State-Level Remedies for the Housing Crisis

Many areas of the country are beset by serious housing shortages. State-level regulatory policies such as exclusionary zoning and other restrictions on construction are, according to some analysts, major causes of the crisis. A variety of possible reforms have been enacted or proposed in various studies, including “YIMBY” (“Yes In My Backyard”) zoning deregulation, inclusionary zoning, rent control, and state constitutional litigation and amendment.
Join us for this discussion on the merits or pitfalls of the range of possible state-level remedies for the housing crisis.
Featuring:

James Burling, Vice President of Legal Affairs, Pacific Legal Foundation
Christopher Elmendorf, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law
David Schleicher, Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law, Yale Law School
(Moderator) Ilya Somin, Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to fedsock Forums, a podcast of the Federal Society's
Practice groups. I'm Ny kas Merrick, Vice President and Director
of Practice Groups at the Federal Society. For exclusive access
to live recordings of fedsock form programs, become a Federal
Society member today at fedsoc dot org.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello, and welcome to this fedsock Forum webinar call today,
September ninth, twenty twenty five. We are delighted to host
a discussion on the possible state level remedies for the
housing crisis. My name is Matthew Saltel, and I'm Assistant
Director of Practice Groups at the Federalist Society. As always,
please note that all expressions of opinion are those of
the experts on today's call, as the Federal Society takes

(00:41):
no position on particular legal or public policy issues. In
the interest of time, we'll keep the introductions brief, but
you would like to know more about any of our panelists,
you can access their full bios at fedsock dot org.
Today we are fortunate to have with us mister James Berlin,
Professor Christopher Allmendorff, and Professor David Schleiker, and we're pleased

(01:03):
to have Professor Elios Soman as our moderator today, Ilia's
professor of Law at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia
Law School. One last note throughout the panel, if you
have any questions, please submit them through the Question and
Answer future so that we will have access to them
when we get to that portion of the webinar. We
do ask the questions submitted there both pertain to this discussion,

(01:25):
and with a question mark. With that, thank you for
being with us today, Professor Soman, the floor is yours.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Thank you to the Federalist Society for organizing an event
on this important issue, and to our three participants for
what I'm sure will be there many important insights. I'm
just going to briefly introduce the panelists. Each of them
will speak for ten minutes. Then I'm going to give
them meets a chance to comment on others' presentations very briefly,
and then after one or two moderator questions, perhaps we

(01:55):
will turn it over to you the audience. So as
our first panelist will be James Berwing. He is the
vice president for Legal Affairs at the Pacific Lego Foundation,
where he has been since nineteen eighty three wittigating a
variety of important property rights related cases. He's also a
member of the Federalist Society Environmental Law and Property Rights

(02:18):
Practice Group Executive Committee, and is a participant and on
a number of other important organizations dealing with wand use
and property law. And he is the author of Nowhere
to Live, The Hidden Story of America's Housing Crisis, a
very important book on actually the issue that we're talking
about today. Professor Chris Elmendorf is the Martin Luther King

(02:42):
Junior Professor of Law at UC Davis waschl He works
in the areas of property law, election, los statutory interpretation,
and administrative law. He is a leading authority in California
Wan use in housing law and has done widely noted
work on public understanding and knowledge of housing markets and

(03:02):
public opinion about housing policy. His research has been published
in numerous top lawn political science and economic journals, including
the Yale Law Journal, Columbia War Review, University of Chicago
War Review, and many others. Finally, last, but not least,
David Schweiker is the Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property

(03:23):
in Urban Law at Yale Law School. He is an
expert on local government law, wand use, federalism, state and
local finance, and urban development. His work has been published
extensively in a variety of academic journals and in popular media.
He recently published a new book in a Bad State Response,

(03:45):
responding to state and local fiscal crises, and he has
co authored reading casebooks about local government.

Speaker 4 (03:51):
Law and property law.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
So we are going to go in alphabetical order for
lack of a better plan, so we will.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
Next passed abaton to Jim Burling. Jim, please take it away.

Speaker 5 (04:04):
Thank you, Elia, and thank you for members of the
Federal Society for joining us today. So I'm going to
start out by talking about my passion. It is property rights.
And my argument is that the right to develop and
use property as an individual right really had a strongest
expression early in our republic, and it was coincident with

(04:25):
the unprecedented freedom and prosperity we've enjoyed in this country.
But from the birth of racial zoning over a century ago,
to criticisms in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, to
the neighborhood changes wrought by greedy developers and the growth machine,
we are now reaping the benefits from massive NIMBI inspired

(04:47):
no growth housing shortage. The right to use one's property
has been effectively converted into a privilege and something that
must be bargained for, where the community and government have
ultimate say over what can be done with one's personal
private property. Our goal, a specific legal foundation, is to
reverse that mindset, to go back to the idea that

(05:09):
people have rapes and property, which include the right to
use and develop property in a way that doesn't cause
nuisance lake harm to neighbors but benefits the owner of
the property and society is a large and there's more
than a philosophical reason for this. There's a pragmatic reason
as well. Study after study have shown that regulation correlates

(05:30):
to the percentage of families who must spend more than
enough for their income on housing. For example, two point
six percent of people in San Diego spend less than
thirty percent of their income on housing, which is the
ideal number quarter people less than a quarter people in Pittsburgh,
which has less regulation than San Diego, and the public

(05:53):
has a disconnect here. This is something that Chris Elmandorf
will be talking more about in his presentation. Twenty eighteen
LA Times poll said only thirteen percent of the eligible
voters blame high housing costs on too little home building,
and we're twice that number on.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
Too little rent control. So the zoning.

Speaker 5 (06:14):
Reform is a place where you have to start, and
it's so really I think it's a local not a
federal response. Local zoning started at the local level in
cities like Baltimore, New York City, and Berkeley, and it
was greatly helped along by the federal government with model
bills and legislation starting with a Hoover administration. And zoning

(06:34):
had to start with a blatant desire to keep minority, immigrant,
and working class families out of more affluent white neighborhoods,
and even in areas where there are not yet any neighborhoods.
The idea is that keep people out of those neighborhoods
unless they look like me. Single family zoning dominance has
made the construction of starter homes economically and feasible, not

(06:58):
to mention unlawful ar parts of the country. My first
home was a nine hundred square foot home, two bedroom,
two bath. That home was built in the shortly after
World War Two. That home would be illegal or economically
infeasible and virtually the entire country right now. But there
is is We see little support from reform from the

(07:20):
current administration, and we harbor a disquiet ourselves with federal
intervention in local hasing policies. But we have to counter
the mindset that I often run into. People tell me
we like local control, we like our neighborhood just the
way it is. We don't want people like Assembly likes

(07:40):
California Senator Scott Wiener State Senator shoving density down our throats.
We had some reforms in California, for example, there's something
called SB ninehch I get into it in a bit,
but that was had a lot of pushback, successful put
pushback from charter cities.

