Posted on 08/05/2007 3:00:37 PM PDT by WayneLusvardi
Pasadena's Asymmetric War on Un-Affordable Housing is Un-Winnable -and Unmeasurable
The Pasadena Pundit - Aug. 5, 2007
A frequent refrain heard especially by those on the political left is that the Iraq War is not winnable, in part because there is no metric by which to measure what a win would mean. Likewise, the war for affordable housing in California has no measure by which to judge success because the number of arriving immigrants in poverty grows daily, the proportion of renters who desire to be homeowners is endless, and the affordability of apartment rents is unknowable.
The homeownership rate in the United States in 2005 was similar to that in other modern nations at 68.9%. Contrary to popular notions, since 1960 the homeownership rate in the United States has increased 10.9% from 62.1% to roughly 68.9%. If you want to be a homeowner be married. Married couples reflect an 84% homeownership rate. Conversely, single females and males have the lowest homeownership rates of 51% and 50.3% respectively.
In California, one's chance of homeownership increases greatest, from 47.4% to 67.2%, if one moves from Los Angeles to Riverside-San Bernardino. The U.S. Census reports that California homeownerhip actually increased 1.6%, from 55.4% to 57.0%, between 1995 to 2005. Contrary to another popular misconception, homeownership rates in California have always hovered in the 50% range, growing from 54.3% in 1950 to 57.1% in 2000. So why do we consider that we have a housing affordability crisis in California now if we didn't consider it so in 1950?
The national homeownerhip rate was 55.0% in 1950 and has risen to 67.5% in 2000. It is not that the homeownership rate in California has fallen but that it has lagged behind the relative rise outside of California.
As for rental occupied housing in Pasadena there is not even reliable data from which to ascertain if the City has an actual rather than just a perceived affordability crisis. Survey after survey is trotted out by local government or newspapers using the apartment rents in brand new luxury apartments or Class A apartment buildings, which typically have amenities such as pools and gyms and are located near convenient shopping centers or light rail stations. Conversely, true affordable housing is old, small, unrenovated, obsolescent, not near shopping or public transit, and usually owned by a mom and pop landlord. The 2005 U.S. Economic Census does not even have data for the percentage of household income dedicated for housing in Pasadena. The data relied is typically cooked up from highly selective samples to serve politicians who pay for the studies.
The only data from which we can indirectly extract a proxy estimate of the affordability of rental housing in Pasadena is the U.S. Economic Census of 2005. This indicates that 35.6% of Pasadena's populace are low and moderate income; and 28.1% are low income. California has 38.75% low and moderate income and 22.9% low income. So Pasadena has a somewhat less proportion of low and moderate income residents than the state, but a higher proportion of low income residents. This does not really indicate a crisis.
How do we know if Pasadena has already met its fair share of affordable housing to stop the war on unaffordable housing? We don't and we can't because there is no such fair share standard in the first place. And secondly there is no measure, other than politically contrived, to know where the City ranks. A frequent saying often overheard during this writer's 30 plus years in local government employment, including as an affordable housing analyst, is that "government agency numbers are always cooked up." This is certainly true with affordable housing.
Given the above, on what basis does the City of Pasadena enforce its Inclusionary Housing ordinance? If there is no accurate and reliable factual basis documenting unaffordability, wouldn't the City's Inclusionary Housing law be a regulatory taking subject to compensation under the 5th Amendment ot the U.S. Constitution?
The highly symbolic war on unaffordable housing is mostly based on impressions. The "Knowledge Class" of newspaper media, academics, activists, and even those in "urban ministry," have seen the value of single family estate homes in Pasadena skyrocket into the mega millions. They have seen starting rents of $2,500 per month and up for trendy apartments being built on expensive commercial land in Pasadena's downtown "Urban Village," with amenities such as pools, gyms, mini-movie theaters, built-in convenience stores, and adjacent to transit stations for the Gold Line Light Rail. How could anyone in their right mind deny there is an affordable housing crisis? Everyone can see there is a crisis because pictures and emotional stories of housing unaffordability are the only ones we see or read about in the media.
But the "housing reality" reported by those in the media, academia, and even the ministry is highly distorted. It is not much different than the Marxist distortion of the situation written about by Friedrich Engels in his 1872 pamphlet "The Housing Question." That distortion is based on the fallacious syllogism - if the value of wealthy people's homes and condos are rising it follows that the price of housing for the poor must also (ipso facto, the wealthy must pay for this sin). What the "Knowledge Class" always fails to perceive is that affordable housing is old, small, unrenovated, untrendy in design, not near shopping or public transit, and usually operated by mom and pop landlords. By my rough estimate, 90% to 95% of Pasadena's affordable housing is owned and operated by the private sector, not government or nonprofits. And over a third of Pasadena's population is already low and moderate income and by definition must be living in some form of affordable housing. How much is Pasadena's "fair share" of affordable housing when the standard is always moving to fill a bottomless pit?
The war on unaffordable housing in Pasadena is unwinnable and endless because it is unmeasurable by any objective standard. If it is time we pulled out of the nebulous War in Iraq, it is also high time that we pulled out of the shadow war on unaffordable housing in Pasadena fought by numerical "errorists" who plant IED's (Improvised Erroneous Devices) in local housing surveys and newspapers which become taken for granted as fact. Newspaper editors who pride themselves on vetting their stories never so much as even check the U.S. Census to see if the numbers on affordable housing reflect reality. Local officials are waging asymmetric urban guerilla warfare against landowners, developers, and future occupants of new condos and apartments for their own political purposes.
A count of financial casualties isn't even being kept by the City, although the Pasadena Weekly copiously keeps a weekly tabulation of the war casualties. Despite finding no WMD's (Wealth Menacing Dwellings) in Pasadena the war on unaffordable housing continues unquestioned.
Pasadena's war on unaffordale housing is asymmetric - local populist politicians, housing activists, academics, the State legislature and the clergy (i.e., the "cognitive elite"), together with the property-less, have legally inflicted their distorted view of the housing situation on small landowners, future apartment dwellers, new condo owners and developers. This sort of asymmetrical wealth confiscation and plunder is what the U.S. Constitution was supposed to protect against. To realign the asymmetrical vested interests about housing affordability what is first needed is a perceptual shift in our vested ideas.
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