How Did Blocking Stuff Become Left-Coded?
It’s clearly a conservative thing to do
There seems to be a very measured, reasonable riot brewing among us technocratic center-left types: We’re fed up with low-benefit procedural roadblocks holding up housing, green energy, and infrastructure. Ezra Klein’s glasses seem to be fogged up with rage. Pollster Lakshya Jain had a tweet thread go viral that basically said “get it together you clowns”. And L.A. mayor Karen Bass has caused the pro-growth left to grab our…well not torches and pitchforks, but laptops and white papers, with this comment:
“I think that developers are willing to build affordable housing and lower income housing. I mean, developers are expecting a profit, and there are some developers that are willing to accept a lower profit. We found that when we did executive directives at expedited they were very willing to do that. But you know, one thing about policy is, to me, when you pass a policy you should evaluate it to see whether it’s working or not.
We did the Executive Directive 1, and then it turns out we had some problems with it, and so we revisited it, and are continuing to revise it. One of the problems that we found was that it was going to essentially unleash a lot of building in single family neighborhoods that apartments would be.
I know some people think that my concern was the higher income neighborhoods, but actually it was both, but it was the lower income neighborhoods too. Because what I found was that for-profit developers were chomping at the bit to go to South LA and East LA, and I did not want to be responsible for the total transformation — which I believe ultimately would lead to gentrification.
Because you can start off as a lower income, but nobody says you have to do that for life. I was worried that they were going to completely change the character. They were also going to displace people. Like. ‘I’m just going to displace these 12 families, but I’m actually going to build 40 units.’ Okay, that’s good, but what happens to those 12 families?”
“We can’t help poor people — it might disrupt our precious slums!” The parts of LA she’s talking about are the most neglected, least-invested-in parts of the city. And she’s saying that developers want to build low-income housing in those neighborhoods, but she’s worried that it might “change the character”. To which I say: Isn’t that the whole fucking point? Isn’t the problem that these parts of town are monuments to urban neglect, and that more housing and new construction would make them more vibrant and livable? Isn’t a housing shortage just about the worst thing that could happen to people in those neighborhoods, because it will either: 1) Drive up rents, or 2) Make it so that crime, decay, and the general hellscape-i-ification of the neighborhood are the only things keeping rents down? Also, where I come from, 40 is a bigger number than 12. Decisions about urban planning can be complicated, but I feel like the situation she’s describing sort of isn’t.