Why Are We Fighting?
Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free.
This week's newsletter is a response to a recent essay in The Federalist that makes a conservative case against New Urbanism and its "assault" on property rights and the single-family zoning restrictions that protect them.
Contradictory as it may seem, the argument that choice and property rights are best protected by regulations that limit choice and property rights is not uncommon in housing policy discussions.
It's a byproduct of lots of varying ideologies and urban planning approaches trying to foist a particular vision on everyone else, all with partial success.
The result is a lot of unnecessary arguments about the type of housing people actually want and the regulations necessary to ensure they don't voluntarily buy or rent something they don't want.
Over at The Federalist yesterday, former first-term Trump administration officials Johnathan and Paige Bronitsky have a broadside attack on the "New Urbanist" plot to "bulldoze the suburban American dream" and the conservatives who've been hoodwinked into supporting it.
There are "two faces" of this ideology, they write:
On one end, you have high-density urbanism, where developers — in cahoots with machine politicians — cram as many people as possible into apartment blocks, eliminating cars and personal space under the guise of environmentalism and a sense of community. On the other, you have the faux-traditional, highly regulated enclaves of Seaside and Celebration, Florida, prohibitively expensive and ironically more artificial than the suburban developments they criticize.
Despite their aesthetic differences, both forms of New Urbanism share a common goal: reengineering American life by discouraging homeownership.
Conservatives, the authors continue, have been bamboozled into thinking this dystopia would be a positive improvement by an oddball collection of profit-hungry developers, leftists, and "crony capitalist" libertarians interested only in control and creating a permanent rentier class.
Right-thinking right-wingers need to reject this "high-density, corporatist nightmare" in favor of "spacious, family-friendly suburbs where liberty thrives."
You can read the whole thing here.
There are plenty of critiques one could make of New Urbanism on free market and property rights grounds. It's a movement that does indeed have a highly particular vision for how communities should look that is highly critical of post-war suburban sprawl. They're more than willing to use regulation to set everything right.
Yet, the authors of The Federalist essay can't decide if they want to criticize New Urbanism for constraining people's choices or for giving people choices beyond the standard post-war single-family neighborhood.
The result is a contradictory tangle of critiques.
The authors attack New Urbanists for discouraging homeownership. They also attack the New Urbanist–planned community of Seaside, which the Census Bureau reports has a 97 percent homeownership rate—well above Florida's overall homeownership rate of 67 percent.
To be sure, the authors support affordable communities of single-family owner-occupiers, whereas overregulation in tiny Seaside (which covers less than half a census tract) has made it prohibitively expensive. One might say the same of many non–New Urbanist single-family-zoned neighborhoods of equal size across the country.
We're told that New Urbanists are engaged in an "assault" on property rights. Through federal fair housing rules, they've also eroded "local control over zoning law" that happens to restrict people's property rights too.
"Machine politicians" are trying to force everyone into family-unfriendly high-density housing. Instead, we need "policies that encourage more single-family homes." That would also seem to involve politicians putting their thumbs on the scales of how people live.
Profit-seeking multifamily developers cynically pushed for the erosion of local zoning rules just to squeeze a buck. Do the builders of single-family homes operate their businesses as charities?
New Urbanist–planned communities are allegedly secular wastelands bereft of houses of worship. That would seem to ignore the pious urbanist planned communities like Florida's Ave Maria. Standard single-family zoning rules, it should be said, are often not particularly friendly to churches trying to operate soup kitchens and cold-weather shelters.
The list goes on.
The Federalist essay is just one entry into an ongoing back-and-forth on the larger fight between free marketeers who support liberalizing zoning rules and zoning defenders who use the language of freedom and localism to support keeping those limits on property rights in place.
These two factions were very much at war within the first Trump White House, when administration policy and rhetoric swung wildly between the pro- and anti-zoning poles.
More broadly, the Federalist essay is part of a blinkered discourse that's deployed by suburban partisans and urbanist advocates of all political persuasions.
Each side criticizes regulations that limit their preferred type of development and subsidies to development they consider second-best. (Typically, some weird constellation of partisan political foes and cynical capitalists are behind these nefarious regulations and subsidies.)
