[Plura-list] The housing emergency and the second Trump term

[Cory Doctorow]

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/11/nimby-yimby-fimby/

Today's links

* The housing emergency and the second Trump term: Weaponized shelter gave us Trump II; can we fix it despite Trumpism?

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023

* Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.

* Recent appearances: Where I've been.

* Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.

* Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.

* Colophon: All the rest.

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💷 The housing emergency and the second Trump term

Postmortems and blame for the 2024 elections are thick on the ground, but amidst all those theories and pointed fingers, one explanation looms large and credible: the American housing emergency. If the system can't put a roof over your head, that system needs to go.

American housing has been in crisis for decades, of course, but it keeps getting worse...and worse...and *worse*. Americans pay more for worse housing than at any time in their history. Homelessness is at a peak that is soul-crushing to witness and maddening to experience. We turned housing - a human necessity second only to air, food and water - into an asset governed almost entirely by market forces, and so created a crisis that has consumed the nation.

The Trump administration has no plan to deal with housing. Or rather, they do have plans, but strictly of the "bad ideas only" variety. Trump wants to deport 11m undocumented immigrants, *and* their families, including citizens and Green Card holders (otherwise, that would be "family separation" and that's cruel). Even if you are the kind of monster who can set aside the ghoulishness of solving your housing problems by throwing someone in a concentration camp at gunpoint and then deporting them to a country where they legitimately fear for their lives, this *still* doesn't solve the housing emergency, and will leave America several million homes short.

Their other solution? Deregulation and tax cuts. We've seen this movie before, and it's an R-rated horror flick. Financial deregulation created the speculative mortgage markets that led to the 2008 housing crisis, which created a seemingly permanent incapacity to build new homes in America, as skilled tradespeople retired or changed careers and housebuilding firms left the market. Handing giant tax cuts to the monopolists who gobbled up the remains of these bankrupt small companies minted a dozen new housing billionaires who preside over companies that make *more* money than ever by building *fewer* homes:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91198443/housing-market-wall-streets-big-housing-market-bet-has-created-12-new-billionaires

This isn't working. Homelessness is ballooning. The only answer Trump and his regime have for our homeless neighbors is to just make it a crime to be homeless, sweeping up homeless encampments and busting homeless people for "loitering" (that is, existing in space). There is no universe in which this reduces homelessness. People who lose their homes aren't going to dig holes, crawl inside, and pull the dirt down on top of themselves. If anything, sweeps and arrests will make homelessness *worse*, by destroying the possessions, medication and stability that homeless people *need* if they are to become housed.

Today, *The American Prospect* published an *excellent* package on the housing emergency, looking at its causes *and* the road-tested solutions that can work even when the federal government is doing everything it can to make the problem worse:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-tackling-the-housing-crisis/

The Harris campaign ran on Biden's economic record, insisting that he had tamed inflation. It's true that the Biden admin took action against monopolists and greedflation, including criminal price-fixing companies like Realpage, which helps landlords coordinate illegal conspiracies to rig rents. Realpage sets the rents for the majority of homes in major metros, like Phoenix:

https://www.azag.gov/press-release/attorney-general-mayes-sues-realpage-and-residential-landlords-illegal-price-fixing

Of course, reducing *inflation* isn't the same as bringing prices down - it just means prices are going *up* more slowly. And sure, inflation is way down in many categories, but not in housing. In housing, inflation is *accelerating*:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-03-08/inflation-housing-shortage-economy-cpi-fed-interest-rate

The housing emergency makes everything else worse. Blue states are in danger of losing Congressional seats because people are leaving big cities: not because they want to, but because they literally can't afford to keep a roof over their heads. LGBTQ people fleeing fascist red state legislatures and their policies on trans and gay rights can't afford to move to the states where they will be allowed to simply live:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/business/economy/lgbtq-moving-cost.html

So what are the roots of this problem, and what can we do about it? The housing emergency doesn't have a unitary cause, but among the most important factors is fuckery that led to the Great Financial Crisis and the fuckery that followed on from it, as Ryan Cooper writes:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-housing-industry-never-recovered-great-recession/

The Glass-Steagall Act was a 1933 banking regulation created to prevent Great Depression-style market crashes. It was killed in 1999 by Bill Clinton, who declared, "the Glass–Steagall law is no longer appropriate." Nine years later, the global economy melted down in a Great Depression-style market crash fueled by reckless speculation of the sort that Glass-Steagall had prohibited.

