Free the Housing Market: News Miner 50

Housing regs, NIMBYism, public schools and safety, Denver elections, bugs, and more.

I hope you’ll also check out my Self in Society Podcast episode with Matt Zwolinski, co-author of The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism, as well as my review of the book. Also, please sign up via email at Self in Society too (if you haven’t already). Now on to Colorado matters. . .

Free the Housing Market

Complete Colorado published my article, “Protect property rights from local government abuse.” My basic thesis is that Polis-promoted bills aimed at limiting “local control” of housing development probably are (on the whole) good ideas. More broadly, the article is a defense of “state preemption” of local control for the purpose of protecting people’s liberties. Here are some excerpts:

Why is it that, when it comes to zoning and growth policy, many conservatives and Republicans turn into a bunch of central-planning socialists?

If you believe in property rights, then you believe people have the right to develop their property as they see fit, consistent with the rights of others. You do not think politicians, bureaucrats, or busy-body neighbors have any right to block people’s development of their property. . . .

Unfortunately, far too many people turn into democratic socialists the second they sign their mortgage papers. Now that they have their place to live, they seek to tightly restrict others’ ability find a place to live. They want to artificially drive up the market value of their own property by using the force of government to restrict the development of new housing. The consequence is the housing crisis that drives homelessness and squeezes the household budgets of renters, who tend to be less well-off. Some people are moving out of Colorado simply because they can no longer afford to live here. . . .

Read the entire piece.

Rich NIMBYs Hyperventilate about Housing Bill

Ali Longwell has ̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶p̶-̶e̶d̶ a news article in Summit Daily complaining about Bill 213, the zoning reform bill. This was my quick reply:

“This is not going to generate any new housing” is such an obvious and stupid lie. Of course the zoning reforms would generate more housing, which is precisely why various city bureaucrats and their NIMBY supporters oppose it.

In Ari’s Inferno there’s a special place in Hell for people who strap property owners and housing developers in straight jackets and then complain that “the free market” doesn’t meet people’s housing needs.

Avon Town Manager Eric Heil told the paper:

It attempts to mandate upzoning to create more supply of housing. That may work on the Front Range . . . but as we all know, and all the CAST [The Colorado Association of Ski Town] communities know, more houses has nothing to do with affordability up here, because the free market price is priced at a luxury level and not really as tied into supply and demand as you might see in a Front Range municipality.

Similarly, CAST drafted a letter stating:

Through these efforts, they have built a deep and nuanced understanding of the interplay between market forces and the regulatory environment on affordable housing. It is our analysis that state-mandated upzoning in single-family neighborhoods will NOT result in any increase of workforce housing due to existing market conditions.

In other words, the claim goes, the mountain towns already are so exclusionary that even an expansion of housing would result in prices out of reach for many working-class people. Even if that’s true, obviously more housing would help. And there’s nothing stopping ski resorts or the towns from building their own “affordable” housing however they care to define that. Indeed, the bill almost certainly would help ski resorts do precisely that, if they chose to.

Incidentally, here is a headline from last summer: “Town of Vail blocks all permits for Vail Resorts housing project.”

An honest message from CAST would read something like the following: “Look, we’re a bunch of rich people up here, we like our exclusionary communities achieved by force of government, and we don’t want a bunch of dirty low-lifes moving in near us. Gross.”

Kafer Promotes Housing Socialism

Many Colorado conservatives hate property rights and are democratic socialists in conservative clothing when it comes to housing. That is the only reasonable conclusion based on what they’re saying about “local control” of residential properties. Krista Kafer is the latest in a long line of socialist “conservatives” making this case. Here’s the thrust of her case:

Why does this matter? Zoning ordinances, which set standards for the size, use, and location of commercial and residential buildings, balance the competing interests of homeowners, home buyers, developers, and commercial interests. Why do they need balancing? In a city, what happens on private property can impact the property values as well as the use and enjoyment of property of nearby residents. Living in close proximity means sharing water, parking, parks and open space, roads, and views. New building impacts these resources, as well as other important considerations such as neighborhood character, historical preservation, the environment, safety, and property values.

Do you get what she is saying here? She is saying that you do not have property rights when it comes to developing housing insofar as your neighbors don’t like the way it looks (the “view”), do not “enjoy” the new people who would like to move into the neighborhood, don’t like the “character” of your development or of the people who would live in it, do not wish to share public spaces with others who would like to use them too, and so on. Such premises could rationalize virtually any forcible intervention in the economy. The democratic socialists who ran for Denver council could scarcely concoct a more anti-capitalist stance.

The grain of truth in Kafer’s position is that cities have to take some care to ensure that residential properties can get hooked up to streets, water, and utilities. But what Kafer is offering is a catch-all excuse for NIMBYism. Anyone can complain that the roads or the parks would be too crowded or that new development would strain resources.

What Kafer is in effect arguing here is that, because local governments have socialized the roads, many of the parks, the water supply, and so on, therefore local governments also must substantially socialize “private” residential properties.

