Factually! with Adam Conover - How to Fix the Housing Crisis with Brian Hanlon

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

The housing crisis seems like one of the most intractable problems threatening America. But slowly and surely, we’re solving it, and you can be a part of the solution. President of California YIMBY, Brian Hanlon, joins Adam to explain how his group is building a movement for fair housing, how to organize for your rights as a renter, and the two pieces of legislation that could dramatically expand housing in California. Check out welcomingneighbors.us to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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We are giving you actionable ways that you can help solve our greatest problems. And this week, we're going to talk about one of the biggest problems in America, housing. Now, we've covered it time and time again on this show. The housing crisis is very bad all across America. In recent years, nearly half of American renters are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent. And this is worse for low-income renters,

but more and more middle-income renters are getting squeezed as well. And this is not just a problem in the largest metro areas like the Bay Area, LA, or New York. It is quickly spreading to previously affordable cities like Austin, even smaller cities like Spokane, the jewel of Eastern Washington, a place where I spent a very wonderful weekend

just a couple months ago. Well, they are facing a crisis too. And this crisis is exacerbating everything from climate change to inequality to homelessness. So if we want to solve any of our other problems, we have to solve the housing crisis as well. So what the fuck do we do about it? I mean, this is not a problem that you can just snap your fingers and fix. One of the things that we must have to solve the housing crisis is more housing because we have more people and housing is continually falling into disrepair. And so we need to build more. And that takes time and money. And when we build the housing, we have to make sure that enough of it is affordable,

that people can actually live in it. And that's kind of a difficult thing to do when, you know, we have a housing system controlled by capitalism, as is every other facet of our economy. Because the system is so big and it takes so long to fix, housing is one of those problems that feels like it's happening to us rather than something in our control. It has been so bad for so long in America that it's hard to know what better even looks like.

Well, we do have some good news here, because better is finally starting to come into view in California. And that's meaningful because California is the state that, you know, invented single family zoning and has by all accounts the most screwed, jacked up, and fucked housing market in the nation. Two major pieces of legislation that were passed by the legislatures could help dramatically expand housing in the state, and they add to pro-housing bills already passed in the past couple of years. The result is the potential for millions of new units that

could not have been built before if they are signed by the governor. And this seat change didn't come from nowhere. A coalition of activists have been pushing for these changes at the state and city level, and they're the ones who helped get legislators, unions, tenant and industry groups on board. As opposed to the NIMBYs, you've heard of them, the Not In My Backyard Coalition of homeowners that have stifled housing progress for decades, these activists go by YIMBY, Yes In My Backyard. And they are proof that a motivated coalition, a movement of experts and activists actually can change one of the most difficult policy problems in America just by pushing like hell for it. So how did California YIMBYs do it? And what can they teach

you about how to get involved to improve the housing crisis in your community? Well, to answer today, we have the perfect guest. Brian Hanlon is the president and CEO of the pro-housing group California Yimby, and he has been in the middle of efforts to improve conditions in California and hopefully the rest of the country. Please welcome Brian Hanlon. Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me. So you run this organization, California Yimby. I'd love to start by talking about how bad is housing in California and nationally. This seems to me to be one of our biggest crises, one of the biggest things that we are not providing our fellow citizens. That is like a desperate need that we have. It's as bad as not being able to have food or air to breathe or water to drink. How bad is the housing crisis in this country? Well, it's bad.

And so like this used to be a problem that was mostly associated with, you know, expensive cities on like on the coast, like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York. But the problem has really gone national and it's especially accelerated in the past few years with the pandemic and remote work and everything else, along with the fact that what's often gets missed is the median millennial is like 30 years old, right? Like we're not kids anymore. This is peak household formation age. I mean,

you have the largest demographic cohort saying, I'm sick of spending a lot of money to live in a shitbox with like three housemates that I don't like. And they're like, wait a minute, like it costs $4,000 a month for like a two bedroom or like a feminist apartment in some places like this is insane. So yeah, no, it is definitely like no longer just a problem of like Santa Monica in San Francisco. And this is something that we've seen change over our lifetimes. I mean, you have something you see people talk about on social media all the time is my parents were able to afford a home with their, you know, if not minimum wage job with their working class jobs, I will never be able to afford a home. You see people start to get

doomery about it. But also I've literally seen it change in my lifetime. I remember when I first moved to Brooklyn in 2005, I got one bedroom in a two-bedroom place for $700 a month. Now, look, obviously, that's inflation. Hamburgers used to cost a nickel, whatever. But still, the degree to which in that same neighborhood, or even another up-and-coming neighborhood at that time, would be an immense difference. Then when I moved to California, people were saying, oh, it's so much cheaper to live in Los Angeles than it is in New York. People actually said this, Brian.

And nobody's saying that anymore. Like now it is the epicenter of the housing crisis and people know it's completely unaffordable here. And now when I travel to other cities, as a comic, I go to Nashville, I go to Austin, I even go to smaller cities than that, and you hear to Nashville, I go to Austin, I even go to smaller cities than that. And you hear the same, Oh, no one can afford to live here anymore. Um, and so what, what is driving the fact like this rapid housing crisis in like the last 20 years, it feels

like things have gotten out of control. So a few things, and look, I don't want to take anything away from our boomer parents. I'm sure they did work very, very hard, you know, not taking that away at all. But like if you look at, OK, what were the median wages, the median household incomes at that time compared to what housing prices were? And what you find out today, like they might be two, three, even four X that level of multiple, meaning that like if a house costs like three times average wages in, say, 1980, now, especially in some of these high-cost areas, it might be seven, nine, 12 times as much. It is completely unaffordable to most people, unless if you're a dual-income in the Bay Area tech family, or if you have family money, which turns out is a lot more common than I had realized. I said, what's actually driving it though? Look, it's just not some of the stuff like that I think it's blamed.

Like it's not, you know, foreign investors. There's this real like yellow peril vibe that you have, especially in some like West Coast cities, like talking about like Chinese investors like coming and buying everything up. Like that's nonsense. That is not what's happening right now. It's because you have, again, the largest demographic cohort in this country reaching

peak household formation years after a decade of barely any national home building at all. Like the Great Recession just wiped out the construction industry. Home construction rates plummeted. And so you have these things coming ahead at once where you have both like the lowest supply and the greatest need. And there's just like nowhere for people to live. And so now, now people are spreading out, right? Like people from the coast are moving to Nashville. They're, they're, they're moving to Texas. And now like what's happening in Nashville, like what's happening in Texas, you're seeing the same things that you're seeing on the coast. And yeah. So when we talk about that boomer period,

right, and even before then, the post-World War II era, these were times of huge national home building. This was Levittown. We're going to build ranch homes everywhere. We're going to colonize, you know, the outlying areas and turn them into suburbs and created, by the way, some hortable suburbs that no one, that now we wish we hadn't built. But there was a huge like national push towards building homes and also making it possible for the average citizen to buy a home that continued for decades up into the baby boomer years. Right. And we am I right that we just not have not had that kind of national push. Like there was a federal and state effort to make it possible, make it affordable for people to buy homes. What happened to that effort? The federal government still keeps down food prices.

