your first thought might be, this would be a nice place to live. But hold your horses. Preferably at the equestrian center in nearby Walnut Creek. This area of suburban Contra Costa County is one of the places where battles over housing have reached a fever pitch. First, a little demographic info. According to the census, the median value of owner-occupied housing units between 2015 and 2019 in Lafayette was over a million dollars.

The median household income in twenty nineteen dollars was almost one hundred eighty thousand dollars. Between the twenty ten and twenty twenty censuses, the population only increased by one thousand four hundred and ninety eight people. And since the topic of density comes up a lot in housing debates, it's also another statistic to consider when looking at suburban communities like Lafayette.

The city's population per square mile in 2010 was 1,569.8. Compare that with nearby Oakland, which had a much larger population per square mile of 7,004. Then there's the statistic that's really hard to ignore. According to census data, Lafayette was 83% white in 2020. Nearby Walnut Creek, which has similar statistics in terms of population growth, home value, wealth and population density, was seventy four percent white in twenty twenty.

I know, correlation does not equal causation, but when you talk about housing, you have to acknowledge historical contexts such as selective lending practices in many cities that have kept people of color out of communities.

There's obviously a lot to unpack here and it overlaps with class and race. So how is the state combating this hesitancy to build more housing? Back to my interview with Connor. There have been a multitude of policies pushed forward in the state assembly and Senate

sometimes by the same senator, to address this issue. Obviously we can't discuss every single one, but SB nine and S B ten are the most recent attempts. Both were signed in September and go into effect on january first. So what do they do? I will explain to you what these do, but I will try to keep it high level, like you said. Everywhere in America, but most prominently in California, we are trying to add more housing in our urban core.

And we are having it, and it's becoming difficult, and the same fights are happening. And there are basically two ways we're trying to do that. One is to make it easier to split existing single family homes into duplexes or triplexes. It varies from place to place, but you know, basically Can you build something that has a couple units but looks kind of like vaguely like the single family houses there? That's like the structure most cities are trying to go towards, right?

And then the other is can we make it easier to build backyard units? SB9 essentially does that. It makes it possible to split homes into duplex. and also to split the lot. So if you have a particularly large lot, you could essentially sell off the back of it. And that is beneficial for all sorts of reasons. beyond density, uh one of which is that it's just much easier for a bank to appraise a piece of land once it's like a separate piece of land.

So that's what SBN does. S B ten is a much wonkier bill that I can I could spend a half an hour explaining to you, but it essentially makes it easier for cities to add kind of medium density buildings with like ten units. But it just sort of reforms the process in such a way that it that it's easier for them to do it, but they don't really have to.

I think taking a longer view, over the past five years, California has passed a ton of housing bills, and not all of them by the same person, by the way. tons of little reform bills. Um, you know, l a lot of the most significant bills have been these

little bills that close a loophole for this one thing or this other thing. Um we've passed probably a half dozen, maybe more, laws just to make it easier to build what are called accessory dwelling units, but you know, backyard homes or granny flats. And one of the impressive things isn't really the any specific bill. It's more that they just keep passing all these little bills that make it actually work. you know, m that that actually are gonna resolve result in more units.

So over the past five years California has made it much easier to pa to build more housing. And they've also reformed a bunch of their processes for how cities have to plan for housing. And so it's kind of setting the stage And really this is gonna erupt into total war this year. Or next you know, twenty twenty two rather. Um Uh, because cities are gonna have to start planning for way more housing and there's gonna be an absolute dogfight over w where it goes and what it looks like and all that.

Uh just give you an example of S B ten. S B ten makes it much easier for cities to rezone to build ten unit buildings. A lot of'em aren't gonna do that anytime soon. But as the state starts telling them they have to plan for more housing, as they start having to kind of voluntarily rezone to at least say where they're gonna put some of that housing They will start being forced to use some of these tools. So it's really less what we've done in the past five years and more of the like.

hopefully more of the pathway we've created for a lot more housing you know in the coming years.

