No Woke? Go Broke.

James Baldwin on “Incremental Progress”

PEOPLE’S POLICY PROJECT

America faces a major shortage of affordable housing. Nearly half of all renters are paying 30% of their income on rent—or more. And the number of households who are renting is near postwar highs. Meanwhile, private market-focused policies have proven completely inadequate for ameliorating this problem. In this paper, we shall argue that large-scale municipal housing, built and owned by the state, is by far the best option for solving the affordability crisis. In Part I, we will examine the history and policy failures that created the crisis. In Part II, we will make the case for municipal housing.

The American poor and working class have never been well housed, but the 2008 financial crisis made a bad problem worse. 

It dramatically expanded the population of people seriously burdened by the need for shelter. The crash was rooted in the housing market, and the ensuing tidal wave of foreclosures (see People’s Policy Project report: Foreclosed) resulted in a drop in the homeownership rate of 6 percentage points.1 Most of those people ended up on the rental market. A 2017 study by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (jchs) details how the population of renters has grown over the last decade to a total of about 43 million households. That increase of about 9 million2 since the financial crisis roughly matches the number of homes lost during and after the crisis,3 and the growth in demand drove up rents across the country. The growth in demand, in tandem with federal government stimulus spending,4 eventually sparked a construction boom. After an initial collapse to record lows for years after the crisis, residential investment increased sharply, led by new rental construction. By 2015, however, new unit construction had only reached 400,000 per year5 —this matches unit construction levels in the late 1980s, when the population was 25 percent smaller.6 Meanwhile, new construction has been heavily concentrated in the luxury markets in major metropolitan areas. Where in 2001, construction was fairly equally distributed between cheap, midrange, and luxury rentals, now the luxury market is by far the largest:

Over the last year, the growth in rental households has stopped or even reversed—but rent prices are still growing (at 2–4 percent in 2017, down from 3-6 percent in 20157). And the number of burdened renters remains substantially above its pre-crisis level. In 2007, 8 million households spent 30-50 percent of their income on rent; in 2017, that number was at 9.8 million. In 2007, 9 million households spent 50 percent or more of their income on rent; in 2017, that number was at 11 million. These burdened renters (paying 30 percent of their income or more on rent) now account for 47 of all renters.8 Meanwhile, some people who would have been homeowners in decades past now appear leery of incapable of home buying. The share of households making over $100,000 and renting has increased from 12 percent in 2006 to 18 percent in 2016,9 while stagnant or declining wages for many demographics mean a down payment is simply out of reach.10 Both developments mean further pressure on rental markets.

Despite the fact that rent pressure remains severe and future growth prospects for rental construction remain fairly strong, the construction boom is already slowing. As the Joint Center for Housing Studies concludes, “The rental market thus appears to be settling into a new normal where nearly half of renter households are cost burdened.” That includes many middle and upper-middle class households: 50 percent of those making $30,000-45,000, and 23 percent of those making $45,000-75,000.11

In Los Angeles, the homeless population increased nearly 26 percent last year.

The situation for poor and working-class households, of course, is even worse. An Urban Institute study identified 11.8 million extremely low-income (ELI) renter households (defined as those making less than 30 percent of the median income in their area), and only enough “adequate, affordable and available” housing for 46 percent of them— even when accounting for usda and Housing and Urban Development subsidy programs12 (see below). 

Naturally, this tends to push people onto the street. Obama administration programs for homeless shelters and similar institutions precipitated a substantial decline in the number of homeless people between 2007 and 2016, but skyrocketing rents are overwhelming those programs in some cities. From 2016–17, homelessness increased by 0.7 percent overall,13 an increase driven mostly by West Coast cities experiencing spectacular rent increases. In Los Angeles, for example, rents have increased by roughly a quarter since 2010—and the homeless population increased nearly 26 percent last year. By itself, the city accounted for well over half of a 9 percent increase in the national unsheltered homeless population.

