The Daily Signal - Why More Americans Have Nowhere to Live

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

The cost of housing rose again last month, making it even more difficult for Americans to afford a home of their own. Inflation is just one of many problems creating a housing crisis in America. On today’s episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast,” James Burling, a property rights lawyer with more than 40 years of experience, documents how zoning laws, environmental regulations, and progressive Democrat policies like rent control and affordable housing mandates have put the American dream out of reach for families. Burling is the author of a new book, “Nowhere to Live: The Hidden Story of America’s Housing Crisis.” Through his work at the Pacific Legal Foundation, Burling has examined the misguided government policies that contributed to the problem of too few homes for Americans. His book diagnoses where the government went wrong and suggests steps that policymakers—and individual citizens—can take to get out of this mess. Enjoy the show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's week three of Canadian tires early Black Friday sales. These prices won't go lower this year. Maybe too long. Freezing. Save up to 50% November 20th to 27th. Conditions apply, details online. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, August 16th. I'm your host, Rob Blewey.

The cost of housing rose again last month, making it even more difficult for Americans to afford a home of their own. On today's show, you'll hear from James Burling, a property rights attorney with over 40 years of experience, and the author of a new book, Now Where to Live, the Hidden Story of America's Housing Crisis. Through his work at the Pacific Legal Foundation, Burling has examined the misguided government policies

that contributed to a problem of too few homes for Americans. His new book diagnoses where the government went wrong and suggests steps that policymakers and individual citizens can take to get out of this mess. Stay tuned for our interview right after this. Hey, it's Rob Lewy from The Daily Signal. Want to stay ahead of the curve on conservative news and analysis? Subscribe to our free Daily Signal email newsletters.

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and get the truth. We are joined at the Daily Signal today by James Burling, author of the new book, Nowhere to Live, the Hidden Story of America's Housing Crisis. James, thanks so much for being with us today. Hey, it's great to be with you. You have written a book about a topic that is so pertinent and timely for many Americans, particularly, I think, younger Americans. You write about how your own children are facing these same challenges that so many Americans are today.

what prompted you to write this book? I have been litigating property rate cases for 40 years, and I've seen one common denominator. We always represent small individuals who are having trouble with government regulation of one kind or another, and Pacific Legal Foundation represents them pro bono, so we're not talking about the big corporations, but the ordinary person simply trying to make use of his or her land. And it is becoming increasingly difficult over the year. to develop property to build the homes where people want to live. And I thought that, you know, if I put this down on paper and really showed where the root of this problem lies,

which is a lack of respect for property rights, it may have some influence. It may help people understand that the reason why housing costs so much is because we as a society are not letting those houses to be built. Like they used to be built. We're building fewer houses now than we were in the 70s. when our population was much smaller than it is now. Well, you have done some tremendous work as the Vice President of Legal Affairs at the Pacific Legal Foundation. I know that your organization collaborates closely with the Heritage Foundation on many different issues. You talk about the lack of houses that are being built.

What are some of the factors and causes, regulations, climate change, environmental policy? I imagine that there's a mix of them. What do you see as some of the biggest impediments? Some of the biggest impediments are zoning at the local level where communities have essentially zoned out any kind of multifamily housing that would allow people who earn a living, working people to afford a home. We have environmental regulations, even if you're able to meet the zoning requirements of a local community. You're guaranteed in many parts of the country to go through one series of lawsuits after a number. another, as the environmentalists, as the not in my backyard types, can nitick an environmental review and find something to sue in.

And then after that suit's over, another suit can be followed in another suit. And so we have this endless series of litigation. In my book, Nowhere to Live, I talk about people that have gone through the process for almost 20 years to get a housing development or just to build a single house sometimes. And on top of that, we have vast areas of property land that's been taken off the table for development, whether it's for endangered species protection, whether it's for wetlands or viewscapes, or we just don't want any more housing because it's a nice farmland right now, even though it doesn't make any money for a farming community anymore. So we have impediment after impediment, but the common thread is that is a government policy that is infringing on the fundamental problem. right, to use one's property in a manner that makes sense. We're talking to James Burling, author of Nowhere to Live, the Hidden Story of America's Housing

Crisis. James, was this a problem that gradually developed, or were there some pivotal moments in this country where you see perhaps the problem being exacerbated? Yeah, I trace in my book, Nowhere to Live, the origins of the various aspects of this, which have all come together. For example, I trace zoning. to the very first zoning law in America, which happened in 1910 when a Yale educated lawyer named George McMetchin wanted to move into a nice Baltimore neighborhood. He bought a home, and within several days, local youth hurled rocks and broke every window that he had in his new house. Why? Well, it's because the neighborhood was all white, and George McMetton and his family

were all black. And that led to the nation's first zoning ordinance, making it a crime. for a black American to move into a largely white neighborhood. And I traced that that was overturned in a few years, but I traced zoning through history and how it has been used to exclude working class people, immigrants from large swaths of America. So to build that affordable housing became impossible. I also trace the history of environmental regulations, how they really started with the best of intentions to protect our water, to protect our air, and to protect our species. But these laws have been abused over and over again by people simply, what I call the deep ecologists that want to stop all kinds of human development pretty much everywhere and have