Why doesn't it keep down housing prices? Good question. Well, let's be clear, though, about like the nature of like much of the subsidy, right? So like you did have a fair amount of a lot more than you have now, of federal subsidies directly for like low-income people to deal with the housing. There are still some, but those are a fraction of what they were, say, back in the heyday, the 60s and 70s. But really, the big thing that happened is the federal government massively subsidized suburbanization. So you had all of these, you know, suburban tract home builders, they were able to get low-cost construction loans. Meanwhile,

the government was building highways, building roads, building, you know, suburban tract home builders, they were able to get low cost construction loans. Meanwhile, the government was building highways, building roads, building new sewage plants, building water infrastructure, building everything that that that these suburban developers needed in order to make those areas livable. Well, the thing is, like, there's only so far that you can sprawl out right before you're stuck with like two hour commutes each way, which, again, in California isn't as uncommon as it should be. So, like, that period, in part because of, like, the natural limits of sprawl coupled with the new environmental protections, you're like, well, we can't quite do that anymore, so now what? And it's important to remember, like, when a lot of people, like, think of, you know, gentrification and, like, rising prices in central city neighborhoods, you know, the suburbanization program was in many ways the greatest housing affordability program for cities that the federal government ever did. But it was, of course, it was predicated upon, like, white flight, disinvestment, redlining, a lot of really, really horrible stuff. redlining, a lot of really, really horrible stuff. And now as folks have been returning to cities for the past 20 plus years, depending exactly on what city that you're talking about, you're not seeing the commensurate rate of home building in those cities, but you're seeing an

influx of people who make a lot more money than the people who were there before. And so then that's leading to additional displacement pressures. Wow. These are a whole lot of pressures happening all at once. I want to just dwell for a second, though. Do we literally just run out of space in which to build suburbs? It's true if you're in Los Angeles, you drive for three hours in any direction, and it is just suburbs as far as the eye can see. And a lot of the time, in smaller cities, Nashville often feels the same way. A lot

of cities feel the same way. And there's a, there's a cert, only a certain distance past which you can get out. And we've had this, we've had this cultural preference for suburbs in America that, oh, we don't want to be that dense. We want, everyone wants their own ranch home with a, with a pool and a big backyard and a big front yard and, you know, a two mile drive to the nearest supermarket. That's just been, you know, the, the image of the American dream. And do we just run out of the ability to build that shit? Like, and, and we're, and we've lagged on, on building tall, like we needed to have been or what? Yeah. I mean, look, I mean like the technical response is no, like there actually is still a lot more space to sprawl out to if folks really want to.

And indeed, that is still happening in most metro areas. So a place like Houston, which is a really fascinating metropolitan area for a lot of reasons. They nearly ended homelessness, which LA and San Francisco could really take a page out of Houston's housing policies. But they're doing two things. They continue to sprawl out, but the city itself is actually densifying, right? Like where there used to be detached single family homes, like now you're seeing, you know, four townhomes,

where there used to be a parking lot, like now you're seeing apartment buildings. So like they're doing like what you need to do, both like growing out and growing up. I would suggest though that, you know, climate change is very real. And this sort of sense that we can just sprawl out forever, drive till you qualify, it's a really dead end way to live. And the focus right now really should be on how do we accelerate home building, like near jobs, near transit, near where most people actually want to

live. You know, like, like, sure, like plenty of people where most people actually want to live. You know, like sure, like plenty of people, they commute the 90 minutes each way. But if you're like, well, if you could get an affordable family size home closer in and you had like a 20 minute commute, would you do that? And like, again, not literally every human being would say yeah, but a whole bunch of them would. Yeah, and by the way, I have a preference for, for dense living environments. You know, I'm a,

I'm a Brooklyn Manhattan kind of guy. That's the kind of place I like to live and where I live in Los Angeles. I got as close as I could to that ideal in my own living situation, but my own preference apart from that, like, Hey, even here in LA, the dream of Los Angeles was, Oh, you can have your own little home. You can be in the city center, right? And hey, if you want to buy a condo instead, you can go somewhere else, right? But that dream is dead in both of those cities, right? And it's dead in so many places around the country, despite whatever your preference might be. So let's return to the drying up of home building. I had not actually considered that before. I want to dwell on that a little bit more.

After the 2008 Great Recession, that housing bust, there was, what, a sudden dearth of homes being built and we're now just experiencing that lag catching up with us? Is that part of what's happening? So again, it depends on the area.

And to be clear, California specifically and some other areas like metropolitan New York, metropolitan Boston, had been underproducing homes really since the 70s, to be clear, California specifically and some other areas like metropolitan New York, metropolitan Boston had been underproducing homes really since like the 70s, especially since like the 80s, especially in areas that are near the coastal job centers. But that wasn't true in Atlanta. That wasn't true in Charlotte. That wasn't true in Dallas. Right. That wasn't true in these like

faster growing sundial towns after the Great Recession, and again, you can look at these charts of national homes built per year. They just fall off a cliff around 2008. You saw a number of things happen. One, there was a recession. People had a lot less money to spend on homes. Two, you had significant change of lending standards. So all kinds of people who qualified to get mortgages before no longer qualified to get a mortgage. And then as a result of this happening, you had this massive shift out of the construction workforce, and they have not come back.

So the construction workforce now, like the folks actually build the homes, is significantly smaller than it used to be. And part of this is because we were really relying upon a boom of largely immigrant laborers, disproportionately from Mexico in the 1990s. Well, that's also shut off, right? Like there are, as you put it, you know, pressures from all over the place. And it's like, you know, the people who aren't home buyers currently are feeling the squeeze. Now, but here's, this is a political question and maybe

it's a little bit out of your wheelhouse or maybe it's in, I have no idea. You will find out once I ask the question. This is the worst front porching of a question I've ever done. Why has this not been a bigger political crisis in America? When the price of gas goes up, right, the federal government steps in. When the price of food goes up, well, frankly, the price of food never goes up because the government exerts massive price supports on foods to keep staple foods very, very cheap. We do that with so many other, I mean, you know, with exceptions, we provide clean water everywhere in the United States. That's pretty good. And when the exceptions happen, they make the news pretty regularly. Not downplaying at all how bad those situations are, how they affect disadvantaged people generally.

But housing, why is housing... This has been happening for the last 20 years, and I've felt it. And I remember watching every you know, every time the presidential campaign rolls around, Hey, when is this going to come up? When is someone going to talk about this in a debate? And they never do. Why is that? Why is, why is this something that we cannot get political will behind? Well, it's affecting so many people. That's a great question. And let me ask you, Adam, how many of your non-political nerd friends know who their city council member is? Uh, I mean, I tell all my friends who their city council person is.