Efforts to remedy the housing shortage and ease the rent burden have been pitifully inadequate, both at the city and federal level. The nation’s major program to ease rents is the Section 8 voucher program administered by HUD, which assists about 2.5 million ELI households by subsidizing a portion of their market-rate rents.14 While that is certainly better than nothing, the program only covers about 22 percent of the 11.8 million ELI households who are eligible. Another 21 percent have been able to find market-rate housing, 2.5 percent are covered under the usda Section 515 program, and the remaining 54 percent are simply left out.15

Thus, these programs are restricted to ELI households, and only help about a quarter of even that small population. They simply do not touch the vast majority of people trapped by the affordability crisis. What’s more, like any open-ended subsidy to private providers, these sorts of rental subsidies can stoke the rental market further, raising prices overall and exacerbating the affordability crisis.

Meanwhile, the major strategy to create more affordable units is to coax the private market using tax incentives and zoning rules. The largest such program is the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (lihtc), under which some 90 percent16 of new affordable housing is built. This gives a tax credit to developers for building low-income housing. 

Once again, one of the biggest problems with this program is its pitiful size: it only provided about $300 per rent-burdened household in 2017, at a total investment of just $8 billion.17 This would not be remotely adequate to make a serious difference in the size of the housing stock even if the program were exceptionally efficient. But it isn’t efficient, either: on the contrary, research suggests18 that at least some of the new housing created under the tax credit would have been created anyway. Crime also undermines the program’s efficiency: a Frontline investigation discovered substantial corruption in the lihtc process, helping to account for the fact that while the cost of the credit has increased by 66 percent from 1997–2014 the number of units created under the credit has actually fallen from over 70,000 per year to less than 60,000.19

Moreover, because subsidized units are often placed in poor neighborhoods to avoid political resistance, they tend to increase segregation and concentrate poverty.20 The program also amplifies segregation in the other direction, according to a study from the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity,21 which found that subsidized units occupied by white people (often designated especially for artists) tended to be placed in white neighborhoods

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GET GRUFFALO'D, BITCH

If you haven't heard of Julia Donaldson, she's primarily a picture book author, who we can thank for extremely popular Halloween classic Room on the Broom as well as the Gruffalo.

Let this be a testament to the power of picture books.

I'm living for these jokes.

Also I need "GET GRUFFALO'D, BITCH" on a T-shirt.

Denmark has a lot to offer.

#BernieSanders

Apparently boomer Democrats are having meltdowns over a gen-z progressive who is primarying an 80 year old Democrat because she "went on trans podcasts" and wore a Charizard kigurumi

ok but what is she running on

You can check her out here, but quick run down:

The Urbanist Nightmare That Is Our Current Reality

Watch and scroll as Youtube urbanist Not Just Bikes explains the concept of a STROAD; a literal blight on the US  urban/suburban landscape that is also probably where you live…

Watch the full glorious video HERE

PEOPLE’S POLICY PROJECT

Nordic societies are lead­ers at the tech­no­logi­cal frontier.

Through state-owned organizations, as well as the broader public sector, they disprove the belief that governments stifle innovation. Moreover, Nordic governments show how to use new technologies to solve the biggest social and environmental problems while ensuring the disruptions and gains of innovation are distributed fairly.

The Nordic experience with technology differs vastly from that of the United States.

For all its world-leading firms and universities, the US has often failed to convert its innovation into meaningful improvements in Americans’ lives. Compared to the Nordics, as well as several other countries in Europe and Asia, US economic growth per hour worked has been mediocre over the last several decades. Most of that growth has flowed to the rich, limiting the country’s ability to improve rates for life expectancy, child and maternal mortality, suicide, depression, and poverty—all metrics where the US fares poorly against its peers. Meanwhile the US has continued to struggle to use its technological might to prevent climate change, relying on a dirty grid and making inferior progress in green energy over the past 50 years.

How the Nordics and the US approach innovation raises important questions about the relationship between technology and the social good. What’s the best way for the state to boost innovation? How can it guide innovation toward socially useful purposes and away from harmful ones? How can we prevent innovation from creating a set of winners and losers that widen inequality and cause long-lasting damage to households and entire communities? And is there an inherent tension in achieving all of these goals?

The fact that the Nordics are both egalitarian and innovative is not incidental.