The alternate view is that it is the job of local governments to accommodate their services to the people who want to live there, rather than to accommodate everyone’s property use to the “needs” of the local government. But that would look something like a free and vibrant society, and we can’t have that!

Exit and Schools

Complete Colorado published my column, “Parents need greater ability to exit public schools.” I begin, “Ordinarily we recognize the crucial importance of the right of exit in a free society.” But, I point out, our ability to exit “public” schools is limited:

Most parents have limited ability to exit the public schools. . . . Imagine if government forced you to pay $1,300 (for a family of four) per month to your local “public” grocery store, whether you shopped there or not. “Ah,” but the Public Grocers Union proclaimed, “You can shop anywhere you want!” Sure, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave with your grocery dollars. Under that scenario, would you say that you had a robust right of exit from the public grocery stores? You should probably conclude the same thing about public schools.

I also discuss the policy of Denver Public Schools of keeping demonstrably dangerous children in school. But that is only one sort of problem. Many children get a poor quality education at their schools.

Read the entire piece.

More on School Safety

CBS 4 adds:

Teachers and faculty members at other public schools in Denver told CBS News Colorado they’re worried about policy changes to the district’s discipline standards, which they say are allowing dangerous kids to continue returning to school, even after multiple strikes or committing egregious crimes.

Also from CBS: There was a “petition calling on the seven Denver Public Schools Board of Education members to resign.”

Kyle Clark summarizes 9News findings:

A Denver Public Schools student threatened to specifically kill a principal in a school shooting. A judge issued a restraining order protecting the principal. DPS told the principal she could leave the school but the student would stay.

Clark also writes:

Families come and go from schools for a variety of reasons. But Denver Public Schools’ insistence that students charged with violent crimes will stay in class over the objection of principals, teachers, and law enforcement appears to have more families rethinking their options.

Quick Takes

Preschool: The rollout of state-funded preschool has been rocky.

Nannyism: A bill to require “sober seating” at large venues died in committee.

Socialists: “Six Denver City Council candidates have been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America Denver in the April 4 election. Candi CdeBaca, is the lone incumbent who received an endorsement,” Axios reported. Apparently those candidates fared poorly.

Democracy: Only around a fourth of voters participated in the Denver mayoral election, reports the Sun, and only around a fourth of those voters selected the top candidate, who will now face a run-off with the second-place candidate. This is a democratic process only in the most strained sense of the term. As I’ve said before, something like approval voting at least would test which candidate actually is most popular among those who care to cast a ballot.

Abortion: Last time I wondered if Bill 190 was really needed given existing anti-fraud laws. Someone suggested that “current law only addresses commercial transactions and since these anti abortion clinics offer free ‘counseling,’ the law does not apply to them.” This sounds plausible although I have not verified the point. Heidi Beedle has more on “abortion pill reversals” and related matters. Elisabeth Epps complains about “racist” and “transphobic” attacks on the bill, which she sponsored, at about the 8:10:45 mark of the March 30 session video.

SNAP: Trish Zornio asks whether “you could eat well” on “average” SNAP food assistance benefits. But, as I have pointed out many times before, SNAP benefits are not intended to meet a family’s entire grocery budget. The “average” benefits go to families with relatively more resources; the maximum benefits go to families with relatively fewer resources.

Media: Zornio continues to turn some of her Colorado Sun columns into episodes of How the World of Colorado Democrats Turns.

Gun Stats: The Colorado Sun published a Kaiser Health News piece titled, “Study finds 1 in 4 Colorado teens have quick access to guns.” I sarcastically wrote about such coverage of this survey, “I think we should take self-reported survey data from American teens very seriously, given how honest and self-reflective they are, especially when the questions invite a lot of speculation.” All that said, obviously some minors do have relatively easy access to guns—as Leslie Herod has said—either because irresponsible adults leave them out or because the minors have ties to criminal organizations. That’s a huge problem. My point about the poll is simply that it is not very reliable.

Street Racing: Two street racers killed a 21-year-old woman (and her dog) in Arvada a couple years ago. The perp most responsible got six years in prison, which seems shamefully light considering the severity of the crime. Cops need to keep such dangerous drivers off the road. I’m all for confiscating the cars of street racers (upon conviction). I also wonder if penalties for the worst cases need to be increased.

Police: Here’s the basic story according to Newsline: As a woman struggled to escape her abusive husband, and police arrested her and sent her children back to the husband, despite their articulated fears that the husband would kill them. In a sane world all of the officers involved would have immediately been fired and forever barred from police work (assuming the article gets the basic facts right).

Harassment: The business community is reasonably concerned about Bill 172 redefining “harassment” in the workplace.

Transgender: A JeffCo elementary councilor asked the district for guidance regarding telling parents about transgender identification of students in schools and using preferred identification around parents. My take: At least in elementary grades parents need to be in the loop.

Transit: I always thought the point of RTD was to help people get from Point A to Point B. I guess now RTD buses and trains also are homeless shelters. That oughta drive ridership.

Museum: The nature museum in Denver has a new bug display. It has some cool large-scale models of bugs but not a lot of actual bugs.