You tell them all, right. Got it. Yeah. So most of them are informed because they know me. Yes. But yes, good question. All right. So I mean-

Not many. The bottom line is that historically, issues around zoning, housing approvals, land use stuff has been a local issue. So it just hasn't been a local issue. Um, so it just like, hasn't been a real matter for, for, uh, national politics for decades. Um, and like, so then it's the question is like, well, like why aren't local city council members, why aren't state legislators, why aren't they doing more to address this problem? Well, think about who votes and who talks to them and who's organized and who's not right. Like we do know from like looking at the

literature, homeowners vote at much higher rates than non-homeowners. And they're doing great in this housing shortage, right? Like, you know, if like you're, you know, the boomer parents who bought the home, especially if you bought in a place like New York or coastal California back in the 80s, they're all millionaires now, right? Like, and again, like they may like, you know,

my dad worked his way up the postal service my mom went back to school to become a teacher and like they were able to buy a home in the 80s and then they got the worth need to sell but you know like they still made tons of money like off this house that that they bought um and that wasn't through their their like any special effort it's because like there weren't enough homes relative to people who needed them and now it's like you you know, their children and like our friends who are getting screwed because like there just aren't enough there. But again, like politicians like respond, like who is making demands, who can get them voted out of office and

who's not. And like homeowners associations, local city council members, like they vote, they make their feelings heard. And renters, especially younger renters, largely have it. Now, that is changing. And the Yimby movement has, I think, really played a large role in helping bring that change about. Yeah, and we talked about this sort of perverse incentive on an episode we did a few months ago with Jenny Schutz, which people should go listen to if they haven't heard it already. Like there's a very perverse incentive happened where because of the, you know, government pushing people into homeownership as being the main way that middle class people are going to generate wealth. Well, now people are living inside their stock portfolio, basically. And you say they're millionaires.

They're living inside the million dollars. Yes. Right. And that means that they have an incentive to keep the price of the house high. And how do you keep the price of the house always going up? Well, you make sure that there isn't enough supply for people to have someplace to live. I mean, like, uh, it's, it's bizarre that, uh, you know, like I, I happened, I live in a small home that I purchased the price of the, or my neighbors who live in a very similar home, you know, lived in it as long as I have, They sold theirs. They made a 33 percent profit on selling the home.

And so that is I'm looking at my home going like, well, maybe I would make that amount of money. But that's bad. Yes, it is bad. Like it's bad for the price of housing in my neighborhood to go up. But I know that it might benefit me if I want to get the fuck out of Dodge. I don't care what happens in the neighborhood if I'm a selfish person like that. want to get the fuck out of Dodge. And I don't care what happens in the neighborhood if I'm a selfish person like that, but it's bad for the, for the price of housing in a neighborhood to go up by 33% in five years. Like, and so we've got a situation in which you've got the people who are

voting are like, have an incentive to make sure that housing prices remain unaffordable because they personally profit off of it. That's fucked up. Is it not, Brian? It is fucked up, Adam. You're correct. So, and look, like Jenny Schutz, a great scholar, and she's absolutely, you know, right. This is a really, this is a really perverse incentive. The one thing that I would note though, is this perverse incentive has existed for many decades, right? Like mass homeownership existed in the 1960s and 70s and just like absent you know a few places you didn't have these massive rates of returns on housing during that time why because we were still building a lot of it and so this like this like notion that oh it is some you know uh law of real estate where housing prices will always go up because of this incentive is simply not true. Like there are ways that, again, non-homeowners and, you know, homeowner, you know, allies

can work together and make demands of their elected officials and change the rules by which the real estate market works. Yeah. I just want to dwell on this, that when we did an episode called Adam Ruins Housing a couple years ago of Adam Ruins Everything. And in that, we talked to an expert who reminded us, hey, people say the value of your home always goes up. Actually, it doesn't. The value of your home remains the same because it can still house the same number of people, right? The utility value of it to society.

It, in fact, becomes less valuable because you have to fix it all the time. You have to put money into repairing it. The price can go up, but if the price goes up, well, that means something is weird, right? It either means the area you live in is becoming more desirable, or it means that there is a housing shortage that your place is taking advantage of. Do you think I'm off base? Well, it's also right. Like there's a difference between like the price of like the actual structure itself, which is like a, you know like a durable good that depreciates every time. And then the land that sits underneath it. Right.

And so what you've really seen, again, like anyone who's like familiar, especially with some of these locals that have been expensive for a while, like you see a bunch of $2 million shit boxes for sale in coastal California. And you're like, how is this possible like this is insane and like it's so it's so expensive because it's the shortage of homes coupled with the fact that that land is really valuable because they're like a rich person can then like buy that house knock it down and like renovate it or like or knock it down and then have like a nice you know commute with like great weather and like all the rest and rest. And so you really need to decouple land from the structure itself. And part of our tax policy, this is especially true in California with Prop 13, but also other places have similarly bad tax policies.

New York City is an anti-renter mess for a whole bunch of reasons. They assess taxes in this really bizarre way. That also has the effect of artificially increasing the price of houses because land is not being taxed properly. Ah, okay. And that goes to your point that it is very specific to the individual area and how they are doing the taxes and what they're incentivizing. But I want to return to your earlier point that it is, we don't need to blame individual homeowners that much because there is a way to structure housing so that homeowners can, you know, continue to have

an investment in their home and we can still have enough places for people to live. Um, and so before we move on to how we do that though, I just want to know like how, what are the effects of housing being so unaffordable on individuals and on our society? Like how bad is the fact that it is this bad? Yeah. Well, so the thing is, you know, like like some folks talk about this, like housing theory of everything. Right. Like, yeah. Like why isn't Indie Rock cool anymore? Is that is that because of the housing shortage, too? Right. Like all sorts of things that you can actually kind of like tie everything back to it.

And so on, like, to be clear. And again, I promise not to make this too like a California centric, but California has the highest poverty rate in the country when you factor in the cost of living. Right. Like not much, much poorer states like, say, Mississippi or like West Virginia, because of the incredibly high price of the housing. We are halting our progress on climate change, especially with regards to transportation emissions, because we are not building sufficient infill housing. We have, by some metrics, there are many places in this country, including much of coastal California, that has worse racial segregation today than they did in 1968 when the Fair Housing Act was passed. inflation today than they did in 1968 when the Fair Housing Act was passed, right? Like, we are, you know, are, you know, any sort of, like, racial or economic equity goals we have are getting thrown out the window. And really, when you think of, like, a lot of, like, the biggest issues, like, confronting this country today, like, inflation, right, is, like, is the one that probably gets, like, the most attention in part because it hits older folks who vote, especially. probably gets like the most attention in part because it hits older folks who vote, especially.

That's one of the reasons why it's talked about a lot. Like, what is the source of that inflation? It's largely housing prices and then gasoline, which you need because you live so far away from where like you work and shop. Homelessness, the number one reason that homelessness is exploding in this country, especially in the really high cost metro areas, is because of the high cost of housing. It is not because of drug abuse. It is not because of mental illness. Right. Like states like West Virginia, which have like very high rates of opiate abuse and very high rates of drug abuse, have very, very low rates of homelessness because housing is cheap. We have like reduced economic growth.

we have like reduced economic growth, like economists out of UChicago and UC Berkeley estimated that the American economy is about $1.5 trillion smaller than it otherwise would be than if we allowed our most productive cities to grow as big as they would grow absent all these restraints. And we're really just like,

this like idea of like the American dream, right? That anyone can move here, work hard, go to school, et cetera, and then you can buy a house, achieve that middle-class security, et cetera. That is absolutely dying. I think a lot to my own family's story and my grandfather, right?

My grandfather was a tenant farmer in Ireland. He didn't come to this country until he was 33 and his job was like loading sacks of mail on a train and, you know, doing landscaping work on the weekends. And yet, within six years of moving here, by the time he was 39, he was able to buy a home. His wife, who was a domestic, right, like a maiden of which Yikim's home, stopped working because, you know, that's what you did back then, you know, had three kids, sent them all to Catholic school, like on this like blue collar job, like live this American dream. Now, for sure, the opportunities that my white immigrant grandfather had were not available, were not open to all Americans. But like, that's the kind of society that we should aim for where anyone, irrespective of where they come from, what their current station of life is, they can work hard and then they can enjoy this middle class security stability and their American dream.