So let's quickly summarize. People are being priced out of urban centers like the Bay Area or Los Angeles and are being forced to move outward to find a place to live. State is saying build more homes. But some suburban communities are saying, not here. However, hashtag not all community members. Uh my name is Sonia Trauss. I am executive director of Yes in My Backyard, also known as Yimbi Law.

And we sue cities that are out of compliance with state housing law and also generally provide support for activists in Gimbi Action, which is our political nonprofit partner. A lot of people are familiar with NIMBYism, um, the not not in my backyard. Uh can you explain what the Yimbi movement is and your work within the movement?

Um, yeah, I mean we like the name Yimbi because it really is a sh for anybody that knows what a nimbi is, you know, usually Yimbi is like, It's the same thing, but yes, you know, instead of showing up to talk about why the proposed housing is a bad idea, we try to organize people to show up to say it's a good idea. I mean way back in 2014 when I started SF Bay Area Renters Federation, I remember thinking of it and describing it as crazy people for development.

You know, I felt like there were a lot of I want to say on So I am. I just said it. Uh a lot I mean a lot of bad arguments. sort of gutter discourse even, you know, at at planning commission meetings against development, people showing up saying things that didn't make sense or that were actively anti social to oppose development. And when I realized that, like, wow, you know, the bar's pretty low.

Like we don't even we don't have to do a good job. We don't have to have great arguments. We we just have to be like warm bodies in the room saying, yes, this is a we do want this. This is a good And that's the germ, you know, that's basic, that's the core, that's the core thing is that in at least, you know, in high demand areas like the Bay Area, LA, uh, New York. Philadelphia now, Atlanta, um

many cities in Arizona. I mean, there's so many cities that are just growing. You know, the demand for housing there is outstripping the supply of housing. And uh in those places, people who aren't against development really need Show up at their local political process to make their voices heard because otherwise the only people who show up. are opposing the new housing and they say that they're speaking for everyone. You know, they say the community hates this idea.

But they don't know that the community is thousands of people, they're just one person. And unfortunately, when when they're the only ones that show up. The cities don't get the housing they need and then you have housing shortage and it creates all these other horrible social ills. In terms of cities and towns in California, where is the Yimbi movement seeing the most resistance?

Um, everywhere. All of the towns. Yes, that's a good I don't know. You'll probably edit this out because I don't know if I'm just gonna tell you though. So I had a long time ago, I was in summer camp or something. And my counselor, my camp counselor, told us that if you see a perfectly clear stream with nothing in it, you definitely don't want to drink that because that's poison.

Like if there's no fish, there's no plants, then that's suspicious. And I think about that all the time. The places that there's the most resistance are the places where no projects are being proposed. So it's a little bit hard to get a a an in. You know what I mean? Like the places where the local government actually zoned for growth.

are are places that are in the scheme of things relatively pro housing. And so even if it looks like there's a lot of action there and even if it looks like there's a lot of opposition because when something is proposed, there's a lot of controversy and people show up. The reality is that place is already much farther, you know, towards the pro-housing side than places that you never hear about.

So for example, you know, you might have some place like Los Altos Hills where the minimum lot size is literally an acre. You we don't see Los Altos Hills showing up in the newspapers as a place with, you know, a lot of housing controversy. We see the mission, we see the Boyle Heights, right, in LA. But those are the places really where the reason that there's proposals there is that the city actually already decided to change the zoning.

The really the really hard places are like are the places where the zoning is really bad and that even the state powers that be are maybe reluctant to spend political capital going after them. Actually been it's been very encouraging. I mean the reason that I can even mention something like Los Altos sales is that S P nine passed and S P nine is Scaring cities, like a lot more than I expected. I think there were a lot of Yum Bs that were like, Oh, well, yeah, duplexes, okay.

You know, in Los Altos Hills you can build two houses on on an acre, not just one. Is that a big deal? I don't know. But frankly, like their reaction is making me really think I was wrong that it is actually a big deal. And we do have Yimpies in those places. You know, we're getting I'm we're getting so many reports of all of these tiny cities all over the state.