The crash of 2008 took down all kinds of industries, but none were so hard-hit as home-building (after all, mortgages were the raw material of the financial bubble that poopped in 2008). After 2008, construction of new housing fell by *90%* for the next two years. This protracted nuclear winter in the housing market killed many associated industries. Skilled tradespeople retrained, or "left the job market" (a euphemism for becoming disabled, homeless, or destroyed). Waves of bankruptcies swept through the construction industry. The construction workforce didn't recover to pre-crisis levels for *16 years* (and of course, by then, there was a huge backlog of unbuilt homes, *and* a larger population seeking housing).

Meanwhile, the collapse of every part of the housing supply chain - from raw materials to producers - set the stage for monopoly rollups, with the biggest firms gobbling up all these distressed smaller firms. Thanks to this massive consolidation, homebuilders were able to build fewer houses *and* extract higher profits by gouging on price. They doubled down on this monopoly price-gouging during the pandemic supply shocks, raising prices well above the pandemic shortage costs.

The housing market is monopolized in ways that will be familiar to anyone angry about consolidation in other markets - from eyeglasses to pharma to tech. One builder, HR Horton, is the largest player in 3 of the country's largest markets, and it has tripled its profits since 2005 while building half as many houses. Modern homebuilders don't build: they use their scale to get land at knock-down rates, slow-walk the planning process, and then farm out the work to actual construction firms at rates that barely keep the lights on:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/its-the-land-stupid-how-the-homebuilder

Monopolists can increase profits by *constraining* supply. 60% of US markets are "highly concentrated" and the companies that dominate these markets are starving homebuilding in them to the tune of $106b/year:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3303984

There are some obvious fixes to this, but they are either unlikely under Trump (antitrust action to break up builders based on their share in each market) or impossible to imagine (closing tax loopholes that benefit large building firms). Likewise, we could create a "homes guarantee" that would act as an "automatic stabilizer." That would mean that any time the economy slips into recession, this would trigger automatic funding to pay firms to build public housing, thus stimulating the economy *and* alleviating the housing supply crisis:

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf

The Homes Guarantee is further explained in a separate article in the package by Sulma Arias from People's Action, who describes how grassroots activists fighting redlining planted the seeds of a legal guarantee of a home:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-why-we-need-homes-guarantee/

Arias describes the path to a right to a home as running through the mass provision of public housing - and what makes *that* so exciting is that public housing can be funded, administered and built by local or state governments, meaning this is a thing that can happen even in the face of a hostile or indifferent federal regime.

In Paul E Williams's story on FIMBY (finance in my back yard), the executive director of Center for Public Enterprise offers an inspirational story of how local governments can provide thousands of homes:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-fimby-finance-in-my-backyard/

Williams recounts the events of 2021 in Montgomery County, Maryland, where a county agency stepped in to loan money to a property developer who had land, zoning approval and work crews to build a major new housing block, but couldn't find finance. Montgomery County's Housing Opportunities Commission made a short-term loan at market rates to the developer.

By 2023, the building was up and the loan had been repaid. All 268 units are occupied and a third are rented at rates tailored to low-income tenants. The HOC is the permanent owner of those homes. It worked so well that Montgomery's HOC is on track to build *3,000* more public homes this way:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/affordable-housing-montgomery-county.html

Other - in red states! - have followed suit, with lookalike funds and projects in Atlanta and Chattanooga, with "dozens" more plans underway at state and local levels. The Massachusetts Momentum Fund is set to fund *40,000* homes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/affordable-housing-montgomery-county.html

The Center for Public Enterprise has a whole report on these "Government Sponsored Enterprises" and the role they can play in creating a supply of homes priced at a rate that working people can afford:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-fimby-finance-in-my-backyard/