Sectoral bargaining and unions compress wages across the economy, which reduces inequality while also inducing more creative destruction in the economy. By raising wages for the least-paid workers, the least productive firms cannot afford them and die, while the most productive firms receive big profits from lower wages at the top.

Unproductive firms dying off due to the lack of cheap labor could be disruptive to workers employed at such firms, along with their households and communities. But this is where another element of the Nordic model helps: Robust labor market policies. The Nordics spend by far the most on unemployment insurance, job training, and job placement programs, which protect workers from permanent unemployment, and train and move workers from the least to the most productive firms. This entire process causes average wages and productivity to grow.

The Nordic welfare state, in addition to equalizing distribution of income and keeping poverty low, cushions financial hits, which encourages risk-taking and more welcoming attitudes toward technology in the worksite and society (Pew 2020, Eurobarometer 2012, 2015, 2017, 2020).

State ownership is an especially useful and under­appre­ciated social institu­tion in this model.

For production purposes, the state can support and guide innovation throughout the entire process to ensure innovation serves larger social missions. Compared to private actors, the state has unique powers that benefit socially useful innovation: greater tolerance for risk, more patience for rewards, and more ability to coordinate key actors and to force required systemic change. The productive benefits of state-led innovation can even be seen in the US, with DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in particular playing a critical role in the advancement of microchips, telecommunications, and more. But the state’s role in US innovation is mostly a limited one: financing early research and development while absorbing most of the risks and allowing private firms to convert the innovation for products for the market. By avoiding ownership, the US government is only able to recapture the value it created in the innovation process via taxes. But taxes are worse at capturing value, since private profits can be hidden, moved, or otherwise escape the arm of the state.

Below, I highlight four cases of state-led Nordic innovation. Together, they bust a number of myths about state ownership and the Nordic model.

Ninety per­cent of the world’s tra­ded goods travel over the seas.

Maritime travel emits 3% of total greenhouse gas, which is on pace to triple in the next three decades. Making maritime trade more productive and at the same time greener thus looks like a clear social good. At the frontier of such technologies are the governments of Finland and Norway, which are pursuing the development of autonomous electric-powered ships (electric roboships).

In Norway and Finland, government agencies have partnered with private industry to coordinate research and development of roboships. The most noteworthy partnership involves Norwegian state-owned enterprises (SOEs) Yara and Kongsberg. Kongsberg’s technical expertise includes over 50 years of missile technology and 25 years of underwater autonomous navigation. Initial efforts in the 1990s included autonomously mapping the seabed to drill for oil and gas, and later to safely sweep mines. Since then they’ve worked on dozens of autonomous technology projects with partners in and outside Norway.

Kongsberg and Yara’s flagship project is the Yara Birkeland, intended to be the world’s first 100% electric autonomous container ship. In November 2021, the Yara Birkeland launched its maiden voyage in Oslo, with the following two years dedicated to testing before it is legally certified for autonomous container shipping.

Electric roboships fit the mission-oriented, innovative growth strategy of both Yara and Kongsberg. Yara is the world’s largest producer of fertilizer and recently partnered with a Swedish farmers co-op to produce the world’s first fossil-free nitrogen fertilizer. And Kongsberg’s expertise in autonomy on the sea has enabled it to become a leader in offshore wind turbine installation vessels. Kongsberg received a $40 million contract to build the first such vessels for an offshore wind farm in the United States.

The steel industry alone accounts for 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The bulk of these emissions come from a blast furnace using coal or other fossil fuels to produce extremely high temperatures. These heat demands exceed offsite electricity delivery capacity, which is why the heavy industry sector is considered “hard to abate.” Instead of burning coal, green steel plants burn green hydrogen to produce iron, which is processed further to produce steel. It’s a highly technical, capital-intensive project of utmost importance. And three Swedish SOEs have joined together to take it on.

Swedish and Finnish SOE SSAB leads the world in producing steel with the lowest emissions, but its goal is emissions-free steel. In 2016, SSAB and the Swedish Energy Agency worked together on a prefeasibility study and launched a four-year R&D project for green steel. A year later SSAB, mining company LKAB (owned by Sweden and the largest shareholder of SSAB), and energy company Vattenfall (owned by Sweden) created the joint-venture company HYBRIT—the world’s first green mine-to-steel company.

