A $1.7 Million Toilet and Liberalism's Failure to Build

Рет қаралды 8,699

Күн бұрын

There is so much we need to build right now. The housing crunch has spread across the country; by one estimate, we’re a few million units short (www.axios.com/2023/12/16/hous...) . And we also need a huge build-out of renewable energy infrastructure - at a scale some experts compare (www.washingtonpost.com/climat...) to the construction of the Interstate highway system.
And yet, we’re not seeing anything close to the level of building that we need - even in the blue states and cities where housing tends to be more expensive and where politicians and voters purport to care about climate change and affordable housing.
Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at The Atlantic who obsesses over these questions as much as I do. In this conversation, she takes me through some of her reporting on local disputes that block or hinder projects, and what they say about the issues plaguing development in the country at large. We discuss how well-intentioned policies evolved into a Kafka-esque system of legal and bureaucratic hoops and delays; how clashes over development reveal a generational split in the environmental movement; and what it would take to cut decades of red tape.
Mentioned:
“Colorado’s Ingenious Idea for Solving the Housing Crisis (www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...) ” by Jerusalem Demsas
“The Culture War Tearing American Environmentalism Apart (www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...) ” by Jerusalem Demsas
“Why America Doesn’t Build (www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...) ” by Jerusalem Demsas
Book Recommendations:
Don’t Blame Us (press.princeton.edu/books/har...) by Lily Geismer
The Bulldozer in the Countryside (www.cambridge.org/core/books/...) by Adam Rome
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...) by George Saunders
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast (www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-k...) . Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-... (www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...) .
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Пікірлер: 77

@mnoot7209 Ай бұрын

Extremely important issue! Please do more on this topic. Thanks!

@DerrickHF Ай бұрын

Great topic. I run federal grant programs and have worked in federal, state, local, and as a contractor. These problems are so infuriating. We get so much less for our money than we should.

@erc9468 Ай бұрын

Yes. And we get the least for our money when then govt is involved the most. Regarding housing in particular we need the govt completely out of the way. Govt involvement is utterly corrupting to the process. These programs and laws are counterproductive. Especially the kinds of things that RFKJr is proposing.

@joiedevie3901 Ай бұрын

@@erc9468 Housing is a market-driven commodity, which by definition means that there are going to be people who cannot afford it. The demand is absolutely inelastic but that does not translate into purchasing power by all who need shelter. Market-driven supply means that profit must factor in and there is no way simply to "de-regulate" into enough housing supply to meet this demand. So if shelter is ever going to be accessible to all, which is what most Americans claim, at least, they want, then it can only be achieved by subsidy. No question that liberal states over-regulate out one side of their mouths while touting all this concern for the poor out the other side. But how do you propose to address housing? Purely through eleemosynary institutions with no regulations? Tried during the Guilded Age with no success. What is this "unfettered process" you cite that would address this problem?