Each side also either ignores, or outright advocates for, regulations that limit the type of housing they think is second-best and subsidizes their preferred option.
The Bronitskys' essay is a good example of this hypocrisy being deployed in favor of the suburbs and standard zoning regulations.
But their New Urbanist targets do this all the time too.
New Urbanist "middle housing" reforms are pitched (correctly) as a way of expanding choice for buyers and renters. Often those reforms are paired with "McMansion bans" that restrict large single-family home development.
Transit-oriented zoning can allow new apartments and shops near bus and train lines. The same zoning reforms can also ban new drive-thrus, gas stations, and low-density development.
Odds are that in any decent-sized American city, you can find zoning districts that offend the sensibilities of both urbanists and suburbanists. With everyone trying to impose their prescriptive vision on society as a whole, everyone has some basis to claim that land-use regulations are threatening their preferred community and lifestyle.
Truly, it does not need to be this way.
Despite the Bronitskys' pot-shot at "doctrinaire libertarians"(a pot-shot plenty of New Urbanists might nod along to), a libertarian approach to land use would allow both sides of the land use wars to disarm.
Free markets give people want they want at the price they're willing and able to pay. It's a setup that respects people's freedom while sorting out their preferences in the aggregate.
Odds are free markets in housing would produce lots of single-family homes in low-density suburbs, lots of walkable communities full of middle housing that's missing no more, and lots of urban blocks where apartments and ground-floor retail go together like milk and coffee.
None of these neighborhood types are bad things to want. None inherently conflict with each other. If one type of housing ends up predominating in this new free market in land use, so be it.
By overregulating what people can build and where, we have put ourselves in a position of trying to reverse engineer people's housing preferences with white papers, charter documents, and confused, contentious opinion essays.
It's exhausting and inefficient. There's a better way.
Gothamist reports on the odd phenomenon of affordable apartments in New York City sitting empty for months. This isn't the result of landlords holding units off the market to drive up prices. Instead, it's the product of city regulations that put absurd limits on subsidized unit owners' ability to market to tenants.
A zoning fight is getting personal in the community of Campton Hills, Illinois, where Village Trustee Janet Burson has been cited for operating a prohibited home-based massage business. The village's administrator says that Burson flipped him off when he confronted her about taking down language on her business website offering home-based appointments. Burson does not deny the accusation, telling the Daily Herald, "I do not deny I was uncouth. The ask was inappropriate. They had no business asking me to do anything with it."
Portland, Oregon's citywide fourplex legalization is starting to take off. Michael Andersen of the Sightline Institute shared new data on Bluesky showing middle housing units enabled by the city's reform accounted for a quarter of new development last year.
Donald Shoup, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Luskin School of Public Affairs and popularizing crusader against the high cost of free parking, has died.
Former Texas legislator and first-term Trump administration official Scott Turner has been confirmed as the next secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Cambridge, Massachusetts, also voted to legalize four-story housing citywide.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency halts federal grants for migrant housing in New York.
