Episode 33: Every social problem is a demand side problem
But everyone tries to fix them on the supply side (part 1)
Dear readers,
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas holiday, however you choose to celebrate (or not celebrate) it.
Just before the holidays, I read this piece. It’s a classic progressive piece in that I agree with a handful of things wholeheartedly while facepalming at the rest. The piece is about housing/homelessness in California, and the author is writing primarily to an audience of other progressives.
The piece starts off with a bang, as the author says “I love you, but some of you are not serious people.” Oh my God, yes, this is EXACTLY how I feel when I talk to some progressives. Not long after that, he points out something I’ve been talking about every chance I get: since 2007, if you look at the other 49 states, homelessness has decreased by 36,000 people. But in California over the same timeframe, homelessness has *increased* by 42,000 people. California is failing on homelessness, and it’s failing in a way that is unique in its scale.
Now, it’s not the only place that’s failing; our author points out that the problem is also getting worse on a per capita basis in New York, Oregon, Vermont, Hawaii, and DC, with New Mexico and Colorado also “gaining ground”. Question for the class: what do all these places have in common?
Our author gives the answer with this sentence “While the federal government has proven incompetent at helping the homeless, it’s time to stop dodging the point that Democratic governments in select areas are uniquely failing.” Oh sweet baby Jesus, yes, yes it’s time!!
Then we get a retelling of our author’s experience trying to find housing in Santa Cruz, which includes the following bit:
“In old hippie towns like these there are generally two sides on housing woes. The moderates and centrists that want to (and cannot) penalize the homeless out of existence. The other is a left contingent that services the homeless or opposes anti-encampment policies, but refuses to understand the practical and empirical root causes.”
As someone who lives in a coastal “old hippie town” similar to Santa Cruz, I would describe our author’s characterization of “moderates and centrists” as both ‘unfair’ and ‘typical of how the progressive left characterizes the moderate left’. But the comment about the “left contingent” is spot on.
Our author then goes on to criticize progressives that complain that the problem is simply “capitalism” or “the market”, and gives the specific example of San Francisco supervisor Dean Preston, who, if you don’t know him, is a multimillionaire who likes to cosplay at socialism:
“[Preston] said that homelessness is a “prime example” of what happens when “you turn the basic needs of human beings over to private interests,” which is “the heart of the approach under capitalism.”
Our author again: “This is true in the abstract. The market cannot provide housing for everyone and no capitalist system has done so without government intervention. But are California and New York becoming more capitalist while Texas and Florida are embracing leftism? Have Atlanta, Houston and Austin embraced Soviet Communism by building swaths of homes and reducing homelessness, while Oakland, Los Angeles and New York embrace Ayn Rand? No.”
So, you can see that there are some things in this piece that a conservative could really latch on to. But of course, the record scratch moment is going to come eventually, and for me it’s when our author gets to his proposed solution:
“The solution is housing, towers everywhere, that radically transforms the character of the city.”
In other words, our author thinks the solution is to turn cities like Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Woodside, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, and my little hamlet of El Granada into Manhattan, which I have helpfully given you a picture of at the beginning of this piece.
Fun fact: I moved to the Bay Area from Manhattan; I lived on the 32nd floor of an apartment building in the lower left corner of the picture above. Manhattan level density is our author’s progressive fever dream. And yet, what do progressives in *Manhattan* say about housing? That it’s unaffordable and they need more housing!!
I regret to inform you that if Manhattan-level density does not, in fact, solve your affordability problem, then your affordability problem is not solvable on the supply side at all, period. You will never build your way out of the problem. And even if you could, what drives me bananas about the progressive worldview on this issue is the mentality that they are righteous and morally superior because they are YIMBYs, and meanwhile every person that made the biggest investment of their lives to buy into a neighborhood in Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Woodside, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, or my little hamlet of El Granada is some kind of selfish, slack-jawed troglodyte for wanting their neighborhoods to remain what they bought into. If only progressives had a term to describe it when one group of people from outside an area enters that area and, out of a feeling of smug superiority, proceeds to “radically transform” the character and culture of the place, regardless of the feelings of the people who were already living there, minding their own business. Man, if only progressives had a word for that1.
Ah well.
As always, I want to actually offer up alternative solutions, not just complain about the other side’s worldview. To keep the length of this post from spiraling further out of control, I’ll talk about my solution in part II. Stay tuned!
1the word is “colonialism”