Very exclusive places that really want to keep their, you know, 40,000 or 10,000 square foot minimum lot sizes that are absolutely Losing their mind. to try to hamstring SB9 and keep it from being effective. Connor and I talked a little bit about SB9 and SB10. We also talk about Lafayette. And I think that Lafayette is a good example because it brings up the Housing Accountability Act.

Can you explain your history with that and what it does? Yeah, the Housing Accountability Act basically says that cities have to follow their own zone. And the reason I think it's funny is that it seems like it should be unnecessary, right? A city f passes a law, you would think that you don't need to again say,

Rule number 11, you have to follow all these rules. But that's basically what the HAA is. And it's a law that the state passed because in the early way a long time ago, 40 years ago, you know, in the early 80s.

Uh they saw that cities were passing zoning um and developers were like, oh okay, great, I can build an apartment building here or whatever, a single family house, try to build it, and the city would just be like, oh no. uh no we don't we don't want that even though the zoning said you could do it like we don't actually Which is a problem, obviously, if you're trying to build housing. Um so they had written the law as if developers were going to enforce it, which they don't.

Because it's bad business to sue the city. You you don't want to have a reputation as hard to deal with. And frankly, uh, it's not a very attractive pitch to your investors, right? Like we have this great project. It's we're gonna build it. First, we have to spend a quarter of a million dollars in two years suing the city to get it. You know, your investors are gonna be like, Are you incompetent? You know, a lot of times what developers sell themselves on is their ability to like.

smoothly and quickly and you know without rancor get stuff approved. So this is like a big giant fail. And the other thing too is that developers, like anyone, kind of believe that they're in the business for a reason. And They make very fine and beautiful speeches and maybe believe them while they're making them about how they they love to build housing for people and they want to build communities and they love to provide this essential good and that's true.

But they kind of forget about that. Like, you know, and if it's too hard to actually do it, they'll just move on to another place, another city, um, somewhere where the local government wants development because they need the economic development or something like that. And so it was just clear, like the voice of the housing consumer was not being represented. So in twenty fifteen, that was when I first saw

I mean, we had I'd already started organizing people. There were, you know, more and more proto Yimbies. I don't know if we were using that, I guess that phrase in twenty fifteen. And it was sort of frustrating because we could see that when the decision at the Planning Commission or or city council, board of students wanted, they were able to use usually CEQA, the environmental, the California Environmental Quality Act.

uh to sue the city or threaten to sue the city and you know slow a project down or get it canceled. And I was like, are there laws we can use, you know, on the other side? And I was thrilled to see a newspaper article. The case in Lafayette was kind of rare. You know, in that case, the developer was fighting with the city.

And this article mentioned the Housing Accountability Act and I looked into it and I was like, this is it. This is the key, you know? And I realized also that we had this structural problem that it was that almost never you know, were the developers really fighting for the future residents for the consumers. I was like, okay, we need a consumer voice. So yeah, it it enabled me to organize the first version of what's now known as Yimbi Law.

to raise and spend money, you know, suing cities or threatening to sue them. Most of the time we don't have to, right? Most of the time there's a nice combination of local advocates that are showing up to support. And we write a letter and the city attorney, you know, agrees, like knows what the law is and tells the the city that they should avoid a lawsuit. Um, we've I've been told by lawyers, by former city attorneys that our organization like really changes the calculus.

Because the city attorney gives advice to the city council. And their job is to, you know, keep the city council from being sued. And they have to tell the city council honestly, yes, if you're gonna turn this project down, you're breaking the law. But also they have to give an analysis of how likely it is the developer's gonna actually do anything about it. And when it's just the developer putting, you know, complaining.

The city attorneys are like, I've never seen it happen, you know, it's just not that common. But if we put in a letter, then the city attorney is like, This organization You know, I looked it up, they have a website, they really do sue cities. I've seen them in the paper. I can't tell you that they're not gonna sue you. And now you have a whole new world of risk involved. And I I, you know, so now I I have to, as a professional, I have to tell you that you really

And that's my advice. So it's just an important institution.