Speaker 4 (07:58):
I said, look, this is a local matter. We are
a charter.

Speaker 5 (08:01):
City and the state can't control what we do at
the local level because zoning is a local matter, and
that one is trial court. It's on appeal, but the
appeal will take probably a few more years. My response
to the idea that we have to have local control
as opposed to state or federal control is yes. I
am for the ultimate local control, that is the right

(08:22):
of the individual owner to make use of his or
her property that's the local level that I think is
most important.

Speaker 4 (08:30):
Now, zoning reform can.

Speaker 5 (08:32):
Be a tough political hurdle, so we see that there
are different ways of.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
Getting at it. I can tell you that.

Speaker 5 (08:39):
Somebody who's litigated taking cases for forty two years, taking
challenge to zoning is generally going to fail unless it's
truly confiscatory, and courts don't like to see things that
are too confiscatory. They just don't see it, even when
it might be. And by the same token, people who
claim that they their neighbors have a right to the

(09:00):
current status quo in zoning.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
So court said in.

Speaker 5 (09:04):
Challenges to zoning, there is no right to the current
zoning when you're being downzoned. The same token, there's no
right to the current zoning if you're being up zoned.
But people think that they have this right. They say,
we have time and time again. I am in a
meeting and people will tell me, but we have a
right to the zoning that we moved into the neighborhood.

(09:25):
That was our understanding that it was always going to
be single family home and therefore I have a property
right in existing zoning. Well the answer is no, you don't,
but we will see how far those arguments go, because,
after all, in Euclid versus Ambler, the case or the
Supreme Court upheld zoning almost a century ago, the court

(09:45):
was motivated more by political and social prejudice than any
coherent constitutional theory. At this point, I'll give a shout
out to Ilio Sohmans and Joshua Braver's work The Constitutional
Case against Exclusionary zoning. Progressives and libertarians can come together
and joined forces and find a good theory why zoning

(10:06):
is unconstitutional. But we can also tip away at the
margins of zoning. Parking requirements that are unrelated to any need,
especially near transit zones, setbacks, penalties for lot splits, height limits,
all these things can be looked at, should be looked at,
or fresh. Urban limit lines is another problem, where density

(10:28):
is confined in small areas and outlying growth is prevented.
California had a series of reforms SB nine that I
mentioned before said cities must ministerially prove duplexes and lot
splits and where they're single families zoning now, but it
can only be in certain key areas. And that's one
of the problems. Is confined to urban areas near mass transit.

(10:53):
These reforms are often combined with affordable housing set asides
or feeds. They're often combined with the requirements project labor agreements,
which means union wage, union labor, and union dues. Now Oregon, California, Washington, Maine,
Vermont have passed some reforms, and California, most recently in
July twenty twenty five pass some major reforms. And if

(11:16):
you read about them in the newspapers, you think, oh
my god, we've gotten rid of the California Environmental Quality
Act and people are going to be developed from the
Oregon border down to Tijuana and across the Nevada Pacific
Ocean and build.

Speaker 4 (11:30):
More and more homes. Well not really.

Speaker 5 (11:32):
We had AB one thirty, which is an exemption to
the California Environmental Quality Act. That act allows almost anybody
to sue any development for any reason, so called environmental reason,
and you have a you know, better than a fifty
percent chance of stopping or slowing the project down. But
AB one thirty is confined to nonsensitive, non environmentally sensitive areas,

(11:57):
and everywhere in California's sensitive of less than twenty acres,
it has to be an area as previously developed. It
has to be consistent with a general plan. You have
to have sometimes special design characteristics. For example, if you're
within five hundred feet to a freeway, you need air filtration, heating, ventilation,
and AC requirements. Affordable projects have to pay prevailing wage,

(12:22):
that is, projects against some sort of subsidy or special
benefit to make them affordable. And projects over eighty five
feet have to have some union labor, which they probably
already have. To have something that you need skill profession
SB one point thirty one at Streamlined Sequel Review or
California en Fernamental Quality Review. For example, local agencies could

(12:44):
hold no more than five hearings on a qualifying project.
I know people outside of California. You say, what, no
more than five hearings? Yeah, because I can tell you
cases where people have gone on for fifteen twenty years
and hearing after hearing after hearing, it just become a
lawyer's full employment act and nothing gets built as a result.

(13:06):
So we have potential limits on historical site determination. So
if you're in the middle of a project, you can
have it landmarked too late in the project where that
could kill the project itself. We have some potential coastal
lack reform and limits the ability of the California Coastal
Commission to appeal to itself a residential project in sensitive

(13:30):
coastal areas. Now, let me explain that in California, if
a local government approves a project, the California Coastal Commission
doesn't like it, it can appeal that project to none
other than the California Coastal Commission. It sounds bizarre and
it is, but it's a great tool for the Coastal
Commission to stop projects. There's attempts to freeze a building code,

(13:56):
put limits on transportation, and develop mitigation fees. I should
mention that we had our sheets case where many of
you know that we challenged the imposition to a twenty
three thousand dollars traffic impact fee. The California Supreme Court
said that we had a right to challenge that even
though a legislative body adopted it. But it just got
out of trial court and the trial court said, well, yeah,

(14:19):
we know that Supreme Court heard the case, but nothing
to see there. It's still a lawful exaction because we
think it meets the Nolan and Dolan rough proportionality standards.
Why because we defer to the government agencies to make
that determination.

Speaker 4 (14:34):
Of course, it's going to work.

Speaker 5 (14:36):
And the last thing I want to mention is we
have to have further reforms and environment in California. And
I hope something is not coming to your way outside
of California, and that is the vehicle miles traveled idea
that if you're building a new subdivision, especially in the
Greenfield area, you cannot have an increase in vehicle miles

(14:57):
traveled by people that move into that subdivision. If you do,
you have to either mitigate that or Now that's the
Air Resources Board is coming up with a fee that
you would have to pay. In other words, developing in
Greenfield areas where people might drive to and from that
new development are going to be increasingly difficult to build

(15:19):
in California.

Speaker 4 (15:20):
So we have a lot of work.

Speaker 5 (15:21):
The head to do is here in other states as well,
but I think it is necessary that we have reforms
if we are going to take a dent in the
housing crisis, which I will say, read my book and
you find all more about a lot more about it.

Speaker 4 (15:36):
Thanks.

