February 3, 2023

Hi First name / friend,

 

Happy Black History Month! 🤎 The spring semester is in full swing, and I’m ending week two feeling like… idk. I find myself questioning the very foundation of my beliefs. Which is disorienting, but also exciting.

 

 

In traditional urban economics, we’re told that the field is the study of firms (employers) and households (the labor force/people), and where those groups organize in relationship with each other. Where we live and how we live is intricately linked to what we do for work.

 

But the thing about economics is that it’s a living subject. There’s no universal truth to the way our economic system functions or should function. And I think my classes this semester are going to really challenge me to rethink the way I view the economy. Lowkey, I’m very excited.

 

As an aspiring housing policy person (or maybe I already am one?), I also aspire to leave space for imagination. One of my class readings this week pointed out the deeper we get into a discipline, the more engrained our views become, the more narrowly we view the options available, and the less capable we are of seeing the world of possibility that could exist.

 

The housing policy debates I (somewhat begrudgingly) tune into on Twitter are intense. Sometimes there’s thoughtful discourse, but often I see really nasty attacks on people and the very core of their belief systems. Also a fair number of folks who are clearly posting with the goal of going viral, which… is what it is, I guess. There are a few camps, including some who believe there is no housing crisis, that young people simply aren’t careful enough to save the money it takes for a downpayment, or who are too stubborn to move somewhere cheaper (this is a false narrative and these are not real choices that real people can make, imo).

 

Where the debate gets murky for me is in the spaces where people acknowledge that housing is too expensive and that we need to do something about it. There is not widespread agreement on how to address this challenge, nor do the housing market issues look the same across different communities in the U.S.

 

This week for my U.S. Housing Policy class, we read several chapters of Dr. Casey Dawkins’ book Just Housing: The Moral Foundations of Housing Policy (it’s open access if you’d like to read for free 🤎). He summarizes the current debate as it relates to rental housing in a way I find super clear:

 

“For the new California YIMBY (yes in my backyard) coalition, the solution to rising rental housing prices is not rent control or tenant protections but instead the removal of regulatory barriers to affordable housing production, a solution that hearkens back to the neoliberal supply-side approach that has been advanced by HUD for decades. While YIMBY advocates support private developers’ rights to produce rental housing, California’s tenants’ rights advocates and their allies oppose market-oriented solutions to the housing crisis, advocating instead for tenant protections combined with an expansion of government subsidies for public housing construction.”

 

The sticking point, in the end, is whether to trust a market-based solution. As a skeptical participant in a capitalist society, I get it.

 

Back to my confusion. Aristotle famously said, “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” A little more than halfway through my master’s degree, I have absorbed a ton of information that often conflicts. Without getting too into the weeds (okay, maybe we’re already there), this has left me in a place of deep reflection. I honestly don’t know what my political ideology is right now. What I do know is that I’m hungry for more. I want to keep digging deeper.

 

My goal for A Place to Call Home is to cast light on, uh, the places we call home. While I will certainly continue to infuse my own belief systems into these letters, my hope is that I can help you form informed decisions and make sense of the housing debates happening in your community.

 

Housing policy is one of these special things that is largely controlled on a local level, meaning that engaged folks can have a huge impact on decisions that elected officials make about local housing policies. Like, showing up to meetings works. Voicing your opinion to electeds works. And that’s a precious thing!

 

Thank you for being here, for being curious. It matters. 🤎

 

Until next time,

Dominique

The chairs I bought on Facebook marketplace for our office are, unfortunately, not very comfy for watching tv. I’ve been on the hunt, and I’ve realized that as I look, I’m less certain of what styles I even like. I think this is exacerbated by the fact that I desperately want to be comfy. 😞 I think these beige leather loungers are pretty cool, but a touch too 80’s for me. I’m proud of myself for walking away lol.

 

Other things I’m into right now: this color scheme, this entire project from my fave Shannon Claire Interiors, and this photo of a photo at the New Black Vanguard show.