You have an econ background and um earlier in the podcast I talked about this issue of supply and demand. economic concept that a lot of people can grasp, right? Um ideally, though, we want supply and demand to be at this equilibrium price where, you know, there's enough supply to meet demand.

But to get there means shifting home prices. So what is your response when homeowners or I I guess like the NIMBY side argue that property values, the basically the equity in their homes will go down if housing stock is increased? Yeah, I mean it's I mean just a little more broadly than you know than what you're mentioning. Um I I hope that listeners listeners will notice this now that I've pointed out. We have this.

grimly hilarious schizophrenia for public policy in the US at all levels of government. Or on the one hand, whether it's a individual politician or it's the FHA or Fannie Mae or something, they want to increase property value. You know, and they want to do public policy that increases property values because for so many people, when they own a home, yeah, that's their biggest source of wealth. And it like seems good for the economy for people to feel like they're rich.

At the same time, they want to ensure everyone has affordable housing. And like you just can't have public policy that does both. You just can't. Like you have to decide at a high level what you're gonna do. So I I don't know. I mean, that's a that the more people notice that, the more I think we can have a clearer public conversation about it. And that's that's the level that we're at with that.

As far as actually for individual property owners in some of these extremely high cost areas, what I have found is that even though when you're at a public meeting, you will hear people say, we don't want this apartment building, it's going to lower my

It's very misleading because they say, I'm concerned about property value, which is literally a very suggestive thing. I it's reasonable for a person to hear that and think what they mean is they care about their property value, but they truly do not. What they mean when they say that is really a more like use value. They're afraid that there's going to be traffic and that that's going to bother them. Or really the most common thing. Is sad. A lot of people's self esteem. is very intertwined.

With their feeling that their neighborhood is a certain way, even that their neighborhood is hard to get into. And they Look back over their lives and they're proud of themselves. They're like, I made it. You know, I worked really hard and I got into this neighborhood and a lot of people can't live.

And so when we go in and we're like, we're gonna make your neighborhood accessible, you know, wouldn't that isn't that one wouldn't that be wonderful? Like for all kinds of people to be able to live here. They're like, no, then how do I know I'm proud of myself? Frankly, because a lot of people's jobs aren't that interesting.

You know, so like what do they take away from the job? It's not like they care about their own their actual accomplishments there. They're They care about all of these symbolic That's a way harder thing to fight with than someone's feeling that their house is worth$1.2 million or$1.05 million. Like they don't care about that. They're not about to move. A lot of them are past the point of taking out a mortgage, uh, you know, to pay for their kids to go to school.

And frankly, there's in certain cases in high demand places, like your actual property value can go up if there's an upzoning. Because if you are able to, if you were gonna move, to sell your house to a developer who's gonna actually make it into an apartment building, then that increases the value of your land. And I've come up with this conclusion that I'm telling you because we've had discussions with individuals who are saying they care about property value, and we're like, look.

Like if that's what you care about, like this upzoning is good for you. And they're like, no, no, no. You know, I don't want to live in their apartments. Apartments are in your room. It's really not about that. It's kind of hard to ignore historical context in a lot of these places too, because you know, there are obviously within the history of these communities, there are things like redlining that exist that keep people out of the neighborhoods. And so

Correlation is not causation, right? You can't apply everything to one particular variable, but when you have certain people saying that they don't want their neighborhood to change, it's kind of like the elephant in the room, right? Yeah, like what are you preserving? You know, your neighborhood was built like Culver City, right? We're suing Culver City. Culver City was literally a sundown town. You know, I mean it's not just a white flight town. Like Lafayette's a white flight town.

There are people that are in in Culver City sort of specifically evoking the those how a lot of those houses were built in the 1940s. And um we're suing over a a kind of a downzoning that they did that we think was illegal. And uh there were people writing in favor of the down zoning. And they were saying that.

that you know these houses were built in 1940 and this was such a great neighborhood then and that the that the reason that their houses are still valuable is that people are buying into the history of Culver City. And I'm just like, what? Like this is horrible. Like I really hope you're wrong. And like the I I don't know. I I hope it's pure ignorance. And e you know, even in that case, it's really pretty bad.