Speaker 6 (15:47):
Okay, So hello everybody, Chris, thank you so yeah, yeah
for good Thanks so much for inviting me to join
this event. I want to talk a little bit about
red states and blue states, Republican led states and Democratic
led states as housing supply fixers. We heard a lot

(16:08):
about California, but I think one of the things that
is really interesting is that while California may have led
the way in terms of escalating housing prices in California
may be the birthplace of the YMBI movement, action at
the state level on housing supply is happening everywhere. So

(16:29):
this is a figure from a report that Mecada Center
put out earlier this year looking state actions that it
happened just in the last year, and they classify five
states as having past major housing supply packages Texas, Montana, Washington.

Speaker 4 (16:46):
California, and Maine.

Speaker 6 (16:48):
So some red states, some blue states, some in between states,
then virtually every other state, with the exception of a
little bit in the Upper Midwest. In New York, maybe
David will tell us about New York has at least
done something, and not just in the sense of debating bills,
but actually enacting a bill that, and the view of Mercadis,
is at least a meaningful attempt to address barriers to

(17:08):
housing supply at the local level. And when you dig
down from the pictures of what states are doing to
the pictures of what individual people think about the housing
supply problem, it turns out that there's actually a fair
degree of agreement among Democrats and Republicans. So with Clayton

(17:32):
All and stand A Klobsia to political scientists, I did
a study a year ago in which we surveyed five
thousand residents of US metropolitan regions.

Speaker 4 (17:44):
Over sampling tenants a little bit.

Speaker 6 (17:45):
So this is a somewhat younger and maybe a little
more democratic leaning sample than you might expect. But on balance,
if you look at the differences between Democrats and Republicans,
they're not that great. There're seventeen housing policies we looked at.
We categorize them as supply side market rate policies, supply

(18:07):
side below market rate that's subsidized affordable housing, untargeted supply
side policies like permitting reforms, price controls, demand subsidies, and
demand fences. In other words, attempts to keep certain people
out of the market. And this figure shows both judgments
about which policies would be relatively effective. That's the why

(18:27):
access as well as support and this is the difference
between Democrats and Republicans in the sample, so you can
see that on policies around below market rate housing development,
there's a pretty substantial gap. Maybe Democrats are twenty twenty
five percentage points more supportive than Republicans, But for a
lot of other reforms, including things that are very populous

(18:51):
like restrictions on wall street buyers, or property tax controls,
or permitting and parking reforms, there's very little difference between
Democrats and Republicans. There's some issues on which Republicans are
a little bit more supportive than Democrats, including allowing more
market rate development, whether of the infull or the sprawl variety,

(19:16):
but those differences are pretty modest. So the big picture
is this isn't an area where there is a lot
of partisan polarization.

Speaker 4 (19:24):
At least not yet. Apologies I'm having.

Speaker 5 (19:33):
There.

Speaker 4 (19:34):
We go, So what do voters?

Speaker 6 (19:40):
What are they most enthusiastic about, What do they think
it is most likely to work well? Inclusionary zoning, rent control,
restrictions on wall street investments, and property text caps are
by far the most popular policies. Allowing more market rate
development is not exactly unpopular, but it's not something anybody

(20:02):
gets excited about. And you might say, well, so people
say they like these policies, but do they actually care
about them if they have to trade them off against
their other policy concerns. And as part of the study,
we gave people randomized platforms of three different housing and
non housing policies and we had them say which platform
they prefer, so forcing them to make trade offs between

(20:24):
what they might want on housing versus other issues, and
then we're able to estimate how much agreement on how
housing policy affects the probability that they would choose a platform.
And it turns out that some housing policies, particularly price
control policies like rent control and property tax caps, are
up there alongside other things people really care about, like abortion,

(20:47):
minimum wage, controlling immigration, or supporting immigration and crime. So
housing supply is a concern for votvoters or housing costs
are concerned to voters. There's broad agreement, big picture agreement
between Democrats and Republicans, with Democrats being somewhat more supportive

(21:10):
of rent control and policies to build more subsistive affordable housing.
And the things that people get most excited about again
are price controls, and property tax controls. So if we
look not at public opinion but at what elites in

(21:31):
the states are doing, maybe this is a combination of
public opinion and elites in the states are doing. I
think we can say that both the Red States and
the Blue States each have some distinctive strengths and some
distinctive vulnerabilities or limitations in their ability to address housing
supply shortages. So I think the great advantage of the
Blue States is there is a kind of social tolerance

(21:54):
or an equity norm that can be rallied as an
antidote to nimbiism. Stephanie Tournello, a political scientists at Harvard,
has done great work showing how even in local referendum elections,
when housing supply issues get tied to questions about exclusion
or inclusion, liberal homeowners can be swayed from their nimbi.

Speaker 4 (22:19):
At elections.

Speaker 6 (22:21):
But at the same time, the equity norms in the
Blue States also lead to tenant protection policies and inclusionary
zoning policies that really raise the cost of development. Blue
states also, at least at California and New York those
states Massachusetts have the Superstar cities. They have a legacy problem,

(22:47):
which I would call the value capture ecosystem. So cities
that had really high housing costs coupled with constraints on
supply generated a bunch of interest groups that benefited from
being able to exercise to facto vetos in concert with
city council members over projects until they got their side payment.

(23:08):
And those groups are now lobbying state legislatures to try
to block efforts to liberalize supply that would bring down
prices and undermine their leverage. And finally, Blue states, as
Jim alluded to, often have limits on ex urban development
that has a strong environmental backing. Those may be good

(23:31):
on some environmental grounds, but they definitely are a constraint
on supply.

Speaker 4 (23:35):
And the reality is.

Speaker 6 (23:36):
That most housing that is built in places of build
housing is greenfield development. Red states, I think have the
advantage of a kind of cultural openness to business and growth.
But on the flip side, there's a great new paper
by Laser and Jorco who show that housing supply is

(23:57):
becoming much less elastic in the metropolitan agents of Red states.
So it's a big change from the picture that existed
twenty years ago. And their explanation is Essentially, the suburban
frontier is closing. There's only so far people are willing
to drive to get to work, and maybe autonomous vehicles

(24:19):
will change this. But with the suburban frontier closing, there
needs to be some effort to allow more development in
existing neighborhoods. Blue states have been willing to limit not
only local government restrictions and housing supply, but also privately
established covenants and servitudes controlled by homeowners associations. Red states,

(24:43):
so far, I think, have been more wary about touching those,
and it's not clear whether the cultural intolerance for immigration
that we're hearing from on high within the Republican Party
will play out also the state level in ways that
operate to limit the workforce. And finally, maybe Daved, we'll

(25:06):
talk a little more about this. Property tax revolts are brewing.
Property tax caps are very popular among Democrats as well
as well as Republicans, but I think at least Democratic
Party elites within Blue states are going to operate to
some check on that sentiment, and I'm not sure we'll
see the same check in Red states. And to the
degree that states constrain local property taxes, that's going to

(25:29):
further diminish cities incentives to improve or allow changes to
the use of property that would generate more population growth
and more.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
House development. What I've got my eye on looking forward.