The post Why Are We Fighting? appeared first on Reason.com.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
8 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
NATO leaders are set to agree a historic defense spending pledge, but the hike won't apply to all
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — NATO leaders are expected to agree this week that member countries should spend 5% of their gross domestic product on defense, except the new and much vaunted investment pledge will not apply to all of them. Spain has reached a deal with NATO to be excluded from the 5% of GDP spending target, while President Donald Trump said the figure shouldn't apply to the United States, only its allies. In announcing Spain's decision Sunday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the spending pledge language in NATO's final summit communique — a one-page text of perhaps half a dozen paragraphs — would no longer refer to 'all allies.' It raises questions about what demands could be insisted on from other members of the alliance like Belgium, Canada, France and Italy that also would struggle to hike security spending by billions of dollars. On Friday, Trump insisted the U.S. has carried its allies for years and now they must step up. 'I don't think we should, but I think they should,' he said. 'NATO is going to have to deal with Spain.' Trump also branded Canada 'a low payer.' NATO's new spending goals The 5% goal is made up of two parts. The allies would agree to hike pure defense spending to 3.5% of GDP, up from the current target of at least 2%, which 22 of the 32 countries have achieved. Money spent to arm Ukraine also would count. A further 1.5% would include upgrading roads, bridges, ports and airfields so armies can better deploy, establishing measures to counter cyber and hybrid attacks and preparing societies for future conflict. The second spending basket is easy for most nations, including Spain. Much can be included. But the 3.5% on core spending is a massive challenge. Last year, Spain spent 1.28% of GDP on its military budget, according to NATO estimates, making it the alliance's lowest spender. Sánchez said Spain would be able to respect its commitments to NATO by spending 2.1% of GDP on defense needs. Spain also is among Europe's smallest suppliers of arms and ammunition to Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute, which tracks such support. It's estimated to have sent about 800,000 euros ($920,000) worth of military aid since Russia invaded in 2022. Beyond Spain's economic challenges, Sánchez has other problems. He relies on small parties to govern and corruption scandals have ensnared his inner circle and family members. He is under growing pressure to call an early election. Why the spending increase is needed There are solid reasons for ramping up spending. The Europeans believe Russia's war on Ukraine poses an existential threat to them. Moscow has been blamed for a major rise in sabotage, cyberattacks and GPS jamming incidents. European leaders are girding their citizens for the possibility of more. The alliance's plans for defending Europe and North America against a Russian attack require investments of at least 3%, NATO experts have said. All 32 allies have endorsed these. Each country has been assigned 'capability targets' to play its part. Spanish Foreign Minister José Albares said Monday that 'the debate must be not a raw percentage but around capabilities.' He said Spain 'can reach the capabilities that have been fixed by the organization with 2.1%.' Countries much closer to Russia, Belarus and Ukraine all have agreed to reach the target, as well as nearby Germany, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, which is hosting the two-day summit starting Tuesday. The Netherlands estimates NATO's defense plans would force it to dedicate at least 3.5% to core defense spending. That means finding an additional 16 billion to 19 billion euros ($18 billion to $22 billion). Setting a deadline It's not enough to agree to spend more money. Many allies haven't yet hit an earlier 2% target that they agreed in 2014 after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. So an incentive is required. The date of 2032 has been floated as a deadline. That is far shorter than previous NATO targets, but military planners estimate Russian forces could be capable of launching an attack on an ally within five to 10 years. The U.S. insists it cannot be an open-ended pledge and a decade is too long. Still, Italy says it wants 10 years to hit the 5% target. The possibility of stretching that period to 2035 also has been on the table for debate among NATO envoys. An official review of progress could also be conducted in 2029, NATO diplomats have said. ___ Suman Naishadham in Madrid contributed to this report.
Boston Globe
14 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Alarm grows after the US inserts itself into Israel's war against Iran. Follow live updates.
