An Affordable Housing Policy to Appeal to Each Quadrant
Residential Intentional Communities Mapped to the Political Compass
Overview of California Housing Thru the Quadrants Framework
I’ve learned the following (largely from podcasts) about the quadrants’ interests in CA housing.
Pew’s democratic mainstays run the state, and the establishment liberals rule it. The current situation largely works for them. Yet they are aggravated by reports that recent LA fires that destroyed over 16,251 homes and commercial properties possibly were started and definitely were aggravated by arsonists, another example of increasing societal disorder. Establishment liberals Ezra Klein and Nick Hanauer point to blatant failures in housing policy.
In the republican quadrant, the business-friendly builders (committed conservatives) find the red tape stifling. Pew’s “faith and flag conservatives” have endured culture shifts increasingly hostile to them. Families can’t afford to live in many parts of CA. They also want public parks not littered with needles and human feces. These both are Pew types that migrated to other states.
Pew’s ambivalent right (dissident right) includes the libertarian tech bros who moved to Austin to avoid CA taxes and get better food. Reportedly, since the working class and most creatives can’t afford to live in or near Silicon Valley, the dining quality has diminished.
Greens’ equity-based ideology demands support and housing for the underserved and historically marginalized. They also demand ecologically sustainable policies for housing and transit.
The homelessness crisis has resulted from the following:
Politicians appease the auth-left by allowing homeowners to legally block or perpetually stall new housing projects that they believe would lower the value of their neighborhoods’ real estate.
Politicians allowed the auth-right (anti-regulation, pro-business) corporations to buy up foreclosed real estate on the cheap after the housing bubble popped, creating a monopoly for corporate landlords that now charge exorbitant rates.
The migration of lib-right tech bros freed up some housing, but it also diminished tax revenue.
Politicians allow the lib-left to pile on well-intentioned requirements to any proposed or approved affordable housing or shelter projects. These requirements—LEED, percentages of minority-owned or women-owned contractors—stall or increase the costs of the projects. In addition, decades ago CA state-funded mental health residential facilities were shut down thru tireless work of activists. Thereafter, the proposed community health centers that were to take their place were not built in sufficient numbers. Nor could they compel the street dwellers to take their meds.
An Affordable Housing Plan Only a Green Would Dream Up
Here’s how politicians and activists could promote a plan that would appease all four quadrants to some extent. Mediators know that with a workable compromise, most often no one gets what they want exactly, but everyone can begrudgingly live with the result.
Lib-left
The Greens have two types that can support each other. Pew’s progressive left supports democratic socialism. Their housing policies arguably have not worked for the reasons outlined above. Pew’s outsider left has a radical solution: voluntary communalism. Jim Rizor’s Ecoshire is an example of a workable ownership model. See photos of their progress creating paradise from a former dumping ground. Russell Chenier provides a cost breakdown of a proposed TerraVerde Ecovillage in Mendocino County. There are 11 known established ecovillages in CA. By sharing a main building with a kitchen, laundry, and bathrooms, ecovillages can house vulnerable populations affordably. Pew’s progressive left could support a charter social service model. Like charter schools, the government could devote guaranteed social service funding to any group that provided adequate housing and services to qualifying populations. If the government also donated the land, including repurposed school buildings, suddenly these projects would be affordable to the idealists yearning to create utopias. Certainly many of these would be badly managed. As with charter schools, oversight would ensure a change of leadership where needed. RFK Jr. envisioned thousands of regenerative farms operated as addiction recovery centers. Proof of concept has been provided by the hundreds of Camphill communities that support and permanently house those with cognitive disabilities. Thousands of rural ecovillages would allow people unproductive in the modern economy to partially support themselves by subsistence farming and small businesses.
Auth-left
If the greens can accomplish that plan, those who feel they are urban wage slaves would have an alternative livelihood. Suddenly parents who agree that “it takes a village” would find that village. Parents swapping childcare would replace commercialized daycare, which in cities often costs more than college tuition. This means the democratic mainstays and affluent establishment liberals may lose some access to cheap labor. Food, childcare, cleaning, and landscaping could get pricier for them. However, if a live-in work trade becomes destigmatized, they can retrofit their half-empty homes or add an ADU to accommodate the hired help.
Auth-right
Republicans are the least likely to embrace communalism. However, the gated community and HOA is comparable in many ways to intentional community. In cynical moments, I describe cohousing as condos with potlucks. Cohousing offers many benefits, but affordability isn’t necessarily one of them. The wealthy could fund an ecovillage as part investment, part philanthropic tax write-off, and personal retirement estate. While this could sound like a new version of serfdom, it can be governed in an egalitarian manner. Also, this quadrant would value the charter social service model as a meritocratic alternative to one-size-fits-all exploitable government-run services.
Lib-right
My avatars for the populist right include small-scale farmers and ranchers, small-town main street business owners, and preppers. Of these, many preppers see the importance of teaming up for off-grid communities at a time of political and financial instability.
Summary
Those unfamiliar with the residential intentional community movement would think it appeals to a small fringe. While true, that fringe is growing. Many are recognizing communalism as a workable solution to simultaneously resolve housing unaffordability, the loneliness epidemic, food supply-chain insecurity, and ecological degradation.
Part of abundance is also allowing people to create entirely new spaces that to some degree embody their different weird values both rad and trad. And that's also I think an answer to both our problems of having supply constrained economic goods, but also we have a constraint on pluralism…if we don't like the way our communities look, where you go create new communities…schools… shared yards, shared daycare. (Steven Teles in The Realignment Podcast, 37:20)
Thanks for reading. Here’s a related video on ICs mapped to the political compass.