Speaker 6 (25:48):
Seek reform in California, as Jim alluded to, I think,
is a really huge deal. It happened through a somewhat
unusual legislative process, and it answers at least to a
substantial degree.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
The criticism that.

Speaker 6 (26:03):
Ran Salon and others have voiced that democratic interest group
politics meant that you would never see significant or be
very hard to see significant reforms that would run against
the wishes of labor unions.

Speaker 4 (26:14):
In the case of Seek reform, it actually happened.

Speaker 6 (26:19):
There's major bills to allow apartment buildings to be built
near transit, including on single family home zoned land, that
passed in Washington and hopefully will pass this week in California.
Pending in California, and no state has tried that previously,
and it will be really interesting to see how those

(26:41):
conflicts would lay out over implementation. I think there's a
question about how part time legislatures are going to fare
against full time nimbies. So if Texas, Montana, and Florida
have part time legislatures Texas and Montana more so than Florida,
but they've been very aggressive in passing very ambitious bills.
But in Texas and Montana they get together only once

(27:03):
every two years, and the nimbies are running all the time,
So how that cat and mouse game plays out over
time will be interesting to watch. Third party permitting, allowing
developers to get permits from like a licensed engineer rather
than a city building department is an idea that has

(27:23):
some precedent in other countries. First then was adopted in
a few Republican states and is now I think about
to migrate to California, and that's going to be an
interesting idea to watch. Funded inclusionary zoning where state legislatures
require some deed resetrich to affordable housing as part of

(27:46):
a project, but provide tax breaks to off set the
losses to the developer I should have had. Florida there
is another example of a state with a funded inclusionary
zoning program, as I think an idea to keep your
eye on, given how popular inclusionary requirements seem to be,
particularly among Democrats. And finally, price controls, we've seen statewide

(28:11):
rent control pass in some version now in California, Oregon, Washington,
there's a proposal pending in Massachusetts, and the property tax
revolts are essentially rent control for property owners. So it
may be that the new suite of price controls undermines
all the other good things that states are trying to do.

Speaker 4 (28:33):
So we shall see. Thanks David.

Speaker 7 (28:41):
One second here, So I wanted to step back. We're
about ten years into what you might call the MBI era,
and when we're state California passed its first big statewide
set of land news preemptions in twenty sixteen, and we're
ten years in. Chris showed you there's been a huge

(29:01):
number of forms in the last couple of years, and
I want to start off by saying like this is
actually you should be understood as one of the biggest
success successes, successes of kind of from ideas to policy
that we've seen in modern American politics.

Speaker 4 (29:19):
It is have become an.

Speaker 7 (29:20):
Almost universal belief among economists and legal scholars and others
that we have a housing shortage and that land use
controls are deeply related to that housing short not the
only source of it, but that we have a substantial
housing shortage, particularly in our densest coastal areas, but increasingly
all over the country, and the idea that that set

(29:43):
of ideas is translated into policy is a notable change.
There are a lot of idea times when experts agree
and it has no effect on policy.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
Nothing can be more common than that.

Speaker 7 (29:54):
So the question is like why and how and the
topic of this thing of this webinar, which is statewide
legal land us reforms are centrals that story. So one
of the key political movolve. Even though there's been many
land use changes at the local level, among people who
support this policy change has been moving towards making land

(30:15):
use policy at the state wide level rather than the
local level, and this is not unprecedented. The nineteen seventies
saw a bunch of restrictive policies and would call the
quiet Revolution in land use reform happened at the state
wide level, but the tradition, broader tradition of zoning and
land use in America is local rather than state. And
so this was an intentional decision suggested by scholars me included,

(30:40):
but mostly done by a variety of policy activists, and
they had quite good reasons for doing so. There ideas
were that it would avoid nimbism in the traditional way,
which is that if some town doesn't want to allow something,
the state would have a broader perspective. It brought other
interest groups into politics. So employers generally don't care about

(31:01):
landag decisions happening at the level of an individual town,
but care about broader housing supply. So employers become interested
in and potentially some types of unions become interested in
expanding housing supply. Involves higher profile figures, so governors who
are able to marshal mass public opinion in some areas.
And importantly for what we're going to talk about and

(31:22):
I'm going to talk about a minute, and that Chris reference,
it makes the issue bipartisan. That there are plenty of
opponents of Landing's reform in everywhere that's by opposition is bipartisan.
But by bringing the issue out of jurisdictions that are
one party you allowed to you got a new set
of friends as well as a new set of benefits.
The move towards statewide politics has a signal and well

(31:45):
understood by everyone downside as well, which is follow through them,
which is states can pass whatever laws they want. But
in a world where local governments have broad ranging sets
of landings authorities, they can frustrate the intent of these
state laws. And so a famous example of this is
California has recently seen a boom in its ADU or
accessory dwelling unit housing time, but it only did so

(32:07):
after about the fourth law passed. That was Deregulatroyd. The
first couple they passed a law saying local governments must
allow ay to use, and cities would say yes, but
e ADU must have eleven parking spaces, and so they
passed another law, say you can't include parking, stage recorming,
and they'd say you have to have sewer hookups that
cost eight trillion dollars and so forth. And only after
a whole bunch of laws were passed that they whacked

(32:27):
up the mole. They played whack a mole and now
act enough moles that the law was passed. And we're
starting to see the same thing in other states that
have a similar thing. So Texas just passed this pretty
very substantial, maybe maybe the most substantial, I don't know,
a set of of of reforms aimed at big cities
in Texas, and in one jurisdiction, we've already seen a

(32:49):
jurisdiction kind of quite cleverly say now we can't ban,
we can't limit things in certain ways. We're going to
put our density requirements. If you're going to build on
this lot, you have to build a stories, which would
be uneconomical in that spot and is a way of
stopping new development. We're also seeing a huge amount of
resistance from trial court judges. These decisions are very frequently

(33:11):
reversed by higher level judges. But in Montana, in Virginia,
in New York, in Minnesota, we've seen trial court judges
sometimes acting kind of narrowly legalistically and sometimes complete with
complete disregard for any content. This is my personal airite
judge who's famous for another reason, Arthur inger On in
New York, which's involved in the land use case, and

(33:32):
he was quoted from the bench, is saying, I don't
care what the zoning says, you can't build on this property.
As a judge saying I don't care what the law
is is kind of a wild thing to hear someone say.
But this general problem of local judges mostly appointed, either
appointed or elected through extremely local projecies, adopting nimbi politics

(33:53):
is a kind of signal trait of this era of
broad statewide reforms hitting local opposition. This basic story is
one that we've seen in both red states and blue states,
this idea of broad state reforms. Again, they take many
different flavors. Some of them directly involve local officials, so

(34:17):
like the both the California arena process and the Massachusetts
NBATA process for those of you who are interested in
the Others are like basically setting local budgets for landings
but giving some discretion to local government. Others are pure preemptions,
so like things like Texas's minimum lot size preemption.