And like if housing weren't cheap, you know, in like the 1950s, there's no way that he could have done this. There's no way that he could have done this. It would have been impossible. If your ancestor had been spending four-fifths of his income on rent, like some people are, in cities like Milwaukee, cities all around the country, if he was being under threat of eviction,

if he was spending all of his time trying to figure out where to live. I mean, we interviewed a couple years ago Matthew Desmond on this show. He's a credible book, Evicted, about the stories of people on the ground and the human misery that's inflicted by this. He would never have been able to have that story. And you also point out even apart from the human misery, we should care simply for that reason about how many people's lives are being ruined by high housing costs.

It fucks up our lives, too. Like everybody is upset about homelessness. Everybody is upset that, you know, or should be upset that their city is not as economically flourishing as it should be.

And those are things that are happening because of how high housing prices. This is a cancer on the whole country. And we got to do something about it.

So when we come back from this really short break, we're going to hear the positive side of this. We're going to hear what you are doing, Brian, and the progress that is being made. We'll be right back the positive side of this. We're going to hear what you are doing, Brian, and the progress that is being made.

We'll be right back with more Brian Hanlon. Hey, Factually listeners. You know, making this show is a labor of love for me, and I hope you love the show as much as I do. If you do, I hope you will consider supporting the show on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash adamconover, and for just five bucks a month, you get ad-free episodes of this podcast. You can join our community Discord. We do a live book club over Zoom. It's a super fun space, and it supports the show. So if you want to join, head to Patreon.com slash Adam Conover. That's Patreon.com slash Adam Conover, and I thank you for doing so.

Okay, we're back with Brian Hanlon. So we have established that the housing crisis is throttling America and its citizens and its non-citizens and all people who live here. So what the hell do we do about it? What do you do about it at California YIMBY? Yeah, so California YIMBY is a statewide housing advocacy organization. And we work to make California an affordable place to live, work, and raise a family for everyone. So we principally focus on accelerating housing production, especially in areas that are environmentally friendly, near jobs, near transit, and that sort of thing. sort of thing. So to that end, we focus on state laws that up-zone, which is basically a technical way of saying

it should not be illegal to build apartment buildings next to train stations. And it is! It's like much of LA, right? You have the Expo line, this nice subway line, and you have all these single-family homes right next to the line, which are all now worth like several million dollars a piece. Why? It's illegal to build apartment buildings there. And so we're saying, well, it shouldn't be illegal to build homes near trains. You know, a crazy, crazy thought. Then beyond that, we're saying it's like, well, it shouldn't just be not illegal to build housing.

You should get approval to build housing if you're complying with like the correct rules. In most of the developed world, other than England, which is like California, only a semi-civilized place, the, you know, the housing is like often it's called a discretionary, meaning that even if you comply with all the rules, you fill out your TPS report, you know, to the, you know, to the dot, you do everything right. Like a planning commissioner can still say, you know, I don't like the windows, that trim I don't care for. Actually, it's a better story too tall. And you're like, but why? The rule second is- Or I got a complaint from somebody in the neighborhood that doesn't want a building to go there. And I can just decide, you know what? Your project is over. I don't even need

a reason. I just, you don't get my signature on your approval. And the thing is, that's not the rule of law. That's like the rule of like the winds of like idiot kings. That's one step to corruption, like true corruption, is if someone has that much power to stop

a project, then they start getting bribed and hey, guess what? We have a lot of that in Los Angeles and in California, don't we? We have a lot of that specific problem. Specifically around approval for building. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Weird.

We're talking about money in a Las Vegas bathroom, right? I mean, so, yeah. I mean, and you see this in San Francisco as well. And look, there's like academic studies that show this. Like this isn't just anecdotal. in San Francisco as well. And look, like there's like academic studies, like I showed this, like, this isn't just anecdotal places that have these, that, that give local elected officials, this type of power, you incentivize corruption where instead, if it just goes to, you know, some like career civil servant, who's like looking at forms, then like, no, um, uh, and it has much

So we focus on like, you know, streamlining as what it's sometimes called housing production. So we focus on like, you know, streamlining is what it's sometimes called, housing production. Then the last thing is like expensive fees and requirements that make housing economically infeasible to build. So there are some places like in Silicon Valley, for instance, that might require up to a $70,000 per home parks fee. Now, this is in addition to, you know to housing impact fees and sewage fees and wastewater infrastructure fees and all the rest, saying it's like, oh, well, for every new person who moves here, we need to buy a certain amount of land, and land's really expensive, so we can convert

that land into a park, right? It's this crazy way of thinking that's highly exclusionary and throttles housing production. So those are the three big policy areas that we focus on there. But we also support like tons of other laws that we think help create a more like inclusive, like vibrant society. And so like that gets around, for instance, like it shouldn't be illegal for sidewalk vendors to, you know, sell fruit, right? Like we should, like we believe, right, you know, you know, four-story buildings and neighborhoods and a taco truck in every corner, right? Like, that sounds like a great vision of America. People love street and sidewalk vendors.

The people selling fruit, that's the best fruit you can get in Los Angeles and in many places around the world. Yeah, absolutely. And so, like, you know, we also focus on, like, legislation to, like, well, how do we grant, like, renters, like, more access to opportunities? Like, we actually had a bill, like, like two years ago where now it is illegal in California for homeowners associations to ban renters. It wasn't before legislation. This is especially important in a lot of these like exclusionary suburbs that have like really nice school systems. And like, you know, like they don't have much rental housing typically, but what they do have is, you know, maybe there's an accessory dwelling unit,

also known as like a granny flat or an in-law unit. They can rent that out. Then if that person has a kid, they can get into those good schools, right? Like, you know, creating those sort of avenues of like upward social mobility is something that we, you know, passionately represent as an organization. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that we, you know, work on, but at its core, we're working to accelerate housing production. bunch of stuff that we work on, but at its core, we're working to accelerate housing production. Now, the name of your organization is California YIMBY. This, I assume, stands for Yes In My Backyard. It's a good assumption. Which is a flip of the classic acronym NIMBY, Not In My Backyard, which is a word that is used to refer to anybody who is objecting to something being built in their neighborhood. I think it's used very generally that way.

But there are also, you know, it is also used to describe a certain type of person or a certain type of organization, right? People who are anti-development, or anti-housing specifically, right? Anti-development's almost too broad of a brush. Yeah. I mean, it's like,

if you want to like NIMBY new oil wells or like NIMBY a new highway, okay, great. Right. But like, don't like NIMBY new neighbors. Like that's the, that's the problem. Yeah. So how big of a factor are, uh, you know, how big of a barrier to the housing that we need are NIMBYs writ large, right? Like, and how does that power express itself and why? Yeah. And so the thing is the power doesn't express itself, say, at the state level in like all that, all that much in terms of organized state, like organized entities that fight for explicitly NIMBY goals.

