Author: Marcy

Advocate of Constitutional guarantees to individual liberty.

Old Debate: Homelessness and Reagan

Is deinstitutionalization still the cause of homelessness, after 56 years?

Ronald Reagan's inaugural address 1981In late 1980 and early 1981, interest rates hovered around 15%, unemployment was at 11%, and economists visualized a crises.  That is the backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s inaugural address .  In that address, Reagan said,

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?

These 74 words became a battle cry of both conservatives and progressives. Conservatives see Reagan’s words as warning against relying on government. Progressives see the same words as proof of the folly of not relying on government.

A favorite topic for battle is homelessness. In 1967, while Governor of California, Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act which ended the practice of institutionalizing patients against their will for indefinite amounts of time. At that time, there were 22,000 patients in state mental hospitals. By 1973, there were 7,000. Community clinics with the help of newly-developed medication assumed responsibility for patient care. In 1981, as President, Reagan signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. The legislation created block grants for states, but reduced federal spending on mental illness.

To this day in 2017, more than half a century after the signing of the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act and 37 years after the Omnibus Budget Act, progressives are still convinced that closing the state mental hospitals is the cause of present homelessness.

However, 56 years seems ample time to reopen state mental hospitals, where the mentally challenged can be warehoused out of sight and out of mind with or without their consent, if that is what Reagan critics desire.

Solar Power Plants – Far from Pristine

Moral of the story: We need to know what we are signing up for.

Solar Plant 2One way to success is to highlight a “crisis” and then pile on “solutions.” Al Gore made climate change the biggest crisis ever, and solutions just poured in. Terms like alternative energy, carbon footprint, sustainable development, walkable cities, transit corridors just sprang up. And government (taxpayers) started subsidizing anything that looked like it fought climate change. Here is a story about a federally subsidized solar power plant in California, Ivanpah.

In order to meet its production goals, Ivanpah needs to burn natural gas at night to keep the system primed and to heat water used in tower boilers. It also needs to burn natural gas when the sun is not shinning. Natural gas, although cleaner than coal, still is not “clean” energy.

So, how come Ivanpah qualifies under state rules as an alternative energy source? Because the natural gas is burned at night. Daytime burning of natural gas is what counts as bad.  This quote from a good article on the subject in The Press Enterprise Local expresses the frustration that can come with the realization of how solar power plants work:

Given the high-level of public investment, the plant’s natural gas use should have been better publicly disclosed before the project was approved, said David Lamfrom, California desert manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.
“The bottom line is the public didn’t expect this project to consume this much natural gas,” Lamfrom said in a telephone interview. “We did not have full knowledge that this was what we were signing up for.”

Not having full knowledge of what we are signing up for is the rule, not the exception. Deciders on the Ivanpah subsidies were correct that solar power is a good thing, since it does not use by itself finite resources such as coal and leaves a cleaner footprint than coal. However, they should also have known that we are years away from finding a realistic way to store solar energy for times when the sun does not shine, necessitating the use of natural gas for volume solar power production.

How is “Affordable Housing” Working Out For You?

What are the real causes of homelessness?

Legislators pass housing bills
Sacramento Bee: Legislators announce passage of bills

In 2016, there were 550,000 homeless people in the United States, mostly concentrated in large cities such as New York and Los Angeles.  California has the largest percentage of unsheltered (not in emergency shelters) homeless in the U.S. at 66%.  California has 22% of U.S. homeless population (in shelters and unsheltered), and 12% of the total U.S. population.

The currently accepted reason for California’s large homeless population is the state’s traditional resistance to population density — the Not In My Back Yard syndrome.  Therefore, the accepted remedy is to force all counties to build “enough” taxpayer subsidized housing.  However, one could observe other contributing factors:

* Destruction of small transient hotels, where low-income or no-income individuals and families called home.  Old timers will remember the last stand, the battle for survival of the International Hotel.  The low-income residents lost and the developers won.

* Explosive growth in drug use that interferes with gainful employment. Is anyone going after the real causes of the growth?

* Advent of central planning that mandated high population densities along transit corridors and designated large swaths of land as conservation or protected areas closed to development. Some call it the Watermelon Plan, green on the outside and red on the inside.

* Acceptance of words such as “displacement,” “housing rights,” “fair housing.”  Rejection of principles such as self reliance, freedom of movement, local control.  Maybe Orwell’s Animal Farm is no longer read in school.

* Utter rejection of the word “suburban sprawl.”  New rule:  everybody stay put.

One would think that as density rises in confined spaces, housing prices would rise.  Thus, all funding options should be viewed as ongoing and forever increasing – never “enough.”

On September 15, 2017, the open-ended nature of California’s “housing crisis” became clear.  Senate Bills SB 35, SB 2, and SB 3 passed the legislature, and are expected to be signed into law by Governor Brown.  SB 35 further moves decisions on housing from cities and counties to state.  SB 2 loads residents with more fees when they need to file a property-related document.  SB 3 funnels $4,000,000,000 in bond money into subsidized housing.  Supporters in the legislature say “It’s just a start.”

