Housing Wars
New York Times economics reporter Conor
Dougherty has written an important book on the California housing crisis in
general and the locus of that crisis in the San Francisco Bay area. Normally
when I review books I do so through the lens of an educated reader. In this
case, if I am not an expert, I am close to it. From my vantage point of being
Senior Economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast and the UCLA Ziman Center for
Real Estate I have looked at reams of data on California housing and before
that I ran real estate research at Salomon Brothers. Further I served on
Governor Jerry Brown’s first housing task force in 1979. Yes it is a long
standing problem and it was there that I met developer Dennis O’Brien who is
featured in the Lafayette controversy discussed in the book.
What Dougherty gets right is the need
for fundamental zoning reform in California that would allow for substantially
increased densification in the major urban areas of the state. He is a
full-throated proponent of the legislation offered by California State Senator
Scott Wiener as am I. He also understands that there has to be a substantial
limitation on the lawsuits filed under the California Environmental Quality Act
(CEQA) that can delay projects for years and ultimately stop them altogether.
Thus the real enemy of increasing housing supply in California are an elite
group of people who I have identified in the past as “enviro-liberals.” In
California, a state that is oh so anti-Trump, the enviro-liberals use zoning to
accomplish the same thing as what Trump’s Wall is trying to do. What he doesn’t
say is that building trade unions use CEQA to force project labor agreements on
developers and that California’s prevailing wage laws substantially increase
the cost of housing.
Where Dougherty is squishy it is on the
topics of rent control and suburban development. On rent control his liberal
heart seems to over power is economics head. He uses the pejorative term “rent
gouging landlords.” The problem here is
that out-sized rent increases cannot be sustained without market support. It is
tenant competition for scarce space that triggers big rent increases thus
making rent control counter-productive. I know that all too well as I was the
expert witness for the Santa Monica Rent Control Board in case called Baker v.
Santa Monica that upheld the constitutionality of Santa Monica’s 1979 rent
control law.
With respect to suburban development
Dougherty is concerned about the climate impacts of low density housing on the
urban periphery. However many people prefer that lifestyle and if one is
serious about solving California’s housing problem, part of the solution is
suburban housing.
What makes Dougherty’s book a great read
is he brings real people into the dialogue. We see Hispanic families being
displaced and we see a fighting Catholic nun in Redwood City protecting tenants
and putting together donors and financing to buy up apartment buildings to turn
them into affordable units. We see a young and very spunky Sonja Trauss
creating a YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard) organization in San Francisco called BARF
(Bay Area Renters Federation) to advocate for developers to increase housing
supply. She reminds me of my much younger self where I was a leader in group
that successfully advocated for an affordable housing component in of Santa
Monica’s redevelopment projects.
Dougherty has written a very readable
and timely book on California’s housing crisis. It should be read by every
legislator, county supervisor and city council member in the state and his
zoning recommendations be acted upon.
For the full Amazon Review see:https://www.amazon.com/review/RIMCO9JQBR67C/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv
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