The Nation Goes Radioactively Idiotic On Home Ownership
Private property ownership is what keeps our society from turning into a giant violent shit-hole.
Kian Goh at The Nation writes, "If we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate change, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership":
Few are discussing one key aspect of California's crisis: Yes, climate change intensifies the fires--but the ways in which we plan and develop our cities makes them even more destructive. The growth of urban regions in the second half of the 20th century has been dominated by economic development, aspirations of home ownership, and belief in the importance of private property. Cities and towns have expanded in increasingly disperse fashion, fueled by cheap energy. Infrastructure has been built, deregulated, and privatized, extending services in more and more tenuous and fragile ways. Our ideas about what success, comfort, home, and family should look like are so ingrained, it's hard for us to see how they could be reinforcing the very conditions that put us at such grave risk.To engage with these challenges, we need to do more than upgrade the powerlines or stage a public takeover of the utility companies. We need to rethink the ideologies that govern how we plan and build our homes.
From the early years of this continent-wide republic, federal policies such as the Homestead Act of 1862 rewarded private home ownership and pioneering activities such as making individual claims on land. Programs such as the "Better Homes in America" campaign in the 1920s attempted to make private property ownership a moral issue in addition to a financial one, linking home ownership with upstanding citizenship and family values, as a presumed bulwark against communist class collectivity.
These views and policies were cemented across the landscape by the financial innovations of the New Deal--including Federal Housing Administration-backed mortgage insurance--and the expansion of the federal highway system. Not everyone benefited from these changes. In and around so many cities, new building technologies, racist lending practices, systemic criminalization of the poor and people of color, and uneven patterns of "creative destruction"--that is, cycles of investment and disinvestment across city centers and suburbs--favored one kind of residential development: single-family houses for those deemed qualified, which typically meant white, middle-class families. Expansionist, individualist, and exclusionary patterns of housing became synonymous with freedom and self-sufficiency.
This ideological geography keeps playing out in devastating and contradictory ways. Climate change generally impacts the poorest and most vulnerable people first. In Los Angeles, we see the impacts of increased heat on homeless people, the elderly, and the very young; in New York, some public housing residents must still rely on temporary boilers seven years after Hurricane Sandy. But in the Saddleridge Fire, the homes at risk were not those of residents pushed beyond the urban fringe.
What he calls for:
Community land trusts--nonprofit, community-based land ownership, with housing units that are typically leased in perpetual affordable status--are a promising model. There are now more than 240 community land trusts in the United States, and they are increasingly part of the consideration for those pursuing a more affordable and less market-reliant alternative.
Welcome to what I in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" call "The Tragedy of the Asshole in the Commons," throwing a little profanity into the Garrett Hardin concept. An excerpt from my book:
The Tragedy of the Asshole in the Commons
There are homeowners who'd start the second Hundred Years' War to defend the sanctity of their property, but a half-block from their property line, everything changes. In fact, some stranger could come by their block in a truck, release a half-dozen feral cats, and then toss a stack of old mattresses onto the street, dump out several drums of used motor oil, and light the whole mess on fire. In response, these fierce defenders of private property would busy themselves with their petunias.This "Ain't my land!" response to the trashing of public spaces illustrates what biology professor Garrett Hardin referred to as "the tragedy of the commons" in his 1968 essay on overpopulation. In a space owned by nobody and shared by many, the piggy can take advantage by grabbing more than their fair share of resources or by slopping up the space, ruining it for everyone.
Oh, and how do we end private ownership of property -- he doesn't mention how that generally works: The government "nationalizes" (read: steals) people's property and turns it into the state's property.
This guy gets it:
Behind every social issue is a hammer and sickle.
— Primitive Goat Herder Apologist (@EdmontonRtb) December 27, 2019
PG&E's issue is well documented. And ignored. It is a California government problem and it doesn't look like it is going to be fixed any time soon. Using it as a pretext for a government take over of various properties is pretty much par for the course.
Ben at December 28, 2019 6:15 AM
For those wondering, Hardin decried the common usage, and depletion, of non-owned natural resources with the analogy of a pasture to which each farmer has free access to graze his herd. Each farmer then adds animals to his herd to make more money because he pays no price for overgrazing the pasture and letting his herd discharge its waste into the pasture. Eventually, the resource is used up and the herd dies due to lack of food; and so the population dies due to lack of food as well.
Hardin - like Mathus, Erlich, et al - failed to account for innovation and market forces. Increasing the size of the herd can pay the farmer more, but only up to a point.
As each farmer adds animals to his herd, the supply of animals gets larger and, without an increase in population, the price drops as supply outstrips demand. A larger herd attracts predators and rustlers, so the farmers are compelled to provide security for the common grazing area, at a cost.
Each farmer is thus constrained by market forces and balances his herd with other crops/animals to diversify his product offerings and insulate himself against market forces:
The "Tragedy of the Commons" is the tragedy of short-sighted analogies. And yes, there will always be that guy who thinks that any common space is his own personal trash can. The solution is to shame that guy, not to nationalize his house.
Conan the Grammarian at December 28, 2019 8:32 AM
Private property is the reason we've cleaned up our environment. Nobody wants to live on a polluted river or next to a pollution-spewing chemical plant. Property owners demanded standards be applied.