Like, yeah, sort of like you have all like the like League of Cities, like the various county associations that like basically do that, but they have like other technical like local control rationales. Where the power really manifests itself is on the ground in the district level, right? When, you know, even state elected officials, they're all elected from local districts. When they're talking to their mayors, talking to their city council members, when they're, you know, shopping for groceries on the weekend, they're running into, you know, these, their neighbors, a lot of them homeowners, a lot of them active members of their homeowners associations, and they're getting an earful, but like, oh, you know, new housing, oh, it's going to create more traffic, oh, it's going to bring

with it crime and like the wrong kind of people. And, you know, in California and progressive areas, people generally use code words instead of just being explicitly racist. But, you know, that's the kind of thing that elected officials like hear from. And while there maybe aren't all that well represented in like the discourse, like on Twitter and like in the New York Times, because it's like not a very respectable opinion to have, there are a lot of them and they vote. And so, yeah, they're a huge block. They're a huge roadblock. I mean, often it does seem to be a respectable opinion to have to do a lot of people. To me, it seems like the default. I mean, I think we all have that emotional living in a place and then something changes and you're like, ah, they built a Shake Shack. Why is there a Shake Shack?

And, you know, there can be examples of something that you like being torn down to build something that sucks. And, you know, I've had examples. I've, you know, there's been examples of that in my own neighborhood. But there's also, you know, I live down the street from there was a burrito shop that was part of this big empty building. There's this big empty disused commercial building, right? There's a burrito shop in it. I got a couple of burritos. I was like, that's a nice burrito shop.

They closed it down and everyone in the neighborhood was like, oh, the burrito shop is gone. You know what they're building there? Like 200 units of housing, like this gigantic, this gigantic building, right? Now here's the thing. A lot of people I know, and I still sometimes feel this way myself. I'm like, why they got to build such a big building? It's ugly. The apartments are going to be too expensive inside. Probably not enough of it is affordable housing, you know, all those sorts of things. When we have those emotions, how do we know whether or not we're, we're, we're coming from the right place, right? Because we, I think it's a human thing to dislike change and to be suspicious of a big money coming in and building something, right? On the other

hand, I know we desperately need the housing. So how do I tell the difference, you know, between a good faith, you know, hey, maybe we should adjust this. And, you know, something that's getting in the way because I believe NIMBYism lurks within the human heart, don't you? Oh, that is dark. So, you know, look, I think that it is. I look, I think you're spot on. And I think a lot of folks, like they move to the neighborhood that they like. They fall in love with it. It's certain rhythms, the place to go. I mean, hell, I got bummed out when the Hemlock, like this great place for seeing shows in San Francisco closed and they built condos there.

Like, I'm like, ah, God, they have a Hemlock, really? But it is, I think what you need to say is that you can recognize those feelings as being valid. You're like, you know what? God, that, that, you know, maybe they'll open up a new burrito shop, like in order to serve those kind of like new people, but it might not be as good. It's not my burrito shop. Like you can still be kind of bummed out about that and bummed out about those feelings. But I do think it's important to not make policy based on vibes. And so what you can say is that, well, you know, yes, this, it kind of sucks. It's okay to be a little bit sad about it. But I do understand that this new apartment building, that that's 200 more households.

They're, you know, maybe 300 more people who are going to have homes in my neighborhood that otherwise would not have homes in my neighborhood. They're going to enrich my life. Like maybe I'll make some new friends. Like maybe some of them will start like a new gallery or like maybe some of them will teach my kids. Right. Like, I mean, you know, who knows like what will happen there. And the overall impact of like, of like helping, you know, reduce housing scarcity, reduce housing prices, make it more affordable, make it a more welcoming community. To me, that outweighs the,

ah, fuck, I can't get that burrito I loved anymore. And also, it's LA. There are other good burritos not that far away, right? So that's really just not a good excuse. I agree with you. I agree with you about this. Just a corollary to that question, though, is that sometimes when people are describing

new construction and the reasons they don't like it, they describe it as gentrification. That, say, the building is a newer building, therefore it looks nicer, maybe it has some luxury features, it's more expensive than the other homes that were there, people sort of see new as meaning more expensive. But I also know that sometimes people just sort of call anything new gentrification when it is not. And gentrification itself is kind

of a slippery idea to get a handle on what exactly is it, what fuels it, et cetera. Now, we're two white guys talking here. I want to acknowledge that. but I want to know that, you know, I want to know how you think about that in your work. Like what, you know, what constitutes gentrification when advocating for new housing and what does not? Yeah. So, you know, I like we typically focus on anti-displacement measures and renter protections rather than just like gentrification overall. Because like, as you alluded to, what exactly is gentrification? Like different people have like different ways of talking about it. You know, some of it really is, you know, vibes, like the community is like shifting in ways that like, maybe I don't like, is this really a matter

of policy that like, there aren't as many, you know, people who like going into your dive bar and then like indie shows afterwards? Uh, like, you know, I don't know. But what you can guard against is, well, do the, if folks want to build a building somewhere, do renters currently live there? Right. So like the kind of legislation that like we sponsor, we say, well, then that's an ineligible site. Like you can't kick people out. And we also say that if a renter had lived there in the past, for instance, like most of our bills, if a renter has been there for the past several years, you can't use that site. Cause we didn want to incent landlords to kick out renters, hold the property vacant, and then redevelop it. So we take those displacement issues very, very seriously, and everyone should. What I would say, though, is there has been a ton of research recently on what are the impacts of building

market rate housing, even in low income areas. And, you know, about say like 10, 15 years ago, we didn't have great answers. Now we had really good evidence at like the regional level and even like the city level for big enough cities that actually, yes, new market rate housing, even expensive housing reduces displacement, like in terms of like low income outigration, it reduces evictions, and it reduces upper price pressure. That's consensus position, and it has been for years. What we didn't know is, okay, well, what about the neighborhood level? On my block, on the two blocks over, what happens when you build this new market rate housing? And in part because of new data sets that have recently become available, we now know that actually the same thing at the regional happens.

Studies from all over this country have shown that new market rate housing is associated with, at the local neighborhood level, reduced eviction filings and lower reduced displacement and reduced upward price pressure on rents. And so that, that's all like, like that, like that's, like, that's great. But again, it is important to make sure that you're not like kicking people out of their home as you build new homes. So you're literally saying if a new home, like a home for purchase or new apartments are built in an area, all of the rental apartments next door, like the older stock housing, there's actually less pressure on those units because something new is built next door. Is that?

That's correct. That does kind of make sense to me. I saw, this is very dumb, but I saw a TikTok a couple months ago by an urbanist and they were pointing out that, you know, they were making fun of someone else's TikTok, which pointed out there's a big condo high rise in a downtown of some city in America, right a huge high rise like 50 story tall and the person

had said this is a gentrification building right and the person who made the stitch right who connected to the to the previous tiktok said actually it's really good if you build a super tall luxury building for all the rich people to go live in because it means they're not going to go to the outlying areas you know the the low you know the working class neighborhoods and buy starter homes and fix them up because guess what there's a nice like you know fucking luxury building with a doorman downtown that they can live in the gentrification containment units yeah that's what they are it's a good way to put it and And that's not going to be the case for every single piece of housing ever built. But these things are complicated.

You have to look really closely at what you're building where. You can't just say, hey, anything new is gentrification. I don't like it. You have to say, well, what are you really trying to avoid? Displacement. And is this building going to cause displacement or not? Does that sound right? I think that sounds right.