UN nuclear agency says significant damage expected at Iranian underground site — 5:09 a.m. .cls-1{clip-path:url(#clippath);}.cls-2,.cls-3{fill:none;}.cls-2,.cls-3,.cls-4{stroke-width:0px;}.cls-5{clip-path:url(#clippath-1);}.cls-3{clip-rule:evenodd;} Link copied By the Associated Press The head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said Monday that 'very significant damage' is expected at Iran's underground facility at Fordo after a U.S. airstrike there this weekend with sophisticated bunker-buster bombs. Advertisement Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, made the statement in Vienna. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Given the explosive payload utilized and the extreme vibration sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred,' Grossi said. UK's Lammy says US not going after Iran's 'civilian leadership' — 4:02 a.m. .cls-1{clip-path:url(#clippath);}.cls-2,.cls-3{fill:none;}.cls-2,.cls-3,.cls-4{stroke-width:0px;}.cls-5{clip-path:url(#clippath-1);}.cls-3{clip-rule:evenodd;} Link copied By the Associated Press Britain's foreign minister says he is confident the US is not seeking to overthrow Iran's government despite a social media post from President Trump suggesting it might be a good idea. Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Monday that 'it's clear from Israel and the United States that they're not going after the civilian leadership' in Tehran. He said 'that's not what's under consideration at this time.' Lammy said he spoke to Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday, and the UK is pushing to 'get the Iranians back to serious diplomacy.' Advertisement Lammy told the BBC he has 'not seen an assessment yet' of whether the strikes 'seriously degraded Iran's ability to come up with a nuclear program.' He added that 'ultimately this has to be dealt with by diplomacy.' Iran has a 'free hand' to act against US interests, top general says — 3:52 a.m. .cls-1{clip-path:url(#clippath);}.cls-2,.cls-3{fill:none;}.cls-2,.cls-3,.cls-4{stroke-width:0px;}.cls-5{clip-path:url(#clippath-1);}.cls-3{clip-rule:evenodd;} Link copied By the Associated Press Iranian Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi, the chief of joint staff of armed forces, warned the US on Monday that its strikes gave a 'free hand' to Iranian armed forces to 'act against US interests and its army.' Mousavi stressed Iran would not hesitate to do so after the US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday. He described the American attack as violating Iran's sovereignty, entering the Israeli war on the country and being tantamount to invading the country. The state-run IRNA news agency reported Mousavi's remarks. North Korea condemns US strikes on Iran — 2:55 a.m. .cls-1{clip-path:url(#clippath);}.cls-2,.cls-3{fill:none;}.cls-2,.cls-3,.cls-4{stroke-width:0px;}.cls-5{clip-path:url(#clippath-1);}.cls-3{clip-rule:evenodd;} Link copied By the Associated Press North Korea says it 'strongly condemns' the US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, calling it an egregious violation of Iran's territorial integrity and security interests. North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday that the United States and Israel were escalating tensions in the Middle East through the use of military force, and called on the 'just-minded international community' to raise a unified voice against their 'confrontational behavior.' During his first term, President Trump met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times in 2018 and 2019, but their diplomacy collapsed over disagreements in exchanging the release of US-led sanctions against North Korea and the North's steps to wind down its nuclear and missile program. Kim has since accelerated his arms development while ignoring talk offers by Washington and Seoul. Advertisement He has shifted the priority of his foreign policy to Russia, sending thousands of troops and huge shipments of military equipment to fuel Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine. Pakistan condemns Trump for bombing Iran after recommending him for a Nobel Peace Prize — 1:15 a.m. .cls-1{clip-path:url(#clippath);}.cls-2,.cls-3{fill:none;}.cls-2,.cls-3,.cls-4{stroke-width:0px;}.cls-5{clip-path:url(#clippath-1);}.cls-3{clip-rule:evenodd;} Link copied By the Associated Press Pakistan condemned President Trump for bombing Iran, less than 24 hours after saying he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for defusing a recent crisis with India. Relations between the two South Asian countries plummeted after a massacre of tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir in April. The nuclear-armed rivals stepped closer to war in the weeks that followed, attacking each other until intense diplomatic efforts, led by the US, resulted in a truce for which Trump took credit. It was this 'decisive diplomatic intervention and pivotal leadership' that Pakistan praised in an effusive message Saturday night on the X platform when it announced its formal recommendation for him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Less than 24 hours later, however, it condemned the US for attacking Iran, saying the strikes 'constituted a serious violation of international law' and the statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
CNN
19 minutes ago
- CNN
Supreme Court prepares to release major opinions on birthright citizenship, LGBTQ books, porn sites
From digging into President Donald Trump's battle with the courts to deciding whether people can be required to identify themselves before viewing porn online, the Supreme Court in the coming days will deliver its most dramatic decisions of the year. With most of its pending rulings complete, the justices are now working toward issuing the final flurry of opinions that could have profound implications for the Trump administration, the First Amendment and millions of American people. Already, the conservative Supreme Court has allowed states to ban transgender care for minors — a blockbuster decision that could have far-reaching consequences — sided with the Food and Drug Administration's denial of vaping products and upheld Biden-era federal regulations that will make it easier to track 'ghost guns.' Here are some of the most important outstanding cases: The first argued appeal involving Trump's second term has quickly emerged as the most significant case the justices will decide in the coming days. The Justice Department claims that three lower courts vastly overstepped their authority by imposing nationwide injunctions that blocked the president from enforcing his order limiting birthright citizenship. Whatever the justices