I I was not aware of that, that Culver City was a sundown town. That that's disturbing. Um yeah, that's what people in in the LA area tell. Yeah, I know I grew up in the LA area. But I think I don't honestly don't know enough about Culver City, so I can't really say.

Just a quick break from the interview to say check the show notes, Culver City was indeed a sundown town. I'll have the link there. So After reading Connor's book, there have been accusations that the YMB movement isn't as inclusive as it should be and it's too friendly with developers. But on the other hand, like we were just talking about.

some of these communities that you've sued, like Lafayette, are they extremely white, whether it's a white flight town or a former sundown town. But what steps have has the movement taken to kind of be more inclusive and work more with other housing justice groups? So the the first thing is that I think Starting in San Francisco meant that we were starting kind of in the middle of a of the conversation. So one of the things that starting in San Francisco, I guess.

kept me from articulating clearly early in the organizing and early in the mission, which we've definitely tried to rectify since then, is explaining to people who are otherwise just not aware how what the importance of low density zoning can be in um achieving tenant So in in San Francisco we have

pretty strong tenant protecting demolition controls, it's already effectively illegal to tear down existing rent control housing. And that's effective. You know what I mean? Like in all of the San Francisco fights over building new housing. There was never a controversial project that we got involved in. You know, at any time.

where they were tearing down existing housing. And that's because that we had San Francisco is lucky to have a long history of a great tenant, you know, organizing movement. And they successfully got these tenant protecting demolition controls. Most of the state, most of the country, that is not true. You know, so when we were we were having these local controversies.

And I think very reasonably, you know, if you're somewhere Where there's no protection for existing rental housing, and you hear people being like,

Yeah, we need to build housing. We need to take away, you know, process barriers um to building housing. And you're thinking of projects that are have happened or about to happen or in the middle of happening, where they're tearing down existing housing in order to build more housing, then that those people are going to sound like your opponents, you know, and and without tenant protecting demolition controls.

We are. But to belabor the point further, I mean, the reality is in many places, like most cities, obviously, they have a apartment zone, they have a single So any given apartment building. is very likely, obviously, to be in the apartment zone and very likely to be tearing down an existing apartment building. And that's just something that like San Francisco, like we didn't ever think about it because it was already illegal.

So I think the biggest thing is getting really serious at the state level about tenant protecting demolition controls. And a couple of years ago in SP330, we got it. California for the first time created state wide rules Not outright prohibiting existing housing from being torn down, but really limiting the circumstances where it's permitted and therefore limiting the just it won't happen.

because it's just a lot harder to do. Um and that was, I was really pleased about that. I mean, I think they still haven't been uh that's part of what we do is. Try to make sure people know about them and that tenants can take advantage of them and that local governments and developers know about them. They kind of got watered down a little bit in SB8, which was really frustrating, but we're gonna keep working on it. The other thing is just more on a like organizing basis.

We're doing a lot better about focusing limited, you know, organizing bandwidth on high income areas, which was Yeah, I mean it's it's been really rewarding, like I said, right? We have Yimbies in Los Altos Hills now. Like we the the more we grow, the more we can find the pro housing people in these most exclusionary places. Whereas again, at first, you know, we were in San Francisco. So like it was already like, what did we all think about it?

Those are I feel like the top two. I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. Um this has been awesome. Oh yeah. Sure.

The work the Yemi Movement is doing is seen as important in bringing more housing to the state. But is it enough? I asked Connor about the next steps and whether we need multiple solutions to such a complicated issue. I keep going back to the last chapter of your book, uh as well as the chapter about Sister Christina and the Saint Francis Center.