Of course, for a GSE to loan money to build a home, that home has to be *possible*. YIMBYs are right to point to restrictive zoning as a major impediment to building new homes, and Robert Cruickshank from California YIMBY has a piece breaking down the strategy for fixing zoning:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-make-it-legal-to-build/

Cruickshank lays out NIMBY success stories in cities like Austin and Minneapolis adopting YIMBY-style zoning rules and seeing significant improvements in rental prices. These success stories are representative of a broader recognition - at least among Democratic politicians - that restrictive zoning is a major contributor to the housing emergency.

Repeating these successes in the rest of the country will take a long time, and in the meantime, American tenants are sitting ducks for predatory landlords, With criminal enterprises like Realpage enabling collusive price-fixing for housing and monopoly developers deliberately restricting supplies to keep prices up (a recent Blackrock investor communique gloated over the undersupply of housing as a source of profits for its massive portfolio of rental properties), tenants pay more and more of their paychecks for worse and worse accommodations. They can't wait for the housing emergency to be solved through zoning changes and public housing. They need relief *now*.

That's where tenants' unions come in, as Ruthy Gourevitch and Tara Raghuveer of the Tenant Union Federation writes in their piece on the tenants across the country who are coordinating rent strikes to protest obscene rent-hikes and dangerous living conditions:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-look-for-the-tenant-union/

They describe a country where tenants work multiple jobs, send the majority of their take-home pay to their landlords - a quarter of tenants pay *70%* of their wages in rent - and live in vermin-filled homes without heat or ventilation:

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/terms-of-investment/

Public money from Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac flood into the speculative market for multifamily homes, a largely unregulated, subsidized speculative bonanza that lets the wealthy make bets and the poor pay their losses.

In response, tenants unions are popping up all across the country, especially in red state cities like Bozeman, MT and Louisville, KY. They organize for "just cause" evictions that ban landlords from taking their homes away. They seek fair housing voucher distribution practices. They seek to close eviction loopholes like the LA wheeze that lets landlords kick you out following "renovations."

The National Tenant Policy Agenda demands "national rent caps, anti-eviction protections, habitability standards, and antitrust action," measures that would immediately and profoundly improve the lives of millions of American workers:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JF1-fTalW1tOBO0FhYDcVvEd1kQ2HIzkYFNRo6zmSsg/edit

They caution that it's not enough to merely increase housing supply. Without a strong countervailing force from organized tenants, new housing can be just another source of extraction and speculation for the rich. They say that the Federal Housing Finance Agency - regulator for Fannie and Freddie - could play an active role in ensuring that new housing addresses the needs of people, not corporations.

In the meantime, a tenants' union in KC successfully used a rent strike - where every tenant in a building refuses to pay rent - to get millions in overdue repairs. More strikes are planned across the country.

The American system is in crisis. A country that cannot house its people is a failure. As Rachael Dziaba writes in the final piece for the package, the situation is so bad that water has started to flow uphill: the cities with the most inward migration have the *least* job growth:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-10-18-housing-blues/

It's not just housing, of course. Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the rich world and get worse outcomes than anyone else in the rich world. Their monopoly grocers have spiked their food prices. The incoming administration has declared war on public education and seeks to relegate poor children to unsupervised schools where "education" can consist of filling in forms on a Chromebook and learning that the Earth is only 5,000 years old.

A system that can't shelter, feed, educate or care for its people is a failure. People in failed states will vote for *anyone* who promises to tear the system down. The decision to turn life's necessities over to unregulated, uncaring markets has produced a populace who are so desperate for change, they'll even vote for their own destruction.