@mnoot7209 Ай бұрын

@@joiedevie3901"Eleemosynary" - love it... had to look it up! 😊 Great comments. But I am sure deregulation can lower the cost of homes. I lived in Hawaii on BI where over-regulation, nepotism and tribalism abound and getting a house build permitted can take 7-20 years (by which time all the regs change). Many of the building codes & requirements are determined by the insurance industry. It's crazy. A few examples: - No building permits can be obtained without electrical hook-up, tho perhaps 80% of the island doesn't have electrical infrastructure so off-grid is a fact of life. - Houses now must have double-wall construction (traditionally single wall... it pretty much never drops below 60°) which means sheetrock, which promotes mold and sharply reduces airflow/ breathability in a mostly extreme humidity climate. - Houses are required to have a minimum of 2 outdoor electrical outlets. (These may not be the best examples, but I'm not a builder so I can't remember all.) I wanted to "build" a shipping container home. Lots of 40' shipping containers get permanently dropped in Hawaii, so they're abundantly available for $5-10K and waterproof. Technically they're a legal build, but effectively the bureaucracy makes them impossible to do legally with permits. They will not permit them. There are even requirements for "minimum square footage of 'livable space'" - which a 9'x40' shipping container probably doesn't meet. Tho in Hawaii, no one but Haoles spend much time indoors and all socialization and even cooking is mostly outdoors on the lanai or in the carport. [Re]Using a retired shipping container with an outdoor toilet and shower anyone could fabricate a beautiful livable tropical home for $30-40K inside of a month. Contrast this with a 1000sf stick built home that would take at least 5 years for permitting alone, then cost $400-500K to build. Some kind of home is better than no kind of home. Try to live in a rental and end up getting bumped out for an AirBnB conversion. If I put $50K into home and land combined, my property taxes are also low and affordable. Americans shouldn't shouldn't have to rely on charity or subsidies or grants. And we shouldn't be prohibited from relying upon our own ingenuity. Furthermore, I don't see why it's "ok" that major cities are now full of sprawling homeless camps, but industrious ingenuitive Americans are forbidden and fined for building their own homes at a price and sacrifice they can afford.

@matthewcaldwell8100 Ай бұрын

@@joiedevie3901 Yeah, they don't have one. They just assume that a sufficiently pure market is the most equitable means of distribution and wax fatalistic when it isn't.

@ianhomerpura8937 Ай бұрын

@@erc9468 wrong! When people are trying to stop housing and transit projects, the government MUST intervene - loosen zoning codes, build more transit lines, maybe repeal the Faircloth Amendment quotas and let the feds build public housing again.

@mikecannatelli2186 Ай бұрын

Good program, but you need to get your guest to not talk so fast. She's hard to listen to.

@dialetheic Ай бұрын

The Denver situation is wildly misrepresented by the Atlantic reporter here. Journalists should pick examples from their own backyard to talk about instead of cherry picking anomalies from across the country.

@Lucien00 Ай бұрын

Man this is sounded more like the reason podcast. Would love to hear Ezra interview thoughtful libertarians who are hyper focused on unintended consequences. The lack of care in looking how the policies claimed by the left to be important actually play out. It’s the thread of critique that made me look at team blue differently. Great work Ezra!

@matthewcaldwell8100 Ай бұрын

The difference is that libertarians are only hyperfocused on the unintended consequences of government policy, never corporate governance.

@Ryanandboys Ай бұрын

This is very important and I'm not sure it's possible for very blue areas to actually fix this problem. As you mentioned they're just too many groups that have very different ideas of what it should look like. I gave up and left Massachusetts for a rural red area where no ones even gets building permits and neighbors out here do not complain about what others do or how clean their yard it. I still have alot of friends and family near Boston and its sooo ridiculously hard to get approval and then the building cost 2-3x the Budget and is always 2 years late. The only answer is to drastically cut back the regulation and adjust legislation so environmental lawyers dont have standing to being forward lawsuits. I personally don't understand how someone can think they have the right to tell others what they can do with their own land. I couldnt care less what my neighbors do with their land.

@robertmarmaduke186 Ай бұрын

I worked in Seattle for a large developer running site candidate layouts and building BOMAs for the highest return, then going through the permit wringer paying literally $100,000s to 'consultants'. We had a crack at a property over in Eastern Washington, so I showed the permit department my rough layout and a BOMA buildout estimate ... just that, _and they started calculating the permit!_ Couldn't help myself. Wait wait, wait.... They said, 'That's all we needed to see."

@nivvy19 Ай бұрын

so nothing gets done and the degrowthers get their way because of all this litigation. what a sad, hilarious scam

@Kevenruf Ай бұрын

How does someone talk that fast.

@marikokelchen Ай бұрын

I had to check several times if I had it at double speed.