Speaker 4 (34:35):
So we have different forms of.

Speaker 7 (34:36):
This, but we see in all these places this broader
phenomenon in how much all these places, this broader phenomenon
of broad state laws facing local opposition. And the challenge
that has emerged is can the people in favor of
these laws win enough times in order to wear down
this opposition, or in fact, will the opposition outlast the supporters.

(35:02):
The things that are most interesting, are maybe most interesting
to this group about this broad dynamic is that it
involves kind of several aspects of what you might think
of as the things or groups of people involved with
the federalist society. So in one set of instances, I
want to try about three ways in which some of

(35:23):
this politics takes place among people who are not at
all associated the federal society, like me. But a lot
of the key politics involved both the institutional and political
dimensions of people who are so to start, the states
in which we have not seen major Landy's reforms are
notable mostly for the fact that their Republicans are not

(35:44):
in favor of Landy's reforms. It is a bipartisan issue everywhere,
but if you look at places like in New York
and Connecticut, the thing that is one of the things
that is frustrated the Democrats are divided in those places
is they are everywhere and in you are particularly supportive
of Chris called everything Bagel regulations, same type of weird

(36:05):
weird anti housing dynamics and pro housing dynamics you see everywhere.
But Republicans, not in power in any way, shape or form,
are uniformly.

Speaker 4 (36:12):
Opposed to land these reforms.

Speaker 7 (36:14):
And it's very different dynamics than you've seen in places
like Texas or places like California. And so the Democrats
confusion and the Republicans' difference across place is explains a
lot of the interstate variation we see in the positive
land US reform. The second thing is kind of what
I called the institutional face. So one of the things

(36:36):
that organizations like Gym's have been very successful at is
institutionalizing opposition to kind of these kind of local backsliding
against laws. So if you're going to have a world
in which judges simply no effectively nullify land use changes,
what you need is organizations and developers will have limitations

(36:58):
on what they can do.

Speaker 4 (36:59):
In order to fight fight.

Speaker 7 (37:00):
These laws, You're gonna need to have legal institutions that
kind of fight the good fight. Of course, and you've
seen some real development of this kind of in California
among kind of more kind of liberal things, but also
among kind of property rights organizations changing their orientation in
pretty substantial ways towards focusing on these regulatory issues and
not not not limiting themselves the constitutional issues. So, for instance,

(37:23):
Jim and the Institute for Justice have scored this amazing
victory in Montana. I don't know if it was you,
Jim individually, but it was it was. It was y'all,
and it came after you had a first round in
which a trial court judge did something crazy. I guess
the best way of describing what happened it was I
could go into the details of what happened if anyone's interested,

(37:45):
but it was, and they were. They appealed to the
Supreme Court, and then they're kind of going through this
process of winning.

Speaker 4 (37:52):
And it required a like the legal development.

Speaker 7 (37:56):
And then the final thing I'd say is the kind
of what you call the organizational efforts that you see
in some areas the federal sidey might be a great
example of which is that in situations in which we've
seen ideas translate into sustained practice, it required those ideas
being instantiated in physical institutions and an organization that have

(38:19):
the kind of capacity to last over time. And one
of the big questions we're going to see in a
world where state laws are only as good as their
enforcement and repeated passage is whether the people in favor
of these things are are are able to last. There's
a famous quote from the famous word healer of Tammany Hall,

(38:42):
George W. Plunkett, who said reform is a morning glory,
but the party is an old oak well. Nimbi's are
are are are are an oak. The question is whether
land use reformers are a morning glory or not.

Speaker 4 (38:58):
Okay, So each panelists will now have a mint or two.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
To comment on the presentation of the others if you
so choose, and I guess we will go in the
same order.

Speaker 5 (39:09):
So I found both the presentations by David and Christopher
fascinating because so much of this gets down to public
policy and what the voters and what people think needs
to be done, which is why we have this sort
of educational forum right now to try to convince the
public to go the other way or to go in

(39:30):
a different way than we have traditionally done under the
NIMBI and no growth attitudes that we had in the sixties, seventies.

Speaker 4 (39:36):
Eighties and on.

Speaker 5 (39:38):
So what I'm really hoping to see in this movement
that we have is the sustainability, as David talks about
turning it into the oak. And I think it's going
to be really difficult because one of the challenges I
see is that there are are institutions that whose bread
and butter is to stop growth pretty much everywhere. I

(40:00):
could be center for Biological diversity, it could be on
the local level, you have various at state level, you
have municipal organizations of local governments getting together, and they
are generally opposed to any attempt to take away any
authority and power from them. So I think that the

(40:21):
rent seeking that goes on with some of the established
institutions is going to be great. I admire the or,
I would say, the enthusiasm I saw for the attempt
in California to overturn the traditional rent seeking by labor
unions and environmental groups that we had.

Speaker 4 (40:40):
But how lasting that would be.

Speaker 5 (40:42):
I'm somewhat pessimistic, but I hope that it continues, and
I hope to see continued good research from both David
and Christopher on these subjects that will give me an
idea what we can do next to litigate.

Speaker 6 (40:58):
Chris, Sorry, I dropped off for a bit, so I've
missed the question there.

Speaker 4 (41:06):
Uh, you're asking for responses.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
The other it was if each person has an opportunity
for a minut or two to comment on the presentation
of the others.

Speaker 6 (41:16):
Oh, I thought they were great, but I'm happy to
pass my comments to the audience for an a.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
Okay, and finally, David, So my question is for Chris.

Speaker 7 (41:28):
I mean, Chris and I we talked all the time,
so this is going to be it's like a public
airing of a of a private discussion. But it's one
of the things that is notable about the kind of
tradition the political science around these things, thinking about it,
not whether we think about it.

Speaker 4 (41:41):
One way to look at.