Mello-Roos Taxes and the Peanuts Syndrome

Lucy will always yank the football as Peanuts kicks, and legislation will always fool voters.

LucysFootball 3Lucy yanking the football just as Peanuts kicks – the iconic image created by the great Charles Schulz will forever live in the public consciousness as a badge of trusting souls. No matter how many times Lucy causes Peanuts to tumble as he kicks into empty space, Peanuts trust Lucy to keep the ball in place the next time.

We the People seem to have acquired the Peanuts syndrome.  No matter how many times legislation morphs into other than its intended purpose, We the People remain faithful to the idea that the next law or rule will fix what went wrong.  The immutable rule of legislation is that every law grows to include more stuff.  Eventually the original piece of legislation becomes something else.  Examples abound; but here, let’s talk about the Community Facilities Act, passed by the California legislature in 1982, better known as Mello-Roos to honor the act’s co-authors.

California’s 1978 Proposition 13 chocked off the flow of property tax money.  Predictably, instead of developing fiscal restraint, the legislature established other ways to tax homeowners.  Mello-Roos was enacted as a quasi parcel tax, not subject to Proposition 13, to provide funds for public infrastructure in newly-created development areas.  Not a particularly bad idea.  However, as time passed, Mello-Roos transformed, with significant transformations occurring since 2010.

Senate Bill 555 in 2011 further blurred the distinction, never quite clear, of what was truly a public facility or service and what was private by authorizing the financing of energy-efficient improvements on privately-owned property.  Assembly Bill 2618 in 2016 included seismic safety improvements to what could be financed.

Lawsuits have not been successful in curbing the morphing of Mello-Roos.  The Pacific Legal Foundation filed a suit on behalf of the Building Industry Association against the City of San Ramon, asserting that Mello-Roos applied only to new infrastructure created specifically for residents of a Mello-Roos district.  The court ruled that existing infrastructure was also covered, thereby breaking the link between the services and the residents paying for the services.

A high-profile expansion of Mello-Roos is the construction of San Francisco’s Transbay Center, located within a highly urbanized and dense Mello-Roos district.  Among the community benefits is a magnificent transit terminal that will include inter-city transportation service, leaving little connection between residents of the district and the services provided by the development.

Yet, residents of the Transbay Center Community Facilities District will still pay the Mello-Roos tax in addition to their regular property tax.  Lucy strikes again.

Massive Housing Programs and Massive Messes

The Fair Housing Act was only “fair” to white people.

public housing 2A recent interview on National Public Radio’s program Fresh Air discussed the federal government’s hand at segregating America’s suburbs during the 1930s through the 1950s. The Fair Housing Act of 1934 was established to facilitate financing and construction of housing, in response to what the federal government perceived as a “housing shortage.” Problem was the act aimed at providing housing for white families only. Vast tracks of suburban residential housing carried covenants that specified homes could be sold only to white families. We are all feeling the results of those misguided decisions to this day.

Government is populated by fallible people, just like any other group. When we allow or incentivize government to undertake massive endeavors, we might end up with massive unintended consequences.

Today the descriptive term has escalated to “housing crisis.” And again, especially in large metropolitan areas, there is massive government intervention in the form of central planning, subsidies, zoning, developer incentives, and a tsunami of new laws and financing proposals.

What will be the effects of the 2015 presidential executive order Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing or California’s Senate Bill 35, both mandating that every community build their “fair share” of housing at all levels of income – whether the community can afford it or not. But for these mandates to come true, they need financing, such as voter-approved housing bonds. Before we vote “yes,” let’s read the fine print.

Government vs Governance

Government is by elected officials. Governance is by unelected bureaucrats.

BadGuy 2Often the words government and governance are used interchangeably.  However, these words carry significantly different meanings.  Government is by elected officials and laws chosen at the ballot box.  Governance is by unelected bureaucrats who establish rules and regulations.

Today the trend is to create mega agencies, such as Metropolitan Planning Organizations (more on that soon).  Employees of these agencies plan land use and transportation, two of the most significant aspect of our lives.  Yet no one is elected to the posts they hold within those agencies.  Who do voters kick out of office if need be?  Do voters spend time studying organization charts to ultimately find who appointed whom?

Sometimes best to Just Vote NO

How many laws are too many laws?

PromisesIn a republic, voters pick who represents them at the various levels of government and they pick proposed laws on the ballot — often a daunting task.  Ballots get longer and levels of government proliferate.  What started in 1787 as a straightforward social contract is now a maze of laws and regulations.  Besides the national maze, we have state, county, and city equivalents.  Additionally, at the local levels of government there are numerous boards and committees.

So, when we enter the ballot box, do we really vote for what is to our benefit?  Probably not.