a really very mesanthropic or anti-human view of life. And in my book, I talk about things like rent control, how rent control started actually after the Civil War on the Chicago waterfront with the grain elevators. And so I have a whole series of stories in my book about the human beings that we're trying to do something and we're stymied, right and left by government policies that have become more and more and more pervasive. We've had, as a result, a supply and demand issue. The law supply and demand is inexorable. It applies everywhere. Nobody's been able to repeal it, not North Korea, not Venezuela, and not even the California legislature. And if we don't allow enough homes to be built, prices are going to go up and

up and up. And the first people that are hurt are the people that are on the economic margins, the working class people, immigrants, people that are starting out like my children. And it's very, very difficult for people that don't already have a home to acquire. a home. Well, let's talk about some of those individuals. So in the event that they can't afford the home or be able to build the home that they want, where do you find that they are going? What are the alternatives that they're seeking out? And do they ever, maybe sometime later in life, find a home? But what are the costs to doing that? The costs are high because to find an affordable house, for example, let's say you had a nice job in Silicon Valley, well, you can't afford to live there if you're starting out. So then you have a super commute. You go into the Central Valley of California in an area that is somewhat more affordable.

So instead of paying, as you would, in Silicon Valley area for a three-bedroom, two-bath home, you know, $1.5 million, you can go in the Central Valley and maybe get something for $6,000, $700,000, which is still. still very expensive, and then you have a two-hour commute each way every day. I mean, that just kills people after a while. You can't do that. So then you think about moving out of state. Go to places where they are allowing more homes to be built. Texas and Florida are magnets for people from California who can no longer afford to live in a state in a state like this or one of the other blue states as well.

But that's exporting our people in order to make sure that we have enough housing for those that remain is hardly a solution. Other young people will or people or people that are just have working salaries, they will double up and triple up. And that's, that's nice for the time being. But, you know, what people really want in this country is that they want to have a house of their own, if they could possibly afford it. They want to have a little yard perhaps. They want to have a place where their children can play outside without having to worry about them being in an urban environment? Now, sure, there are some people that might prefer to live in a city, but there's some people

who prefer to live elsewhere. But we should build enough homes to meet everybody's demand, and that's what we're not allowing to happen anymore. James, is this problem more pronounced in some states more than others? You mentioned, for instance, Texas and Florida being magnets for people like Californians who can no longer afford it. So are some states doing it correctly and other states doing it poorly? You know, I would say every state can improve, but some states are doing a lot more poorly than others.

And front and center are the western states, Washington state, Oregon, and then the worst of the worst is probably California. In California, I've talked about these people that have been trying to build homes for 20 years. There's a big area, a big huge ranch north of Los Angeles where a developer is trying to build on about a quarter million acres, of its giant ranch. They've already agreed to give over about 200,000 acres for conservation, land that will never be developed. They wanted to build 30,000 more homes on the remaining. And that has been going through lawsuit after lawsuit.

Each lawsuit, they shrink the size to the development a little bit. They agree to do such things as providing solar roofs, charging panels, credits for EVs, even in one case to subsidize building, car. neutral stoves for African peasants. And this is – this to get a house built in California, it's absurd. And then we have our environmental laws in California, front and center, is the California Environmental Quality Act, where anybody in the state can sue to stop any project he or she wishes. Even if the lawsuit has no merit, the lawsuit is going to slow the project down for a year or so because the court system is so slow.

And if you lose, well, no big deal. Maybe somebody else can sue. And if you win your lawsuit, you get paid attorney fees from the developer. But if you lose, do you pay attorney fees to the developer? Of course not. It's a one-way ratchet. And so it's incredibly easy to sue and stop a project in California. And there's no meaningful attempt to do reform of the California Environmental Quality Act

because you have what I call the Iron Triangle of not in my backyard types that like the law, ought to sue, environmentalists who make a lot of money and their attorney fees from suing under the law, and then the labor unions. The labor unions in California, and this may seem absolutely absurd to somebody not here, the labor unions will often sue to stop the development on environmental grounds. It's not that they care about the environment, but they use that as leverage to get a project labor agreement so union labor will be employed on the project. Hey, we'll sue you, and we are suing you, but hey, we can make a deal. We'll drop our lawsuit if you agree to hire union labor.

And this sort of thing goes on. And it's just a standard way of business in California. Well, now we regularly hear from some of those individuals, whether it be unions or progressive Democrat lawmakers, that they push things like rent control or affordable housing mandates. You have found in your research, however, that those typically don't work. Why is that? Well, take rent control.

When you have a city that adopts rent control, who in your right mind wants to build new rental housing? And I'll give you an example that's in my book, Nowhere to Live. St. Paul, Minnesota, adopted rent control just a few years ago. There were building projects in the works. Sticks and bricks are going up out of the ground. When rent control is passed, the workers were called off, the equipment was called off, and the project stopped dead in its tracks. Because it made no sense.