In 2019, trials started for smelting sponge iron in electric arc furnaces. Powered by hydrogen, these furnaces are essential for green steel. A year later, HYBRIT produced the world’s first fossil-free iron ore pellets. The company received its hydrogen storage permit in 2021, allowing it to build the onsite green hydrogen storage needed to power its furnaces. In that same year, HYBRIT delivered the first green steel to Volvo, and plans to scale capacity by 2026 to serve the global steel market. As of today, HYBRIT is the only project in the world producing carbon-free steel.

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Let me just come right out and say it: I love @BernieSanders. While many in the Democratic Party appear to be asleep, Bernie is leading the charge against the Trump regime. His "Fighting Oligarchy" tour is spanning the country and drawing massive crowds in Republican leaning districts. He's tapping into the anxiety that so many of us are feeling. And he's energizing us to stay engaged in the fight we're in right now — and the fights to come. Why do I love Bernie? I love his authenticity. Some people like Donald Trump because he says whatever he wants and he’s an asshole. Bernie’s authenticity comes from saying what he wants and speaking the truth. And although he’s blunt, he’s anything but an asshole. When he growls “this grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is immoral,” he means it. And he’s right. I love Bernie because he’s a true populist — a word that has gotten a terrible rap since Trump but should be redeemed. It means for the people and against the powerful. Trump pretends to be a populist, but he’s always wanted to be one of the powerful and has forever been in their pockets. Bernie is a true populist. I love Bernie because he has almost single-handedly changed the national conversation — turning proposals that had once been on the Democratic fringe into respectable, and in some cases mainstream, Democratic positions. Creating jobs by rebuilding infrastructure. Providing free tuition at public universities. Breaking up the big banks. Guaranteeing workers paid medical and family leave. The policies no longer seem far-fetched. I love Bernie because even at the age of 83, his indignation hasn’t faded. Nor has his energy. I love Bernie because he has more guts than any politician I know. Hell, he has more guts than just about anyone I know. Bernie — thank you for continuing to fight for a better world. I'll be right there alongside you, friend.

Trump’s Purge of the FTC: The Dismantling of Consumer Protections and the Rule of Law

What’s at Stake?

In a shocking and blatantly illegal move, Donald Trump has fired Democratic-appointed officials from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), violating longstanding norms and potentially breaching federal law. By unlawfully purging the agency of opposition, Trump is not only undermining consumer rights but also attacking the very foundation of democratic governance. This unprecedented action sets a dangerous precedent for the executive branch to override legal safeguards and seize unchecked power.

Why This Should Terrify You

The FTC is a regulatory body designed to operate independently, ensuring that corporate power does not override consumer protection. By illegally dismissing commissioners who were lawfully appointed, Trump is gutting the agency’s ability to function fairly. Here’s why this is a direct threat to democracy:

Why This Matters to You

This isn’t just about Washington politics; it’s about your everyday life. If Trump gets away with this illegal power grab, it sets a precedent for him—or any future president—to ignore the law whenever it suits them. If the FTC becomes a rubber-stamp agency for corporate greed, you will feel the impact:

This is particularly dangerous for young people and low-income communities, who rely on regulatory protections to ensure fair economic opportunities and prevent corporate abuse.

The Bigger Picture

Trump’s move isn’t just about the FTC—it’s part of a broader effort to dismantle democratic institutions and consolidate power. This echoes tactics used in authoritarian regimes, where leaders remove independent oversight and install loyalists to control every aspect of governance. If left unchecked, this could extend to other agencies, eroding the very fabric of American democracy.

By blatantly disregarding the law to fire FTC officials, Trump is signaling that he believes he is above legal constraints. If he can ignore these rules without consequences, what stops him from undermining election results, bypassing Congress, or silencing dissenting voices in the judiciary?

What Can You Do?

Trump’s purge of the FTC is not just a direct assault on consumer protections—it is a brazen attack on democracy itself. If we don’t act now, the consequences will be felt for generations to come.