Speaker 7 (41:42):
It is to look as you took it through voter preferences,
and in other ways to look at through kind of
kind of either voter intensity or interest group formation around
these issues. And one of the things that has been
notable about the the statewide moves has been to encourage
different interest group coversation that the local level, we're looking
at a very different group of people involve either participatory

(42:05):
in the kind of partics vision or interest group. And
so the questioning is, like, to what extent do we
think that looking at voter behavior or voter preferences in
the way that you do is like makes it like
I should be supplemented by perhaps kind of a direct
analysis of interest group involvement the way that likes Aara
and Z would.

Speaker 4 (42:24):
Crazy.

Speaker 6 (42:24):
Yeah, So I think the interest the interest group story
is super interesting and important.

Speaker 4 (42:31):
Interest groups are a lot harder to study.

Speaker 6 (42:34):
Than voters, and like the same interest groups like the realtors,
sometimes end up in really different positions in different states,
Like in California, the realtors have generally been an obstacle
to pro housing reforms at the state level, whereas in

(42:55):
other states they've apparently been key allies. So I think
interest groups are definitely a big part of the story.
But understanding how those interest groups get mobilized and what

(43:15):
motivates them to take the positions they do is easy
in the case of some groups like labor unions, but
much more obscure in the case of many other of
the groups that are involved in state politics.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
People hear me, I'm worry this system might be frozen
or something. Can you hear me?

Speaker 3 (43:45):
We can Okay, So I thought there was a problem
to connection from it, but maybe not. I'm going to
take a moderator progative and ask one question for whoever
it might care to answer it, and then we will
throw it over to audience questions. My question is this,
the three of you all have quite rightly talked about
important statewide statutory reforms. I was wondering if you think

(44:07):
whether or not there's any role for state constitutional reform,
either by amending state constitutions, many of which are easier
to amend, and the federal Constitution obviously is, or alternatively
by making use of existing state constitutional provisions, whether takings,
causes or other provisions to engage in litigation.

Speaker 4 (44:28):
So that's my question.

Speaker 7 (44:30):
I will say that I think there are some efforts.
So before we get started via, there was in the
seventies and eighties, a huge number of efforts to challenge,
to use the constitutional law to challenge the kind of
broad structure of local z owning authority, and you saw some
success and some failures and states the central trouble was
the same problem we see with respect to legislative changes,

(44:52):
which was followed through, which is when the courts came
to actually enforcing their orders. It became quite difficult for states.
You know, world where local governments have a lot of authority.
In states where we saw some things like this, like
the Mount Laurel decision, it required state courts to engage
in a more aggressive reorganization and power grab, power structure

(45:13):
grab than we've seen at any other point in the
history of state courts. So I am quite skeptical that
we are going to see anything of that sort in
the modern era, though there are some efforts. So in
Connecticut there is a challenge to a local like a
very very restrictive town in the New Haven suburbs that
brings a kind of seventies eighties style challenge saying that

(45:34):
either the state contusion or more and more commonly, the
text of the state are kind of more with the
kind of heart of the claim. The hate of the
text of the States Zoning Enabling Act does not allow
a jurisdiction to limit to limit housing in certain ways.
And I think that there is some space for this
kind of but it is, it is, it is. It

(45:57):
is pretty unlikely to see courts do the kind of
things that that we saw in the seventies and eighties.
The problems in the seventies eighties were really different also,
or the perceived problems really different. We really didn't have
region wide housing supplies in that era.

Speaker 4 (46:12):
We had.

Speaker 7 (46:14):
Questions of local exclusion, but we're not talking. I mean
in California you start to see you start to see
region wide housing prices in that era, but not really
in other places until a little bit later. And so
the usual organization was different. But I think that this
is not it is not likely to see well, we're
not likely to see state constitutional or state courts taking

(46:38):
the lead on this in that way. My hope for
state courts is that they are active. They are active
reviewers of local decisions and do a number of things
that that would would would rebect. One other thing that
I don't know if we'll all agree on this, when

(46:59):
I suspect we will not, is that one thing that
way in which state courts have really undermined some prettly
local reforms has been in engaging in very very strict
administrator review. So this has been a kind of very
strong local non delegation doctrine and in a kind of

(47:23):
what we call it an anti chevron in which the
not only is deference not given, but it is the
fact of local decisions which held suspicious in interpreting local laws.
And in this context, I think that is probably likely
to be a anti housing, an anti land use reform
area in a world in which executives are pretty systematically

(47:46):
more pro development than.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
Are city councils and legislatures.

Speaker 5 (47:54):
So I think there is room in existing state constitutional
parameters to have I mean a lot of states have
not only takings closes but damaging clauses. But what's going
to be done and at the state level, I think
depends less on the exact words of the Constitution than
it does on the predilections of the justices on the

(48:15):
various state supreme courts. David referred to the New Jersey
Mount Laurel decision. If you read that decision, it was
really unhinged from the New Jersey Constitution. I mean, it
was a decision that was necessary and useful and helpful
for the cause of housing, although it did take a
half a dozen tries, and the Supreme Court eventually is

(48:36):
now the housings are in New Jersey. Which you talk
about judicial activism on steroids or rocket fuel, that's it.
But New Jersey Supreme Court did what the New Jersey
Supreme Court thought it should do. And so I think
that with the existing constitutional parameters, which sometimes have stronger
protections or property rights than New Jersey's Constitution does, can

(49:00):
be used if we can get the mindset of the
justices on the state supreme courts to recognize that there
is a need to support a robust excretion of private
property rights and reforms that are done at the state
or even local level. Montana is going to be a
test as your We have a case there where a

(49:22):
trial judge overturned what's been called the Montana Miracle, which
was a series of very good land use reforms in
Montana which have been followed up in the following year
by some more. A trial judge struck them down because
of the neighbor's right, or so called purported right to
have their existing neighborhoods just the way they are. And

(49:44):
I'm quite hopeful and optimistic that the Montana Supreme Court
will reverse that nonsense and uphold the reforms. And I
would hope that other Supreme courts as we as they
judge justices become more and better educated about the nature
of the housing crisis and the cause of the housing crisis,
assuming that some of Chris's data can translate into the

(50:08):
minds of the justices can have an impact. Lastly, as
far as amending state constitutions, I don't know. That's probably
a bigger hurdle than getting the justices on various state
supreme courts to come around, because you're going to have
a rather heated reaction from interest groups such as environmental groups.

(50:31):
If you're going to have any kind of reform to
current land use policies in the environmental.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
Community, in the Nimbi community often.

Speaker 5 (50:40):
Are one the same, not always, but oftentimes, and that's
a rather powerful constituency to overcome. And really, lastly, you
do have the issue of the home voter hypothesis. Bill
Fischel's work showing that homeowners think, I think wrongly often,
but think that the status in land use patterns is

(51:02):
the best way to protect their investment in the value
of their homes or their primary asset being in homes,
and so they want to stop any kind of development
which would increase supply and lower the value of homes.
Not everybody agrees with visual psypothesis, but it's a powerful
story and it is something that has to be overcome
at the local level as well.