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💷 Hey look at this

* Luigi's Manifesto https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto

* Waiting for Takeoff: The short-term impact of AI adoption on firm productivity https://dais.ca/reports/waiting-for-takeoff/

* Debanking (and Debunking?) https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunking/

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💷 This day in history

#15yrsago Mall cops in Norwich, England get police powers https://web.archive.org/web/20091220231959/http://www.edp24.co.uk/content/edp24/news/story.aspx

#15yrsago Kenyan bike-mechanic’s homemade tools https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEeyY09YzEY

#15yrsago Science fiction fandom is 80 today https://web.archive.org/web/20091214023834/http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58405

#15yrsago English anti-terror cops ask nursery school workers to watch 4 year olds for signs of “radicalization” https://web.archive.org/web/20100106032907/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6952503.ece

#15yrsago Just look at this awesome EU banana curvature regulation. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:1994R2257:20060217:EN:PDF

#15yrsago Anti-Olympic mural censored in Vancouver https://web.archive.org/web/20091214014017/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/vancouver-orders-removal-of-anti-olympic-mural/article1396541/

#15yrsago RIAA, MPAA and US Chamber of Commerce declare war on blind and disabled people https://web.archive.org/web/20091214062920/https://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/blind_block/

#15yrsago Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border https://memex.craphound.com/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canadian-science-fiction-writer-beaten-and-arrested-at-us-border/

#10yrsago Google News shuts down in Spain https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop-spain-thanks-ancillary-copyright-law

#10yrsago Calling out the doctors who abetted CIA torture https://kottke.org/14/12/medical-profession-aided-cia-torture

#10yrsago Lawquake! Judge rules that explaining jailbreaking isn’t illegal https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/pointing-users-drm-stripping-software-isnt-copyright-infringement-judge-rules

#10yrsago We know you love privacy, Judge Posner. We just wish you’d share. https://www.techdirt.com/2014/12/09/judge-posner-says-nsa-should-be-able-to-get-everything-that-privacy-is-overrated/

#10yrsago Furry convention evacuated after chlorine-gas attack https://www.themarysue.com/furry-con-terrorist-attack/

#5yrsago Twitter wants to develop an open, decentralized, federated social media standard…and then join it https://www.techdirt.com/2019/12/11/twitter-makes-bet-protocols-over-platforms/

#5yrsago The true nature of creativity: pilfering and recombining the work of your forebears (who, in turn, pilfered and recombined) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB1KE5dbOZo

#5yrsago South Carolina’s feudal magistrate system may take a modest step toward modernization https://www.propublica.org/article/we-investigated-magistrates-now-lawmakers-want-to-overhaul-the-system

#1yrago Daddy-Daughter Podcast 2023 https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/11/daddy-daughter-2023/#not-bye

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💷 Upcoming appearances

* IA et “merdification“ d’internet: peut-on envisager un nouveau web? (Remote), Dec 12
https://www.unige.ch/comprendre-le-numerique/conferences-publiques1/cycle-5-2024-2025/ia-et-merdification-dinternet-peut-envisager-un-nouveau-web/

* Should a Public Telecom Be An Election Issue/Davenport NDP (Remote), Dec 15
https://www.davenportndp.ca/public_telecom_town_hall

* ISSA-LA Holiday Celebration keynote (Los Angeles), Dec 18
https://issala.org/event/issa-la-december-18-dinner-meeting/

* Picks and Shovels with Charlie Jane Anders (Menlo Park), Feb 17
https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow

* Picks and Shovels with Dan Savage (Seattle), Feb 19
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989

* Cloudfest (Europa Park), Mar 17-20
https://cloudfest.link/

* DeepSouthCon63 (New Orleans), Oct 10-12, 2025
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

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💷 Recent appearances

* Can we avoid the enshittification of clean-energy tech? (Volts.wtf)
https://www.volts.wtf/p/can-we-avoid-the-enshittification

* Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (HOPE XV)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrciT_dc2sc&list=PLcajvRZA8E0_tLLEh1COeAv-TcaDna2k1&index=32

* How To Keep IoT From Becoming An IoTrash (Def Con)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA7bpp8qXxI

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💷 Latest books

* The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

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💷 Upcoming books

* Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

* Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

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💷 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast:
  Spill, part six (FINALE) (a Little Brother story) https://craphound.com/littlebrother/2024/12/08/spill-part-six-finale-a-little-brother-story/

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