But you also have to remember, where do you see the greatest displacement pressures, right? You see them. And, again, we know this through looking at all these studies. They're in places that aren't building. There are places that are attractive to high-wage earners that are not building housing. And so, you know, like, to me, like, the archetypical image of, like, a gent gentrified neighborhood is not these like, you know, new gleaming condos. It's these gorgeous old Victorians, right? I mean, like the image of like the painted ladies in San Francisco or these like gorgeous like row homes and in like Columbia Heights and like Washington, like Dight to Sea or something like that's what gentrification looks like.

Like these like nice old historic homes that, you know, we're all fixed up on the inside. And but like no more people get to live there than live there before. In fact, typically you see fewer people live in those units because like upper income households generally don't have as many kids or like, you know, grandparents like living with them, et cetera. And so you have fewer people now occupying significantly more expensive housing. And so you have fewer people now occupying significantly more expensive housing. OK, well, look, we've had some really big victories recently in this solving this problem, at least in California, that maybe can be a model for the country. So we're going to talk about those and what you personally can do, listener, to fight back against the housing crisis when we come back with more Brian Hamlin.

when we come back with more Brian Hanlon. Okay, we're back with Brian Hanlon. So you were talking about, hey, these are the policies that you advocate for in order to fix the housing crisis. We have actually had, surprise, surprise, some pretty big legislative movement here in California, the epicenter of the housing crisis, if I may be so bold, a place where, you know, wealthy homeowners have been able to stop

development for decades, a place in which, you know, we have environmental protection laws that have been abused by people who want to stop development for decades. It's really been, you know, intractable in this state. And yet we just saw some really big bills come out that are going to, I think, could make a difference. Can you tell me about them? Yeah. No. The past five years, you've really seen a sea change in California policymaking around housing production. And in fact, last year was the highest production housing year since the Great Recession in California, in part due to this state legislation that we're passing. Wow. So just this year, some of the biggest victories, I won't get into all of them because there's just been so much winning happening recently, it would take too long.

I would say- That's what I like to hear. Yeah. So two of the bills that I'm most excited about, one bill, AB 2011 by Buffy Wicks. Sorry, I'm going to use some jargony numbers here. This is a bill that legalizes 100% affordable housing for low-income households in commercial districts and mixed-income housing along commercial corridors, provided that you meet certain labor standards and have certain affordability requirements. This is a big bill.

Estimates suggest that this bill could create 1.6 to 2.4 million new homes, including hundreds of thousands of deed-restricted homes affordable to low-income people. And that would not have happened without, I mean, both, you know, humbly suggest that like, you know, California YIMBY and like YIMBY allies across the state like working diligently, but really, especially the Carpenters Union, they really stepped up and organized the hell out of, you know, trying to get this bill passed. And so the sort of like, you know, nascent alliance between labor and YIMBYs is going to be really important going forward. And in fact, we actually had another bill, well, not as big an impact, SB 886 with State Senator Scott Wiener. This is a bill that we partnered with the State Construction and Building Trades Council on that streamlines dorm building on campuses for UC, for the University of California and other public education systems in California.

In part because, like, students are massively rent burdened. They live in overcrowded housing. And many California students experience homelessness in a given year. It's a real shame. Yeah. I mean, there was recently, was it, was it UC Berkeley literally had to cut enrollment because they were prevented from building a dorm? So yes, a judge, this, this misanthropic judge, um, uh, you know, ruling on behalf of this guy, I think he's like a hedge fund guy who spends half of his time in like Bali or something. I don't even know. He's like, like lives part-time in, in, in Berkeley, you know, sued the school for growing too much. Then the legislature, the state legislature went into

action. State Senator Nancy Skinner, who represents Berkeley and is like the budget chair, negotiated a deal real quickly past what's called the emergency legislation and basically undid the judge's order. So UC Berkeley did not actually need to cut enrollment there, but that was a real threat. And then I would also add one other bill from this year, this bill by Senator Laura Friedman from the Burbank-Glendale area in Los Angeles. It would end mandatory parking mandates for homes and businesses that are near major transit stops for most projects. And this is like a – Why is that a big deal? Well, for a few reasons.

One, building parking spots and parking garages is really expensive. You're talking anywhere between $30,000 and $80,000 per unit in cost, which significantly increases rent and the price to buy a home. Also, it makes building a lot of the smaller, I think like all those more historic fourplexes. They basically come with big single-family homes, but they actually have four units. They never have parking because you can't really fit parking in that kind of what's called building envelope, the actual space of the building. And so this bill is going to make it possible to build much more naturally affordable homes that don't have all these expensive park requirements. And, and I think like you as well, like you and I are kind of weirdos.

Like we don't, we don't own cars. And so like, I don't need a parking space. Like, why do I need to pay for a parking space? It's like, like this is going to be like like really helpful in accelerating more like climate friendly home building. And then in the past few years, I won't get into everything. I will say some of the biggest successes have been around accessory dwelling unit legalization bills.

So in ADU, think like a backyard cottage or like you're converting your garage to allow an in-law or someone to live in. You know, there was legislation on the books, actually all the way since 1982, way back when I was born. And just like, you know, me at that age, I was totally useless. And so was this law for decades. Then we started passing, you know, significant amendments the past few years and ADUs have skyrocketed. They're now 15% of all homes built in California are now ADUs. 25% in Los Angeles are now ADUs. And that's because of the state legislation.

And we've also passed a number of other bills that, as I mentioned, right, like the anti-renter bans and like under HOAs and, you know, significantly curtailing the ability of local governments to deny zoning approval housing. That's been a real big one where oftentimes these, you know, especially like exclusionary cities use their power to deny housing that they say that they will allow underneath the rules. And California YMBA has sponsored some very significant bills to make that a lot harder and more expensive for cities to engage in. Yeah, there's all these cases where you've got these little cities that are very wealthy and, let's be honest, have right-wing governments that are made up of people who are wealthy,

affluent people who don't want any new housing built, and the state is saying, you have to build housing, and they do everything they can to get out of it. They come up with these weird procedural rules. They say, oh, we looked and we couldn't find anywhere. And then you got to take them to court. You got to do all this. Like it's it's a battle. And it's it's it's one that that maybe will be a little bit easier to fight.

So so are these new bills? Are these now passed? Have they been signed or are they great questions? So the bills I mentioned for this year, they have all passed. So it's just actually been a really great year in the legislature. And now we've got to exert pressure on Governor Gavin Newsom to sign them all. And, you know, based on our political intel, we think he's likely to sign them all. Although the one that we are a bit more concerned about is the parking bill. There's, of course, opposition, like people like free, cheap, abutted parking.

And we are continuing to direct pressure to the governor to not veto it. But this makes, all this bill does is it makes it legal to build homes without parking. You can still build the parking. Yeah. You can build the parking if you want, but it was previously required to build parking, whereas now you could build a transit accessible home next to the subway, next to bus lines that doesn't have parking for folks who want a place that is $80,000 cheaper than a place with parking and, you know, where they can park on the street or they can get a fucking Vespa or a bike or whatever. They don't need to pay for parking. They might not use. Got it.

Okay, well, perhaps these bills will be signed by the time this episode comes out. Perhaps they will not. But I think these are some shocking wins that could really actually help make the housing crisis better in California. Is that not true? That is definitely true.