Speaker 7 (51:23):
He's on the call, we can ask him.

Speaker 6 (51:27):
Okay, I guess my views on this are similar to David's. Sorry,
but my views on this question are similar to David's.
I'm skeptical that sports will sort of be able to
persevere unless they're backed by the legislature, and so I

(51:49):
think went off changes to state constitutions probably aren't going
to achieve that much. On the other hand, I will
say that in conversations I've had with folks in Washington State,
one of the reasons that they're inclusionary zoning limits have

(52:10):
not been as fringent as those in some other states.
And why apparently the Transitway Too up zoning bill passed
with a tax break to offset the cost of the
inclusionary units is because folks in that state are concerned
that inclusionary zoning that is entirely uncompensated would be held

(52:33):
unconstitutional by state courts interpreting the state constitution. Obviously, there
are live questions about that under the federal constitution as well.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
So we have about an eight or ten minutes and
we will try to go to questions from the audience.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Yes, so thank you. We have a lot of questions.
Will be kind of a rapid fire around, try to
get through as as we can, so polities, if we
aren't quite able to make it to all of your questions,
we'll start. This is the first question asked, What, if anything,
can city and county residents and politicians do to rationalize
housing policy at the state level. I believe this was

(53:16):
as during your presentation, Jim, if you want to take
a stab at it first.

Speaker 5 (53:22):
So to get local and state politicians on board, I
think it's an educational process. I think that, and by
education I mean people with money to make political contributions
to It's necessarily we are involved in any kind of
political contributions. But you know, a lot of politicians go

(53:43):
where the votes are and go where the money is.
And you know, I'm maybe signding a little cynical, but
to get them to turn around, you have to educate them,
and you have to let them know that there are
a lot of constituencies, some with money behind them, that
are in favor of these reforms. You just can't sit

(54:03):
back and hope someone else is going to do it.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
Thank you. Sonya Traus asks, Parking reform consistently is unpopular
amongst voters, but it seems to be one of the
most popular pro housing reforms in cities all around the country.
So what is the best use of information about what
voters like? Maybe this is a guide for candidates during
election time, but no information that helps elected people at

(54:29):
the time they're governing. So that's during your presentation.

Speaker 6 (54:32):
Chris, Yes, I think that's a good way to think
about it. My guess is the reason why parking reform
or polls poorly is that nobody really knows what it means,
but they like their cars. So if you ask about

(54:55):
taking away parking, people are like, oh, yuck, I don't
like that. But it's not on anybody's priorit list. Nobody
tangibly understands what parking reform actually means. So you get
a lot of expressions of negative opinion, but you don't get.

Speaker 4 (55:11):
A negative opinion that matters electorally.

Speaker 6 (55:14):
The stuff that I think will potentially matter electorally are
things like position taking on price controls and anti Wall
Street type stuff, which.

Speaker 4 (55:29):
Again people seem to prioritize.

Speaker 6 (55:32):
On the other hand, even on price controls, like a
concerted campaign with enough tens of millions behind it is
able to win statewide elections in California every four years
or so, so we'll see.

Speaker 4 (55:48):
For its worth.

Speaker 7 (55:50):
Sonia is I think the heroic activist in this space
is I think one of the interesting stories about parking
is kind of the way in which ideas translate in policy,
and so I think that we ought to maybe the
best use of this information is that is to buy
buy all legislatures. A legislator is a copy of Donald
Shoops The High Cost of free parking, and see if

(56:14):
elite persuasion is a good strategy in this area, because
it seems like it's working.

Speaker 4 (56:22):
Thank you a quick question.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
I believe this also for you, Chris, but really anyone
so in Florida cover I'm just Governor de Santasis, push
me to eliminate property taxes or reduce them significantly. Has
this been tried and all alternatives have arisen for local
government revenue? Is there a state with both no state
income tax and low property taxes?

Speaker 4 (56:42):
So I'm nice to send that to David.

Speaker 7 (56:46):
This is it's not just Florida we are People don't
realize this, but we are living in the middle of
a second property tax revolt, the first one being Surgery
at Prop thirteen, but also Proposition two and a half
in Massachusetts. We've seen huge, huge, huge reforms to property
taxes all around the country. We've seen even a referendum
that lost in North Dakota to completely repeal property taxes.

(57:09):
The effect of this on housing supply is confusing. It
will be multiplicative and not so depending A lot of
all depend on what it replaces. In a lot of ways,
property taxes are a real enemy to or reliance on
property taxes real enemy to housing supply. And the way
that this argument works is that jurisdictions often seek to

(57:32):
keep average levels per capital levels of property value equal
common among their among the the in the jurisdiction Bruce
Hamilton's famous contribution to the literature, because if they allow
greater development, the value of the property will go up
and they get a little more property tax revenue, but

(57:52):
they will then have to write schools and services to
all sorts of the people who live in them, And
so ftions on housing is driven by this fiscal imperative,
and so repealing property taxes would get rid of that
pretty substantially. On the other hand, which makes it getting

(58:13):
like a full repeal, which we haven't seen anywhere, quite
different from say California style property text reform, which is
a shifting as well as a restriction. On the other hand,
there's a lot of evidence that property taxes serve to
increase the ability of priply younger and more capital constrained
purchasers to be able to buy houses. And the way

(58:36):
this works is that high property tax reduces property value.
It's called capitalizes into the property value, and so if
the property tax, it reduces the value of the property.
Anyone who's ever bought a house knows this.

Speaker 4 (58:49):
And the.

Speaker 7 (58:52):
One way to think about a relatively high property tax
is that it is a little bit like a forced
mortgage in that you get a lower price at the
outset like the loan, but pay it off over time.
And one thing we see is jurichictions with high property
tax jergy like taxes, which has very high property taxes
or had very high property taxes, very high reliance on

(59:15):
property taxes for its local services, has a much younger
home buying spate group than does then do other states,
and so the.

Speaker 4 (59:27):
Effects will be extremely mixed.

Speaker 7 (59:29):
The effects will be I mean, if we ever see
full repeal in any jurisdictions, the effects will be enormous.
We're really talking about basically the end of local government,
at least the end of local government as fiscal local
governments very rarely have control over other taxes, and so
we're going to be talking about state control and of finances,
and we're talking about huge, huge, huge changes.

Speaker 4 (59:49):
No one's spending a lot of I mean, this is like,
this is the biggest change.