Much like there isn't one single issue behind the housing shortage, it seems like the solution is equally complicated. You write, quote, It's hard to walk away with the belief that any sort of rigidity is the answer, end quote. We just have to get creative, right? Is that a correct interpretation? Yeah, I think I mean, you are talking about like the structure of civilization, right? Like I mean it's not

It's not just that people always say housing policy is complicated and that's true, but it's not because of some like legal construct or whatever. You're talking about like who do you want to live next? Where are we going to put the sewer? What's the most desirable land? And how are we going to figure out who gets to live there? Right? Even if you had a you know, hardcore anti capitalist construct, what would you then have? Some like quota system?

I'm sure the quota system would piss off a lot of people too. Y you know what I mean? It might be more fair, but uh you know, so I guess what I'm saying is is that there's no system that's gonna make these answers easier because you're talking about where people live, what it looks like, how it changes, who gets screwed when they decide to knock something down or puts you know, right? It really gets into the like core of us. So when I start thinking to myself though, what are the solutions?

I I just think that the solutions are pretty simple and also pretty complicated. Like you need to build a lot more housing. You need to make it easier to build a lot more housing. Um, but you also need to build some subsidized housing for people who won't ever be able to afford what the private market is building.

But also I think things like community land trusts and all sorts of those nonprofit models and the I I think those are all great. I mean and one of the things I find is that the community land trusts people are kind of incredibly entrepreneurial. Like if you look at what makes these community land trusts, uh the the ones that are successful. I mean this sister Christina, she like works it. You know, she has a very ideological diverse board. They kind of um

You know, they kind of they're all Catholics, right? So that's like their commonality and they sort of veer from very devout kind of conservative Catholics to very liberal kind of social service type Catholics, but they somehow come together and raise a ton of money to buy and preserve deed restricted house. She's built a community land trust that's worth tens of millions of dollars. If she gets hit by a bus tomorrow, those units will all remain deed restricted in perpetuity.

She's actually done the job in a really good way. And I find that when you and she runs her buildings very intelligently and they have all these ways they keep their costs low and they you know, they're all you know, there's all these things they do that are just like running a good operation. keeping the units safe, but also keeping overhead manageable by kind of assigning different tasks to people.

finding ways to get people to do more of their own maintenance. Like I'm talking like clean the laundry room. I'm not talking like can you please fix your own toilet. Y you know, and And I guess what I'm saying is is that even even at these community land trusts that are really I don't know, we're kind of off on a different topic now, but what I'm just saying is is that there are a million little models and

Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't work and I could imagine there being a community land trust it'd be run really poorly and would fail. And the r your analysis for why it was failed would be like, Well, because the person running it was an idiot and didn't do a good job. And then there are other ones that are run really well. And like Sister Christina's and you're like, Why is that running well? Well,'cause she's really smart and really diligent and

builds broad support. So I think all these models are good, but all of them are also gonna fail. You know, meaning you're gonna find instances where they just don't work as well. I mean it it's what's fascinating to me is too is just how insanely bipartisan NIMBY isn't Right. It's like You can be in a very conservative part of Texas and people will guard single family zoning, or you could be in a very liberal part of Berkeley, and the same thing will happen.

And so that shows you that this common thread kind of really is like there's something deeply us about that. It is it is the agreement, not the disagreement. And and that makes it hard to reform. But slowly but surely it's happening. You know, backyard homes, duplexes, baby steps. Is it gonna be perfect? No, but I do think you are starting to see the wheels something really different. Yeah, thanks for taking the time to talk with me. Cool. Thank you.

So yeah, housing is complicated. And we didn't even get into homelessness, eviction, the people who are renting Airbnbs or staying in hotels by the month just to have somewhere to live. But a lot of what we discussed are the mechanisms behind those phenomena. There are plenty of more issues worth exploring in another episode. I want to thank my guests Connor Doherty and Sonia Trauss. Also, apologies to my listeners for the late episode this month.

To paraphrase one of my favorite movies, when you think you have everything under control, life uh finds a way to mess that up. Thankfully I'm just making a podcast and not bringing dinosaurs back from extinction. This episode was written, mixed, and edited by me, Matt Sedlar. You can find me on Twitter at at Matt Sedlar or the podcast at at Sociology Ruins. I also wrote and recorded the music you've been listening to. Join me next month as Sociology Ruins something completely different.