We Need More Housing: News Miner 54

Housing, anti-trans bigotry, swatting, and more.

Housing Updates

Here’s the big update on the land-use bill, 213, as reported by the Sun:

Colorado’s largest cities would no longer be required to let multifamily housing with up to six units be built in all residentially zoned areas under a major amendment made to Senate Bill 213. Instead, those cities . . . would only have to let duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes be built in 30% of their land area currently zoned for single-family homes, concentrated around train and high-frequency bus corridors where applicable.

Another amendment “reduces land-use requirements on resort communities, like Aspen and Vail.”

CPR’s Andrew Kenney posted an interesting photo April 17 showing around 150 people gathered at a “Cherry Hills Village Mansion” to oppose the bill giving people greater ability to use and develop their property as they see fit.

As you can imagine, this group of mostly older, wealthier white people opposing the building of more housing that largely would benefit younger, less-wealthy people drew some pointed comments.

Now, if rich people want to buy huge mansions, I have no problem with that. No one’s going to force them to tear down their mansions and build multi-unit housing complexes instead. The problem is when rich people turn to government force to prevent others from developing housing on their own property.

Denver New Liberals pointed to a new Pew article, “More Flexible Zoning Helps Contain Rising Rents.” Whoa—it’s almost like supply and demand matter. Here is part of the text (reproducing the links in the original):

Research shows that rents rise when more people need housing relative to how many homes are available. Restrictive zoning policies make it harder and more expensive to build new housing for everyone who wants it, and most researchers have found that this drives up home prices and rents. Rents usually rise quickly when an area has rapid job growth, an influx of new residents, or a surge in households.

But what happens to rents after new homes are built? Studies show that adding new housing supply slows rent growth—both nearby and regionally—by reducing competition among tenants for each available home and thereby lowering displacement pressures. This finding from the four jurisdictions examined supports the argument that updating zoning to allow more housing can improve affordability.

Meanwhile, Complete Colorado strangely seems to deny that more housing would lower housing costs.

I replied with a simple supply-demand graph. Other things equal, more supply brings down prices. Trust the science, man!

But let’s look at the Gazette article to which Complete points. The argument is not that density doesn’t bring down housing costs, but rather that other factors—specifically, other government interference—can be larger drivers.

One developer, Deviree Vallejo, told the paper, “Developers are already leaving the city and the metro area. They’re not going to build in Denver because they can’t make their proformas work.” The paper explains, “She added that she knows firms that are departing, some leaving the state, after putting a pencil to the costs of new affordable housing requirements adopted by the city of Denver last year.”

Okay, so somehow we shouldn’t allow people statewide to use and develop their property as they see fit in the context of land-use rules, because some other Denver regulations are driving out some developers? That’s ridiculous. The right answer is to expand economic liberty across the board.

Bottoms’s Trans-Exclusionary Rhetoric

Now standard within many Colorado conservative circles (as within many conservative circles more broadly) is to talk about transgender people as though they are inherently disturbed or delusional and in effect to claim that there is no such thing as an authentically transgender person.

Jon Caldara claims that referring to a transgender woman as a woman (or a transgender man as a man) is a lie. (See my previous exchange with Caldara.) Krista Kafer describes as “powerful” the claim that a transgender woman dressing as a woman is the equivalent of blackface. Lauren Boebert has described transgender people as “goomers,” likening them to sexual predators. So has state GOP leader Dave Williams.

Scott Bottoms, state representative and evangelical pastor, recently made overtly bigoted comments about transgender people.

Let’s back up to set the context. In early March, the House considered a resolution urging Congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (something I oppose because I think it would be used to undermine rather than to advance equal rights).

Bottoms took this opportunity to score culture-war points against transgender people, offering an amendment saying that women have a “right” to play sports and “to use a single-sex restroom and shower facilities” without the presence of “a biological male” (i.e., a transgender woman), the mere presence of whom Bottoms calls “sexual harassment.” Bottoms suggests that recognizing transgender identities “would obfuscate the very nature of what it means to be a woman.” On the floor, Brianna Titone, the state’s first and only transgender legislator, said, “My existence is not up for debate.”

More recently, as Heidi Beedle reports, Bottoms appeared on the Liberty Warrior Nation podcast, where he doubled down on his trans-exclusionary rhetoric:

Our entire Republican caucus got dressed down by a transgender representative [Titone] because I said—in a bill that had to do with children—a bunch of stuff like you cannot change XX and XY chromosomes. That is male and female, and you can dress differently, you can say things differently, but you can’t change that. When we do that, we are living in such a weird, warped, lie mentality that now the people that actually speak scientific truth about the very basic core of humanity—that there is male and female and that’s it—when that happens we become the pariah, and we got dressed down by the entire Democratic Caucus. They all went up and stood while this transgender representative said that we were all spewing hate because we said there’s only male and female.

When host Michael Poff claimed that “two things [cause] transgenderism,” “mental illness and . . . grooming at a very young age,” Bottoms did not disagree but instead added:

I do believe there’s a third category for why—I agree with your first two categories — but why people get into the LGBT community, not just transgender, but the entire community is abuse. They’ve been abused and they’re broken and they’re hurting and they go to the arena and embrace the arena where they are hurting because there is a justification there that deals with their pain and their condemnation and all the stuff that they do to themselves, and also outward influences. I would throw in your spiritual stuff that Satan does to them. They run straight to the very essence of how they were abused.

In Bottoms’s view, a transgender person, and, indeed, any LGBTQ person, is inherently disturbed or deranged. In this view, in an ideal world, no one would be transgender or anywhere else on the LGBTQ spectrum. In this view, the existence of any LGBTQ person is the result of some serious problem.

Bottoms said, “I don’t hate transgender or gay or any of the categories, I don’t.” Indeed, his church is trying to “help them”—i.e., “help them” not to be gay or transgender anymore.

Bottoms’s overt bigotry will shock any decent person. So will the Colorado conservative establishment ignoring, tolerating, or even openly embracing such bigotry.

Quick Takes

Swatting: “Falsely reporting an active shooter is on track to become a felony offense in Colorado,” the Sun reports. This is Bill 249. There have been “about 40” “major swatting incidents” so far this year!

Conservatives: Jason Salzman points out that “powerful conservative institutions” in Colorado have promoted election conspiracy mongering. Meanwhile, Salzman’s colleague Erik Maulbetsch reports, state “GOP Secretary Anna Ferguson” claimed online in 2021 that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are pedophiles.

Health: This is quite the headline from the Gazette: “None of Colorado’s largest hospitals are in compliance with federal pricing transparency law.”

Crime: Debate over a bill to limit criminal prosecution of children under 13 became testy, with Elisabeth Epps suggesting some of her colleagues are racists who talk over her. I’m not sure what I think of the bill; on one hand, I certainly want a light touch when it comes to putting kids in the criminal justice system; on the other hand, some young children can commit brutal crimes, and I’m not sure how those are handled under this bill. See the report by Colorado Politics.

Guns: “Sweeping semiautomatic weapons ban headed for Colorado legislative committee hearing,” Complete Colorado reports. This is not how to address the criminal misuse of guns.

Immigrants: Please watch Marc Sallinger’s beautiful ode to immigrants.