Conan the Grammarian at December 28, 2019 8:36 AM
I live in a huge house with my husband and our medium-sized dog.
I have been asked, "Goodness, why do you need such an enormous house for just the two of you?"
The answer which stopped these rude people: "I'm fat".
W.C. Fields was right; “If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
Real answer available upon request.
Grandma Elizabeth at December 28, 2019 8:52 AM
The problem here happened 60 years ago, when the public bought into the nonsense view that "sprawl" is a bad thing and should be fought against.
"Sprawl" is simply the conversion of unbuilt land into usable real estate, especially single-family homes with yards. To make a pejorative of that great good is nonsense, and expresses nothing more profound than envy, which has no place in politics.
Urban planning, as we know it, does no good for the community. It simply orders that most unbuilt land be left that way in order to create a shortage of housing, so that existing homeowners can profit at the expense of home buyers and renters. Thus it is a cartel.
The right way to plan for the provision of needed utilities and roads is simply to give each builder both the right and responsibility to arrange for these services, at his own cost, before building. That would be real urban planning. But the cartel wouldn't like it, so it hasn't happened yet.
As for private property -- even if real estate were declared a public trust, someone will always control it. And the right way to evaluate any proposed government project is to follow the money. Don't the bureaucrats who want to get their hands on your house have enough already?
jdgalt at December 28, 2019 10:05 AM
The author makes several unsupported assertions (like our life is increasingly "fragile" which it is not--deaths due to storms have been going down for 50 years in the US because our system is less fragile).
Beyond this, however, he is calling for communism. "leased in perpetual affordable status". huh. The reason there is a housing shortage in California has nothing to do with private land ownership. It is due to restrictions on building. Within the major Calif cities there are huge tracts of land where development is off-limits. These are claimed to be necessary to connect habitats for wildlife--but without any proof that this is necessary. These no-go zones make commutes longer thus increasing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution. In Portland and some other cities, the trees on your land do not belong to you but to "the people" and you cannot cut them without permission even if they are a hazard or eyesore. This collectivist drive only goes one way: it is assumed it will always favor the Leftist desires. But it need not.
One of the biggest impediments to development in the third-world has been shown over and over to be lack of clear title to land (ie private property). Even in Greece a property may have unclear title (people living in a place for 3000 years might not have kept records, who knew) and thus you can't sell it or borrow money against it or even develop it. In Brazil the slums cleaned themselves up pretty good when the squatters were allowed to buy the land. If you can't own the land would you make your house nicer? ha
cc at December 28, 2019 12:21 PM
Kian Goh is a perfesser in Los Angeles. From her POV the world is an overcrowded car-addled nightmare (as is mine here in the Bay Area).
I'm sure her retweets of Bernie and AOC are completely science-based, though.
Seriously, Kian, less lipsticky-pouting and more rural-traveling. Open your horizons, honey.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at December 28, 2019 4:17 PM
Sprawl IS a bad thing, where it occurs without regard for natural features. Condos are just fine when you don't kill barrier island rarities so people can sit, order pizza and watch the ocean.
From 2009: "People work best in their own interest. Go look at the projects and see what ensues when "somebody else" owns the living quarters. Do be sure to plot the crime rate and note the prohibition of self-defense weapons."
Radwaste at December 28, 2019 4:30 PM
Owning a house has made us a lot more "green" in many ways.
- We grow most of our own fruits and veggies (space to do so)
-We dry our clothing out on a line (we got fined for drying clothing on our balcony at our apartment)
- We have invested in insulation/energy efficient appliances to reduce our energy usage (compared to what we used in our apartment that was less than half the size of our house but had an aging HVAC unit that ran 24/7 that the apartment complex refused to replace). IF we didn't have three big-ass shade trees covering our roof, we'd have solar panels, too.
- We are gradually replacing all the turf grass on our lot with xeric plants/rocks/ground covers, to create a no-mow, no-water yard that also doesn't look like parched death during the six-month TX summer. Our apartment complex used to waste copious amounts of water maintaining plants/grass that had no place in TX (and skirted the city's watering restrictions to do so).
Having a house literally lets me put my money where my mouth is.
Sprawl doesn't even negate the ability to have good mass transit. Park-and-ride lots and freeway flyer routes can go a long way for people who can't afford to live in the city, but work there.
sofar at December 28, 2019 5:16 PM
Kian Goh sounds like another one of the "elite" who thinks she knows what is best for the rest of us.
Since her bio lists her as an "assistant" professor I would further guess that means she does NOT have tenure and is simply trying to show her leftist credentials so she thinks she will gain a better chance at getting that full-time, permanent gig at a university.
Reading her bio she states that her research interests include "urban political ecology" which sounds like social-justice warrior made-up sh&t.
Further, she finished her dissertation in 2015 and lists 6 schools that she has taught at and two architect firms that she has worked for. That's a lot of jobs in 4 years. Or is that normal for academic wannabees? Lastly, it would be interesting to see if any of her designs, as a licensed architect, have actually made any developer money. Or are her ideas just not sustainable?
charles at December 28, 2019 10:27 PM
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