And look, I'm focused on California because like we focus on state legislation here. But I talk with my pro housing allies in other parts of the country. And like you're seeing a lot of winning throughout throughout the country. I mean, like Gainesville, Florida, I mean, like all kinds of places that like you like wouldn't necessarily expect if you get all of your housing news like from Twitter or something like you're really seeing like YIMBY pro housing organizations emerge all over the country, working with their either local city council or their state government and passing ordinances and laws to accelerate home building and, you know, try to build more inclusive and affordable communities. So, you know, I like I'm I am very optimistic about where we're headed. It is just a lot of work.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about what we as people can do to help, right? I mean, housing is something that we really feel subject to as people, that I don't get to control the housing prices in my area. People tell you, ah, move somewhere cheaper. That's bullshit when people tell you to do that. You shouldn't be forced to move in order to have someplace to live. But it often feels like an ocean liner in terms of how difficult it is going to be to turn. What are the things that we as people can do to actually help turn the ocean liner and help

solve the housing crisis? Yeah. So I mean, I think it depends like what your interests are. Like you were talking about TikTok. I'm not personally on TikTok, but apparently lots of other people are. You gotta get on TikTok, it's really fun. It's addictive and it's fun and they're spying on me and I can't get off of it. So I recommend it to everyone.

Join me in my misery on TikTok. No, but like, okay, like you mentioned like a TikTok urbanist videos. Like I get, you know, I get like texts from like my, like, you know, like, you know, like friends friends in the food industry, and they're just like, hey, did you see this? Do you know this guy? This stuff actually matters. It changes conversations. People talk about it. So if you're great at making TikTok videos, get on it. But I would say a more normie thing to do, one, see, is there a local YIMBY group where you are?

If so, join it. Do you know who your city council member is? If not, find out and get to know them. Is there, like, are you a homeowner? Is there a homeowners association? Are they advocating bad things? Like, get on that, right? Like, just, like, get more involved in civic life. And, you know, if you want to, you know, engage in combat on Twitter or whatever, like, yeah, that's like kind of helpful. I think that should mostly be viewed as like entertainment and like blowing steam, etc. That's like not really how the real work works. But like, you know, there's power in organization.

that I like, you know, think about a lot. Like, why is this, you know, movement emerging now? Now, while like, if you actually like look at the membership of these groups and like of our group, right? Like the median activist with California Yimby is a middle-aged woman that has adult children. It's more like you're like League of like women voters kind of like demographic. But if you look at who like, okay, who started these groups? Who are the most like online activists, it's largely millennials who like have like middle

class or like professional class jobs. And I think what really changed here is a lot of these housing, these exclusionary housing policies, often cases that were put into place like, you know, 50, 80 years ago in order to mandate racial and economic segregation, have in effect worked so well that like our like, you know, great grandparents generation that put these rules in place, like they're now screwing us. And so what really happened, and I think like, if I can like read like one quote from like E.P. Thompson, the English socialist and a historian, when talking about the making of the English working class is that

class happens when some, and apologies for the language, when some men, as a result of common experience, limited or shared, feel and articulate the identity of their interest as between themselves and as against other men whose interests are different from and usually opposed to theirs. And that's really what's happened here. You have a bunch of folks who realize that, you know what, we may have different class backgrounds from the context of like employment, but from the perspective of land ownership, this more almost like feudal sort of position, we have a lot in common and we also have common enemies. And you've seen people come together and fight for their self-interest for a more affordable, you know, California, in my case, you know,

Gainesville in the case of the recent victory or really anywhere in this country. Yeah. I want to make clear when you say our grandparents, meaning like the grandparents of you and I as white people put in place these exclusionary policies, they ended up hurting their white grandkids as well. They also ended up hurting all of the people of color who are listening to this show and are affected by these policies as well. 100%.

And I mean, like, hell, like, if you look, the origin of attached single-family home-only zoning is Berkeley, California, right? Berkeley's Pioneers and all sorts of things. And if you read the 1915 edition of the Berkeley Civic Bulletin where they're discussing this new thing called zoning and should Berkeley adopt it, et cetera,

they didn't use euphemisms in 1915. They were very, very clear that their goal was to create professional class white neighborhoods. Elmwood was a specific neighborhood and it's still to this day, a very, very wealthy neighborhood and to, to secretary and to keep out black and what they refer to then as Asiatics, um, or the heathen Chinese. Um, and you know, like these exclusionary, um, uh, impulses,

like they worked, you know, like it's, you know, like it, it, it, it worked. And like our job now is to undo them. And I think it's a really exciting thing that a lot of folks, you know, especially like a lot of like, you know, grassroots EMVs, like maybe there were, they also, I mean, hell, like I studied 20th century US political history. So I was already like well-versed in this sort of like history of like segregation and racism, but a lot of folks weren't. And now they get to be, to fight in common cause and say, it's like, well, this is impacting me, but a lot of folks weren't. And now they get to fight in common cause and say, it's like, well, this is impacting me, but you know what?

It's actually impacting other folks even far worse. And so now this is an opportunity to work together, again, recognize our mutual class interest and our mutual opponents here and build a much more affordable, inclusive and sustainable world. The word you're looking for here is solidarity. That's right. It's an opportunity to build solidarity, which is a connection with the labor movement, as you say. It's a solidarity as people

from different backgrounds coming together to support each other's shared interests and support the interests of people. You might not share their interests, but you see their struggle and you connect it to yours and you have each other's backs. I want to return to your point about organization and how important it is. Homeowners associations, if folks aren't familiar, can be these incredibly inimical groups of homeowners who get together,

start a structure that A, controls what each other can do on their land. Oh, you can't allow someone to rent out your home. You have to have a certain kind of bush in your front yard or whatever. That's bad enough that this is a way that people exert control over each other. With the force of law, by the way. But what's even worse is that sometimes these homeowners associations become very politically powerful.

And so the head of the homeowners association reaches out to that city council person and says, they're thinking about building a new apartment building. I don't like it. And you know how many votes I control because I have a newsletter and you don't. Right. And I can say to everybody, vote this person out of office. And they end up like that. That is the arch nimby.

Right. That sort of person. The Sherman Oaks homeowners association is like the archetypical example of this. This is a well-to-do neighborhood in Los Angeles. And for decades, they have just been running housing policy. And to this day, the votes in that part of Los Angeles are really, really hard for us to get, even if the individual representatives are not NIMBYs personally, even if, like, they completely agree with the racial, the economic,

and the climate justice arguments. And they're like, yeah, but here's the thing, Brian, I'm going to get voted out if I vote for your bill. And so, like, this is, yeah. Oh, what I was going to say is there have been so many stories coming out about people. I've read a couple anecdotes like this of people realizing that they hate their homeowners association, that it's making their life worse and making their city worse, and then they take it over.

