Trying to add the activists list again.
See Thomas's argument against the 100% affordable and educator housing measure below.
Full text of the measure:
https://sfelections.sfgov.org/sites/default/files/20190618_AffordableHomesForEducatorsAndFamilies_LegalText.pdf
I've added my two cents of suggestions below, in dark blue to distinguish them from previous comments...
Trying to add the activists list again.
See Thomas's argument against the 100% affordable and educator housing measure below.
Full text of the measure:
https://sfelections.sfgov.org/sites/default/files/20190618_AffordableHomesForEducatorsAndFamilies_LegalText.pdfThanks Thomas,
Looks great! I have some feedback which you may or may not want to incorporate.In 2015, the highly-respected State Legislative Analyst Office published its landmark, “California’s High Housing Costs” followed by “Perspectives on Helping Low Income Californians Afford Housing.” Using confidential government data not available to private researchers, this gold-standard study concluded:
The "Using confidential government data..." part does not seem to me to add anything to the argument. I'd remove this so it gets into the meat of the argument sooner.
I would even rework the very beginning to the effect of "Even the highly-respected State Legislative Analyst Office acknowledges that affordable housing programs are ineffective. In their landmark 2015 report, ..." to minimize the amount a voter has to read in order to get to the key point here.
I agree with both these suggestions.
“In communities with inclusionary housing policies, most new market-rate construction is paired with construction of new affordable housing. Our analysis in the Bay Area, however, finds that market rate housing construction appears to be associated with less displacement regardless of a community’s inclusionary housing policies. While affordable housing programs are vitally important to the households they assist, these programs only help a small fraction of the Californians that are struggling to cope with the state’s high housing costs and introduce a lock-in effect that can cause households to stay longer in a particular location than is otherwise optimal for them. The majority of low-income households receive little or no assistance and spend more than half of their income on housing. Practically-speaking, expanding affordable housing programs to serve these households would be extremely challenging and prohibitively expensive …We suggest policy makers primarily focus on expanding efforts to encourage private housing development.”
Can we add extra emphasis to a few key parts of this, so it's easy to skim? Just to make it easier for readers to parse.
Another good suggestion Nick. I do think the Legislative Analyst's report is a terrific piece of evidence here Thomas – glad you dug it up! I would recommend boldfacing this part:
"...market rate housing construction appears to be associated with less displacement regardless of a community’s inclusionary housing policies".
Also italicizing the word "regardless". Since it's a quote however, we'd need to put "(emphasis added)" after the passage.
Let’s listen to the experts rather than a minority of Rainmakers on a Board of Supervisors that created the problem in the first place; after all, Jim Jones once sat on the Housing Authority. “Educator Housing” creates dependencies that worsten California’s overgenerous teacher tenure and harm our children. The tax credit program is plagued with pay-to-play fraud and giveaways to the Nonprofit-Industrial Complex.
"harm our children" -- how? Could use a bit more justification to make it obvious.
I agree it does harm our children, but again Nick is right that the dots could use a bit of connecting here. Mentioning that Jim Jones once sat on the Housing Authority also seems extraneous and might best be dropped, but if this is left in, I'd suggest adding "Jonestown massacre perpetrator" before his name. Maybe everyone should know who Jones was, but I'll bet many don't. Libertarian philosopher Roderick Long recently mentioned on another list that many of his students don't know the difference between Austria and Australia.
Since the demand for affordable housing is there, let’s empower people to supply it so that market-rate becomes affordable. To start, let’s fix the broken California Environmental Quality Act. We could also try Public Banking, embraced by many Greens, Libertarians, and the Occupy movement.
I don't understand the last sentence, neither why Libertarians would embrace it nor why it's relevant to affordable housing. Can you explain? Either way, I don't think it's worth mentioning here without a further explanation since it isn't obvious.
Again I agree, and would further add that we haven't endorsed public banking and I'm not at all sure that we ought to suggest Libertarian support for it here. I'm open to the possibility it might be a net improvement over the status quo, as you briefly argued at our meeting Thomas, but the issue is complex and needs more discussion. On the face of it, a government takeover of banking functions traditionally handled in the voluntary sector seems like a bad idea. Also, regarding any particular public banking proposal that might be advanced locally, the devil may well be in the details even if the idea is good in theory.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))