St. Paul's rent control was allowing only 3% increase on an annual basis, regardless of expenses, regardless of inflation. So if you have a rental property and a tenant moves out and you need to do some major rehab on it, replace appliances, things get a little trashed up, you cannot recover your money. Same thing in New York. If you have more than $20,000 in expenses, you can't pass those on to the renter and you have to eat those. So what's happening? People are not only not building new rental housing, but they're abandoning housing that exists. They're essentially saying, look, this makes no sense. If I can't make money on my rental and somebody moves out, I'm just going to keep the police vacant. So that's rent control, and that's a terrible

disincentive. And it's one thing I talk about at length in my book, how we got started with rent control, and what a bad idea it is. And you also mentioned the idea of affordable housing mandates. And this is the idea that if you build a certain number of houses, you have to set aside a certain percentage as affordable or below market rate. So let's say you have a development that you want to build 20 homes. You're required to take two of those homes and sell those for what is affordable for a low-income person. And that essentially means you have to jack up the prices for everybody else. And economic studies have shown that this does not help affordability overall, but it makes housing less affordable.

So these are the sort of things that just make no sense. And I can tell you just one last thing. In California, there's some counties that you don't have to be building 20 homes to have this affordable mandate imposed upon you. We had a case at Pacific Legal Foundation that I talk about in my book, Nowhere to Live, where a couple was simply trying to divide one lot into two. And they were told to pay an exorbitant affordable housing mandate just for subdividing the property.

They weren't even building anything. And so you ask, why do they have to subsidize this? They're not causing the need for more affordable housing. They're just a convenient ATM because they needed a government permit. We are talking to James Burling, a vice president at the Pacific Legal Foundation, an author of the new book, Nowhere to Live, the Hidden Story of America's Housing Crisis. So you talked about some solutions that the left has proposed and why those don't work. but I know that it's a passion of yours to figure out this problem,

not just document why it is a problem. So what are some of the solutions that you would offer and you offer to your readers in this book? Well, I would offer not more government programs, but less. I mean, the bottom line is less bureaucracy, less fewer government programs. And I could start at the zoning level, local communities. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror

and ask ourselves, are we allowing enough development to occur for people who are starting out for working class people. And if we're not, then we need to fix our zoning to allow more triplexes, duplexes, accessory dwelling units like granny flats. We really need to seriously start at ground level. We also need to reform the environmental laws to make it not possible for somebody to simply sue to stop any project for any reason at any time and make developing homes into a nightmare. We have to get rid of these top-down mandates like rent control. It's a terrible disincentive to building new rental housing.

We have to get rid of affordable housing mandates that simply, you know, Rob Peter to pay Paul. Look, if you want to have subsidies for housing, which I don't think are a good idea, at least have it on the taxpayers. Don't put all the burden on somebody, a new home buyer, like a young couple trying to start out. So bottom line is less government, less government control, less government regulation. Yeah, of course we need some regulation for health and safety, and nobody's going to dispute that.

But let's get real. Let's only have the regulations that are necessary and let builders build the homes where people want to live. Okay, a couple of final questions for you, James. Number one, for the individuals who may be listening to this interview and say, geez, I'm in a situation where I perfectly identify with what James is talking about and the challenges in the housing market today. Are there steps that you would encourage individuals to take where they might be able to make a difference? People can start joining what they call yes in my backyard movements. These are spreading up around the country where people go to the city councils and say to those people are saying, no, we don't want anything built.

They're saying, yes, we want things built in our town. We want new housing. We have to have a political force that makes it politically palatable for local politicians, mayors, city council members who say yes to proposals for housing development. Because until we build our way out of the problem, we're going to have this problem. And that's the most important thing, because otherwise an individual, you look at the market, and I have no secrets for how you're going to buy a house on the cheap unless you want to move somewhere. we just have to encourage our lawmakers to fix the laws that we have. To have, if you have a good development and you meet the zoning requirements, you should be able to build by right, not have to go through one discretionary permit after another,

each time the government uses that as an excuse to extract more money and concessions from you. So, yeah, we have to make it easier to build. James, you mentioned at the top of this interview that you've been doing this type of work for about 40 years. What keeps you motivated in going every day to try to find solutions here? I am the eternal optimist, and I don't look at a problem and say, I have to give up and go somewhere else. I have been fighting 40 years on behalf of property owners representing the pro bono at Pacific Legal Foundation, and we have had some great successes.

We've had 18 victories at the Supreme Court over 20 trips there, and this is not just friend of the court breeds. This is actually us representing individuals in arguing up before the justices. So I think it could be done. I think things can be fixed. If I didn't, I would just give up and go somewhere else. I don't know where, but I would have to give up sometime. But so I'm the optimist. That's why I wrote the book, nowhere to live, because I think that, and if the readers go to, you know, find it on Amazon, nowhere to live. It just came out on Tuesday. They'll find that, you know, I have a passion for this issue. I hope they would develop that

passion and we'll try to get something done and fix the problems that we're in. James Burling, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with the Daily Signal today. Again, the book is called Nowhere to Live, the Hidden Story of America's Housing Crisis. We'll be sure to provide a link to Amazon, and I'm sure it's available wherever books are sold. James, thanks so much. It's my pleasure talking to you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Please subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts and help us reach more

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