Speaker 7 (59:52):
It doesn't have America isn't focused on it, mostly because
it doesn't involve the president.

Speaker 5 (59:58):
So if I could give another to Bill Fischel, he's
written that the lowering of the separation of schools financing
a schools from local property taxes led to less respect
for property taxes in California, which led to Proposition thirteen,
And I would go further saying that Proposition thirteen in California,

(01:00:19):
which lowered property taxes, makes it less financially renumerative for
local communities to allow a lot more housing because they're
not going to get that much taxes from the housing,
and it's a fiscal drain rather than the fiscal plus
to have increase housing in a community because you just.

Speaker 4 (01:00:36):
Can't get long term the taxes out of it.

Speaker 5 (01:00:38):
So it is really a mixed bag how lowering property
taxes is going to affect housing costs and affect the financing.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
Of other state services as well.

Speaker 5 (01:00:49):
So you know, sometimes I would say, be careful what
you ask for, because you don't know the unintended consequences
of your reforms.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Thank you. I have a question here from Randall Clark,
who's working with lawmakers in a state of New Hampshire
to increase housing stock in the rental marketplace by a
mending state landlord tenant law to make it more attractive
for owners to place exists in housing into the market. Yes,
do any of you have experience or thoughts on doing this.

Speaker 5 (01:01:23):
I've had many developers of apartment and multifamily tell me that,
you know, the first thing we look at is whether
a community has or is about to have, or might
have rent control as to whether we're going to invest
in that community or rent control is a disincentive to
building new multifamily housing. Now, some developers think they haven't

(01:01:45):
worked out and will develop in multifamily housing, but many
will not. So Yeah, reform to the landlord tenant law
is starting with rent control could create a tremendous incentive
for people to build more multifamily housing. You know, right
now in California we have statewide versions of rent control.

(01:02:06):
I have talked to many small mom and pop owners
of rental properties are getting out of the business.

Speaker 4 (01:02:12):
I just can't stand it anymore.

Speaker 5 (01:02:14):
And we're even talking about having new eviction moratoria as
long as ICE is roaming the streets. In California, some
communities such as Santa Ana and Los Angeles county are
considering to have new eviction moratoria on getting rid of
tenants who might be afraid to make enough money to
work because of the roaming roaming ice raids. So landlord

(01:02:39):
tenant laws, a reform of that could have a big impact.

Speaker 4 (01:02:44):
And yeah, that's it, I would.

Speaker 7 (01:02:48):
I mean, the specifics of landlord and tenant law are
so I think we've talked about for a long time
and I'm not kind of but one thing I note
is that there are a whole variety of laws that
should they kind of in this space that are worth considering.
So one big area in this area is called condo
defect lawns. This is the construction side rather than the
existing builds. But seats differ a lot in how much

(01:03:09):
a tenant can sue the develop or set of tenant
that the homeoernation and inside a rental apartment building can
sue the developer for how long they can and unver
what conditions they can. And it may not surprise anyone
to find out that the longer the prayer of the
statue limitations, and then the broader the swath of the
things that you can sue over restricts people's willingness to

(01:03:33):
build rental housing. So California used to build a lot
of condo development and now it builds almost none. Almost
all apartment buildings are kind of tall, building to our
apartments rather than condos. And so we have a huge
universe of tools we can think about. And one of
the things we're going to see, I think more broadly,
is that as states pass land use reforms, we're going

(01:03:57):
to find other limitations on growth that are that we've
built up over the last forty years of kind of
uh growth skepticism and so exactly what is constraining growth
when in being held up by belts and suspenders, and
you know, I don't know what else uh is. We
will we will see as we see these uh see

(01:04:19):
these kind of state why deregulatory bills happen. So what's
important and what's not is going to be still to
be discovered.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
So the plus degree, we will take one more question,
uh and then we do need to wrap up because
we're four or five minutes past the official time. Obviously
the topic has attracted great interest and that's good, but
we don't want to keep everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:04:44):
Past the time.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
So one more question, Matthew, if that's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
We'll finish with the question an anonymous attendee. But it's well,
the crack down on crime and are renewed conference of
coming to Law and Order make it determines this difference
to the housing supply, especially in urban centers.

Speaker 5 (01:05:09):
A reduction in crime could increase the attractiveness of cities.
We saw people moving back into the cities after the
crime waves of the sixties and seventies and early eighties
have bited somewhat in cities like New York. But I
would be the last person to explain to understand what

(01:05:30):
a crackdown means and how you have an effective crackdown
or an ineffective one.

Speaker 4 (01:05:36):
Yeah, that's beyond my ken.

Speaker 7 (01:05:38):
So Chris and I wrote a piece relatively recently arguing
that one of the things that affects kind of positive
affect towards New Berkeley infield development is attitudes towards the city,
and this suggests that solving urban problems things like crime,

(01:06:00):
is deeply related to whether people are going to be
willing to allow to allow housing to be built that
looks like the places that suffer from these most dramatically,
and so what it takes to do So is a
group a question you're gonna have to ask a bunch
of different group of experts. Uh Uh, there's at least
some evidence that like, more police officers results in less crime,

(01:06:22):
but the specifics of crime policy, well, what they should
do is.

Speaker 4 (01:06:26):
A little like not for not for this group at least.

Speaker 7 (01:06:30):
But I do think that the there's a deep connection
between uh, whether people like places and whether they'll allow
them those type of places, like those places to be
built in other locations, and so uh like the reducing crime,
I think would increase housing supplying to well fortally increase

(01:06:51):
housing demands, you know, we make it more attractive to
live in places, but also it would increase support for
allowing new housing of that type built in other places.

Speaker 4 (01:07:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:07:04):
One little thing I'll add to that comment is that
we think of old people as being the nimbies. Old
people's being the people who don't want apartments built. And
that's true today, but it wasn't true thirty years ago
or forty years ago. And the people who are old
today are the people who lived in their teenage years

(01:07:28):
through the seventies and early eighties when cities were in
really bad shape. And people who are younger today are
people who in their formative years experienced the rebirth of
cities in the early two thousands.

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
All right, And if freedom't, I think we're out of
time here. So I just want to thank everyone on
behalf of the Federal Society. I want to thank our
experts for their time and expertise today, and I want
to thank you our audience for joining and participating so
as always keep an eye on our website and your
emails about upcoming virtual events. Thank you all for joining
us today.

Speaker 4 (01:08:04):
We are adjourned.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
Thank you for listening to this episode of FEDSOC Forums,
a podcast of the Federal Societies Practice Groups. For more
information about the Federal Society, the Practice groups, and to
become a Federal Society member, please visit our website at
fedsoc dot org.