@catc8927 Ай бұрын

This upside is that this is an episode of The Ezra Klein Show that is actually less than an hour. 😆

@nathanielparker4421 Ай бұрын

i slowed it down and she sounds fine but Ezra sounds drunk

@DSTH323 Ай бұрын

Ezra, this lady is saying very important things of great interest to many, but could you please ask her to talk faster?

@Despondencymusic Ай бұрын

😂😂

@kentdenero Ай бұрын

Great podcast, as usual, but the Denver situation was more nuanced. We (I included) did everything Jerusalem said we did in a city and state where we have conservative liberals and liberal conservatives. Polis (in an election of Generation X candidates), was elected to be different than the real estate and oil and gas-friendly now Senator Hickenlooper. Polis ran against George Bush's cousin Walker Stapleton (whose great-grandfather had been the Mayor and a part of the KKK), who had beat out Mitt Romney's nephew. It seemed to many that the national parties were dropping in candidates at all levels to run for office. Polis, even though he was a Clintonian Democrat was more ours(a local). Combine this with a Democratic African American mayor who was pro-business, out of touch, and pro-developer and a majority Democrat city council being led by what appeared to be the Mayor's handpicked successor who also happened to represent that particular district where the golf course was/is. The district was leading in gentrification, school reform(school closings) and reverse mortgages. It was too much upheaval. We didn't trust the local government from the school board to the Mayor's office. We only slightly trusted the local house members but they too were divided while each had their hand in school reform or land development. At this time they were calling themselves New Democrats which we quickly learned meant, "I don't care who you sleep with, just keep the money flowing". We didn't care about the golf course we cared about what our city was becoming and who was running it between the gentrifiers, the newcomers, and the neopostmodern scalawags and carpetbaggers in a city where long time Boomers were being let go from jobs and experienced Xers were being passed up because it seemed cool to someone to give a job to a kid (Millenial) for marketing and social media post. We wanted the housing and needed the housing (still do) in a city where a biologist making 80k could qualify for low-income housing, we just didn't trust the people talking about it. Housing creates community and developers, real estate investors and school reform advocates (voucher and charter school promoters) with the help of local politicians had ripped the communityy apart by the time we got to the golf course. Now, the Park Hill Golf Course is undeveloped land that I drive past nearly every morning, I think I like it, like that and so do the birds and critters in a city running out of open space.

@mnoot7209 Ай бұрын

Thanks for the meaningful insight!

@jessa5388 Ай бұрын

Who do you think would have lived in that housing? The developers you didn't like, or biologists and their kids? I don't find these arguments convincing. Denver has a housing shortage. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

@kentdenero Ай бұрын

@@jessa5388 I think your point is fair. What I described above was a longer lens of where the developers of the golf course found themselves. They were outsiders who came into a district that was infighting (please be mindful that the development of this land was in itself a breach of a previous contract). The promoters for the golf course development were a group of Democratic politicians who had lost their social equity. They, as a Democratic mayor and city council, had deregulated a system that previously had required low-median income housing. Developers could now pay not to develop low-income or median housing when building on a large scale. This created a self-induced market scarcity, which meant all housing prices would rise. If you combine this with the demolishing of nearly 1000 low-income units the displacement of many of those long-time residents in that district, and a Mayor's Office that sat aside low-income housing to be bought by families, only for the media to report these houses were being sold at market rates to people who were not low income residents (another broken promise), a lot was going on. Did I mention as homelessness and rents increased the city council kept giving themselves raises? The person who many of us did trust was the former Black Mayor(as opposed to the one who was in office) who lived in the district with us because we had seen him fight for the housing mentioned above and we had seen him fight to make sure businesses paid their equal share of taxes. We hadn't seen any of that from the politicians that were currently in office. We had seen the opposite The fact that he was also against the development of the golf course carried more currency. I don't have a dislike for developers. I get how cities work. The biologist nor his/her children are the problem. The problem is that at 80k they qualify for an apartment as opposed to being able to buy a house. He/She has gone to school, they have bought into the dream, and now you're asking more out of them. That's the problem. You have deferred the dream.