say about the power of courts to halt a president's executive order on a nationwide basis could have an impact beyond birthright citizenship. Trump has, for months, vociferously complained about courts pausing dozens of his policies with nationwide injunctions. While the question is important on its own — it could shift the balance of power between the judicial and executive branches — the case was supercharged by the policy at issue: Whether a president can sign an executive order that upends more than a century of understanding, the plain text of the 14th Amendment and multiple Supreme Court precedents pointing to the idea that people born in the US are US citizens. During the May 15 arguments, conservative and liberal justices seemed apprehensive to let the policy take effect. The high court is also set to decide whether a school district in suburban Washington, DC, burdened the religious rights of parents by declining to allow them to opt their elementary-school children out of reading LGBTQ books in the classroom. As part of its English curriculum, Montgomery County Public Schools approved a handful of books in 2022 at issue. One, 'Prince & Knight,' tells the story of a prince who does not want to marry any of the princesses in his realm. After teaming up with a knight to slay a dragon, the two fall in love, 'filling the king and queen with joy,' according to the school's summary. The parents said the reading of the books violated their religious beliefs. The case arrived at the Supreme Court at a moment when parents and public school districts have been engaged in a tense struggle over how much sway families should have over instruction. The Supreme Court's conservative majority signaled during arguments in late April that it would side with the parents in the case, continuing the court's yearslong push to expand religious rights. The court is juggling several major cases challenging the power of federal agencies. One of those deals with the creation of a task force that recommends which preventive health care services must be covered at no cost under Obamacare. Though the case deals with technical questions about who should appoint the members of a board that makes those recommendations, the decision could affect the ability of Americans to access cost-free services under the Affordable Care Act such as certain cancer screenings and PrEP drugs that help prevent HIV infections. During arguments in late April, the court signaled it may uphold the task force. The court also seemed skeptical of a conservative challenge to the Universal Service Fund, which Congress created in 1996 to pay for programs that expand broadband and phone service in rural and low-income communities. Phone companies contribute billions to that fund, a cost that is passed on to consumers. A conservative group challenged the fund as an unconstitutional 'delegation' of the power of Congress to levy taxes. If the court upholds the structure of the programs' funding, that would represent a departure from its trend in recent years of limiting the power of agencies to act without explicit approval from Congress. For years, the Supreme Court has considered whether congressional districts redrawn every decade violate the rights of Black voters under the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. This year, the justices are being asked by a group of White voters whether Louisiana went so far in adding a second Black-majority district that it violated the 14th Amendment. The years-old, messy legal battle over Louisiana's districts raises a fundamental question about how much state lawmakers may think about race when drawing congressional maps. The answer may have implications far beyond the Bayou State, particularly if a majority of the court believes it is time to move beyond policies intended to protect minority voters that were conceived during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Arguments in the case, which took place in March, were mixed. A ruling against Louisiana would likely jeopardize the state's second Black and Democratic-leaning congressional district, currently held by Rep. Cleo Fields, a Democrat. And any change to Fields' territory could affect the boundaries of districts held by House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. The justices will also decide a fight that erupted in 2018 when South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster yanked Medicaid funding for the state's two Planned Parenthood clinics. Technically, the legal dispute isn't about abortion — federal and state law already bar Medicaid from paying for that procedure — but a win for South Carolina could represent a financial blow to an entity that provides access to abortion in many parts of the country. McMaster, a Republican, argued the payments were a taxpayer subsidy for abortion. McMaster's order had the effect of also blocking patients from receiving other services at Planned Parenthood. A patient named Julie Edwards, who has diabetes, and Planned Parenthood South Atlantic sued the state, noting that federal law gives Medicaid patients a right to access care at any qualified doctor's office willing to see them. The legal dispute for the court deals with whether Medicaid patients have a right to sue to enforce requirements included in spending laws approved by Congress — in this case, the mandate that patients can use the benefit at any qualified doctor's office. Without a right to sue, Planned Parenthood argues, it would be impossible to enforce those requirements. The Supreme Court has tended to view such rights-to-sue with skepticism, though a 7-2 majority found such a right in a related case two years ago. The court is expected to release more opinions Thursday and will need at least one other day — and possibly several more — to finish its work.
