Radical Right Reality Check

New Locke Foundation report claims the market will take care of everything

Consider the following basic difference between modern progressives and the market fundamentalist right.

For most progressives, the world is a complex and imperfect place in which humans struggle to address the problems that confront them - both individually and collectively. In this worldview, society makes use of public and private structures (government and the market) as part of an ongoing effort to build a better, freer, healthier, and fairer world.

While there is no perfect mix that works for every situation at every point in history, the basic idea is that it is possible for humans to progress over time and to do so in a collective and intentional way. Whether it's establishing a legal system that makes possible the ownership of private property and enforcement of contracts or building the  infrastructure (roads, schools, parks, public safety) that makes a community worth living in, progressives have faith in the idea of intentional solutions to the problems we confront.

The market fundamentalist right, in contrast, sees things in much starker terms. In this black and white worldview, there is only one true path - that of the unfettered "free market." Practically any government interference in the market is just that - "interference" and equivalent to "socialism." For just about any problem under the sun - from poverty to pollution - the answer is simply to encourage each individual to pursue his or her own self-interest. Virtually any attempt by society to use public institutions is counter-productive and amounts to "coercion" and a threat to individual "freedom."           

Affordable housing: Not a problem?

While perhaps relatively harmless when voiced by an actor dressed in a powdered wig at a right-wing think tank reenactment, in the real world, the "market as infallible God" belief system leads to a number of rather remarkable conclusions and recommendations. For instance, just a few weeks ago, the Raleigh-based John Locke Foundation released a report that purported to expose the evils of public greenways.

This past week, the group released the results of its latest foray into fundamentalist fantasyland - a new "regional brief" entitled "Un-affordable Housing: Cities keep low- and middle-income families from home ownership." According to this rather uneven and at times contradictory document, there is no real affordable housing shortage and any that exists is the result of intentional efforts to promote affordable housing - most notably the practice of "inclusionary zoning." Here are some excerpts:

"Dynamic metropolitan areas such as the Triangle automatically produce affordable housing without forcing builders to build it. As the incomes in an area rise, people buy larger, higher-priced homes leaving behind homes that sell at affordable prices. (Just as ‘affordable automobiles' are often found in the used-car market, affordable housing is typically found in the ‘used home' market.)"

The solution to any problem that does exist? Tell people to move:

"If city leaders are truly concerned about the welfare of all citizens, then they should avoid policies that increase prices and make housing unaffordable. If they want to help low-income people buy their own home, they should assist them in finding an affordable home not just in their community but wherever they are located."

Reality Check

While flawed on many levels here are three glaring shortcomings in the Locke report:

#1 - It's absurd to argue that there isn't a huge, unsatisfied need for affordable housing. The report argues that an unfettered market will (and does) produce plenty of affordable housing. As evidence of the supposed broad availability of "affordable" homes today it notes that there are a number of modest-priced houses advertised on Realtor.com - 350 of them in the Chapel Hill area alone! This argument is reminiscent of Ronald Reagan assuring the American people that there were plenty of jobs during the recession of the early 1980's by pointing them to the large number of want ads in the newspaper.

Uh, earth to the John Locke Foundation: The affordable housing problem isn't a matter of matching a couple of hundred would-be home buyers in each community with a used double-wide that's for sale. The point is that there are hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians living in housing that's of poor quality, overcrowded, in a bad neighborhood, sucking up too much of their income, and too far from their jobs.

While it's true that most people are in out of the rain (though homelessness remains a large and scandalous problem), this doesn't mean that the market has taken care of everything. To the contrary, it's failing a huge proportion of the population.

The ramifications of this chronic shortage are evident for all to see: families constantly shifting their addresses and their children's schools, health problems (like childhood asthma) brought on by a host of indoor environmental shortcomings, increased workforce absenteeism, increased traffic and sprawl as lower income commuters struggle to get from lower priced area to where the jobs are, and so on.

#2 - Affordable housing isn't just about homeownership. The main objective of the report seems to be to attack local efforts in four towns (Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Manteo and Davidson) that have experimented with promoting the construction of affordable single family homes. Here's how the "logic" works: "These towns have enacted some kinds of ‘inclusionary zoning' programs that provide incentives or requirements for developers to build some affordable housing as part of larger, more expensive developments. Since these programs were enacted, home prices in these towns have continued to rise. Therefore, such programs don't work."

But, of course, this is like arguing that highway safety programs don't work because there are still accidents. All four of the programs identified in the report are modest, small-scale efforts in small, highly desirable towns. To dismiss all intentional public efforts to promote affordable housing because a handful of partial, small-scale efforts haven't completely solved the problem is patently ridiculous. Inclusionary zoning has worked in hundreds of communities throughout the country.

Moreover, affordable housing is about more than inclusionary zoning for homeownership. For a huge proportion of the population (the poor, persons with disabilities, fixed income seniors), homeownership isn't an option at any price and decent apartments are simply out of reach. In the Triangle (the area highlighted in the Locke report) between 40 and 50% of renters do not earn enough to afford a fair market rate two-bedroom apartment. In Wake County, one must bring home at least $15.33 an hour ($31,800 per year).

These kinds of problems are not going to be solved by the unfettered market or simply providing incentives to single family homebuilders. These problems require public subsidies that keep multi-family developments affordable for decades. This is one of the things that the incredibly successful and publicly funded North Carolina Housing Trust Fund does so well. The state needs to invest more in such solutions.  

#3 - Planning and zoning are essential. According the report authors, a key threat to housing affordability is government regulation like "tree-protection ordinances, open space requirements, and architectural standards that require builders to build ‘aesthetically pleasing' buildings." The authors also lambaste Chapel Hill and Carrboro's maintenance of a "rural buffer" which they claim is "The factor that contributes most to unaffordable housing."

Obviously there is a kernel of truth in this argument. Planning and zoning can drive up prices. But what's the solution - completely unfettered sprawl? No more green space?  "Freedom" to build mobile homes in every neighborhood? Let's hear the authors sell those ideas to the societal Brahmins (and wannabes) who constitute their core supporters - particularly the last one.

The bottom line

Despite the Locke Foundation's protestations to the contrary, building and maintaining a vibrant and diverse community with a high quality of life is not a matter of simply turning the market loose and getting out of the way. Rather, it involves a never-ending series of complex calculations and balancing acts between public and private actions and actors. Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of housing policy - where, unless we want to emulate the third world model of warehousing low-income people in vast shanty towns and then importing them each day into the affluent areas, the public and private sectors must work together in a direct and intentional way to promote a healthy mix in every community. 

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 9:27 am and is filed under Radical Right Reality Check. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.