@bernardzsikla5640 Ай бұрын

This topic is an issue that Republicans have been railing against for decades. I am a Reagan republican (who happens to despise maga) and I see the excesses on both political extremes. On one side, modern liberalism is ultimately self destructive. It keeps breaking people down to smaller and smaller fractions, while also grouping us into oppressed and oppressor. The right or the new right is just bat shit crazy, supporting policies that are just knee jerk reactions to the left. As in a 50ft tall, 1500 mile long border wall, at a cost of trillions of dollars, at the same time, possibly shutting down the government every 3 to 6 months. Worst, they don't believe they should or need to compromise one bit. Everyone please put on their seatbelt, there will be more turbulence ahead.

@mkearns60 Ай бұрын

I listen to Ezra because he IMHO does a fair job even though he is "liberal" however I literally spit my coffee out when I heard what this broadcast was about and his criticism of the left.......Clearly Ezra is trying to get himself suspended like another journalist.....Seriously keep up the good work, I usually dont agree with your perspective but feel like your fair.

@eaton55r 28 күн бұрын

Most of her comments are based on quick judgements, not good.

@ricklarson392 Ай бұрын

As a long-time resident of the Park Hill neighborhood in Denver, I can assure you that the speaker does not understand what really was happening in this recent referendum.

@W_Bin Ай бұрын

The whole presidential system is a disaster. The founders tried to create an elected king, copying England, which abolished it except in name only centuries ago. No one person can hope to competently run an entire modern country: corruption, incompetence and despotism is inevitable. The only way America will get democracy is through ministerial responsibility. You should have a dozen or so portfolios, including foreign affairs, defence, infrastructure, government owned entities, information, commerce, revenue, education, environment, internal security, courts, health, social welfare, etc; elected separately by STV, so people can vote for policies, not tribes. Maybe even 2-3 for each, so the community is reflected. Then they will be directly answerable, and you will have an administration that cares for its citizens

@Despondencymusic Ай бұрын

Interesting

@user-eq2hj6uy7p Ай бұрын

You could have a perfect political solution for housing but you will never get people like these two to pick up a hammer and actually build the house. They will form a committee to find someone to future out how to buy a hammer.

@MayorMcC666 Ай бұрын

grey environmentalisms tag line : YOU WILL EAT BUGS

@ianhomerpura8937 Ай бұрын

They're delicious though. Especially cicadas.

@hadiza1 Ай бұрын

💙🩶

@polyglot8 Ай бұрын

Talks too fast. Annoying. Can't listen anymore.

@WayneBeverly376 Ай бұрын

Despite all the financial struggles i and my family faced, everything is finally falling into place! $47,000 weekly profit and riches I'll always praise the Lord

@Chriscarr686 Ай бұрын

Same here, with my current portfolio made from my investments with my personal financial advisor I totally agree with you

@JesusRamirez59418 Ай бұрын

Angela Danielle has really set the standard for others to follow, we love her here in the UK as she has been really helpful and changed lots of life's

@minnesotajude Ай бұрын

This sounds so good and I would like to be a party to this, is there any way I can speak with her?

@Chriscarr686 Ай бұрын

Sure! She interacts on what's Apk using the digit below👇

@Chriscarr686 Ай бұрын

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@johnyawin388 Ай бұрын

Jerusalem Demsas talks too fast & is on the shrill side. As much as I valued the contents of your podcast, her voice was like nails on a chalkboard. I had to stop listening.

@joiedevie3901 Ай бұрын

His show typically provides a transcript within 24 hours of the broadcast.

@jeremy____5747 Ай бұрын

I set the speed at x0.75 and she's then easier to deal with, though still not great.

@Ryanandboys Ай бұрын

I guess I am from Massachusetts where we all talk fast lol I didn't notice it at all.

@jimdotson4184 Ай бұрын

Whoa slow down . Can’t hear that fast! Old.