Yeah, that's right. They counter-organize. They start knocking on neighbors' doors being like, hey, do you like the fact that you're getting yelled at for not taking your trash cans out at the exact right minute of day and you can't control, you know, what you, you know, leaving your truck parked in your yard. Tell you what, vote for me for the next person to run the homeowners association. And then once they get into power,

they dismantle the homeowners association. They take it apart. Stuff like that. That can be really, really powerful. But a contrasting thing that I think is powerful is starting your own organization. Like if you're a renter,

starting a tenants organization in your building that can, you know, exert its own, you know, if you've got a hundred tenants and you're emailing the city council person, you're saying, hey, we're having trouble with the landlord. And also we'd like more rental housing to be built. That can be super powerful as well. And you can have solidarity and support each other when the, when the landlord says, hey, there's a 300% rent increase, you can say, fuck you, me and 100 other tenants are organized, right? Stuff like that can be powerful, can't it?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, and like, this is the sort of thing where, you know, like, yeah, it's like, you know, free to just like go on Twitter and like tweet and like maybe you can get some engagement and that's kind of fun. But the hard work of organization,

and it is hard, but it's also like the, you know the the joy of solidarity is real right like when you're actually like you know working with your neighbors at this like common cause because like it's not it's not all like you know boring like you're going out and you're drinking and you're otherwise like having fun and hopefully you at least like like a few of them um and then like when you actually like taste victory and you're like oh wait my landlord, my landlord, all of a sudden, they're fixing our broken appliances fast now, whereas before they were not. Or they were threatening to evict one of my neighbors for no good reason, and now they've backed off. That's a great feeling. Yeah.

Oh, my God. It's incredible. Especially when – because landlords fucking lie. They lie to people. A friend of mine right now her elderly mother her husband died

this old woman is in this apartment the landlord is terrifying her by saying she has to do literally like a you know like an extra $600 a month

saying she's evicted and my friend is saying to her mom no this is illegal what they're doing putting her in touch with the tenants right organization

that kind of thing it makes my blood boil thinking about you know this poor woman being treated this way in a place that she's lived for 30 years. But this is what landlords do. And this is something that we can fight back against if we start some tenants' rights organizations or find some and band together and have solidarity with each other. Yeah. So two things to say. One, absolutely right. And landlords especially love to prey upon people who don't know their rights, who they think probably don't know their rights. Obviously, tenant rights vary tremendously based on what like

local jurisdiction that you're in. But typically, if you have a tenant right organization, they can help educate you to figure out like what your rights are. But also, this is also why it's important to just like build a ton more like rental housing. Like landlords wouldn't have the power to be like, I want to increase your rent by 300 a month you'd say like oh okay uh cool man i'm gonna go get a better apartment for like less money and they're like wait wait wait no no no one month free you know sorry like that's like and look look like and some of us got to taste this like during covid. I negotiated an 18% rent reduction, you know, in the early days of COVID. Cause you know, I like living in downtown Oakland, you know,

all of a sudden like the amenity value, the neighborhood kind of drops to zero. Cause like, I'm not like, like all the offices are closed. The brushers are closed. The bars are closed. I'm not taking the subway anywhere. And yeah, I mean, I was able to 18%. And I was talking to my neighbors. I told them what I did. Like, wait, really? I'm like, yeah. When you come up for renewal, like, you know, send them an email with like a little analysis of other rents in the area and ask for a reduction. And I, and my neighbors also did it. Like, it was great. Yeah. Do you feel that there is any kind of, you know, sea change happening in our national consciousness about this? Because,

you know, we used to live in a world in which, you know, Americans loved building new housing, loved building new things in which, you know, housing was seen as something that was available to everyone. And, you know, now we live in this world where people are like, oh, they built something new over there. And, you know, we all feel oppressed by the price of housing. Do you feel that we're starting to see a change in that the crisis is starting to cause a response in the minds of the American people?

So, yes, I think we are. And you definitely see this in housing. You also see this, I mean, hell, the Biden administration has said like a lot of great things about housing production. Hell, there's even a YIMBY Act Act like, you know, before Congress right now. It's like you actually are like seeing some stuff. But beyond housing, though, I think you're speaking to a larger like vibe shift.

That's like a good thing where folks like, you know what, we actually do need to build more good things. This is a country that like if you think like early 20th century, like, know, post-war era, you know, building bridges, building power plants, like, building the highway system, which, you know, makes sense about. But, like, you know, the government just building this massive infrastructure in order to support, like, broad-based, like, prosperity and economic growth and everything else. And now we sort of said that, you know, since the 70s, like, many of us, especially those of us on the left, have been like, oh, wait a minute. There are all these problems with that. The highways, the dams, they kill the fish, blah, blah, blah.

And that's all true. But how do we actually build the future that we want? We can't just say no to things. And I think Derek Thompson of The Atlantic has talked about this a lot and other, like Drew from DemSass has mentioned this. It's more like abundance agenda. Like we need abundant housing. We also need, you know, abundant clean energy production. You know, AOC has talked about this, too.

It's like, well, like, well, like is permitting reform, you know, broadly good or bad? Well, like, I don't know. Like we shouldn't make it easy to drill more oil wells, but we should make it easy to, you know, do like geothermal wells and like, and, you know, you know, wind farms and solar plants and like all the rest, like this carbon free transition and, you know, large is going to require us to build a ton of stuff. And we can do so without making the same mistakes that folks made in the more like, you know, early, mid 20th century period. Yeah. And if we're talking about environmentalism, which I'm an incredible, I'm an incredibly

huge environmentalist. I don't know how effective I am. And I eat granola every morning. I used to work for the EPA and the Forest Service. I'm like a cartoon joke environmentalist with bikes everywhere. Okay. So we both give a shit. I think we both agree, though,

that if we care about the natural world, we're not going to preserve it if the only place to build new housing is a bunch of tract homes out in the desert. That's right. Three hours from the city center where nobody gives a shit, that's where you build all the new housing.

No, we need to build taller in our city centers so that we can preserve all that land out there because we have a growing population. Until we stop fucking, we're not going to stop having a growing population. And I don't think we're going to stop fucking anytime soon. I certainly don't want to ask people to stop. So we need a place for the people to live.

And we got to knock down some old buildings and build some really tall new ones. Otherwise, we're going to be eating up more and build some really tall new ones. Otherwise, we're going to be like, you know, eating up more of the natural world and you can go to countries that have huge populations

and also are full of, you know, the natural, go to Japan, right? Japan has some, an enormous population, enormously dense population

and also enormous parts of that country are gorgeous and natural because they have built, I don't want to speak to Japanese housing policy, but that was my experience of being there for a week. And it's so much more affordable too, right? Like Tokyo makes Sacramento, California look outrageously expensive. Like it's amazing what you can do when you actually just build a lot of dense infill housing. And it sounds like we are doing it. And you've given us a wonderful list of ways

that people listening can be a part of that. So I really thank you for being here, Brian. Where can people find out more about California Yimby? Or more importantly, where can people find a Yimby organization in their neighborhood? Yeah, so I would say if you're in California, C-A-Yimby, California, yesmybackyard.org,

you can sign up to like our rapid response team, start calling into a legislative committee hearings and make a voice call as well as get connected to your local group. If you're like outside of California, Welcoming Neighbors Network is doing a ton of good work organizing folks all over the country. That's welcomingneighbors.us. I love that name. Welcoming Neighbors. That's what we all want to be doing, and that's what we need to do in order to solve the housing crisis. That's right.

Is welcome neighbors into our communities. Who doesn't want to do that? Assholes. Well, we're not assholesholes and no one listening is an asshole and neither are you. Brian, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been a delight and a pleasure. Thank you. It was a lot of fun.

Well, thank you once again to Brian Hanlon for coming on the show. I hope you loved that conversation as much as I did. By the way, if you live in Portland, come see me live. I'm going to be at the Helium in two weeks. I hope to see you there.

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