IZ and the art of the bad-faith argument
March 16, 2007
I’m agnostic on the merits of inclusionary zoning. It offers the promise of maintaining the economic and civic health of an urban area. It also gets lost in the weeds of cumbersome bureaucratic decision-making. It creates a whole lot of misaligned incentives for a lot of different groups of people, and that orthogonality makes good public policy much more difficult.
And above all, no one has yet answered the question of “Does it work?”. Some hard, empirical data would be greatly appreciated. Unfortunately, that kind of empiricism is completely missing from the bad-faith argument by Terrance Wall (a local real estate developer and the president of Smart Growth Madison, a conservative business lobby) that appeared in Isthmus.
There are lots of numbers, of course, but no data. To take one example: if you don’t count student housing, low-income housing, buildings with less than 10 apartments, or a host of other specific categories, there were 143 permits issued in 2006. Then, if you do count those things in the annual average count, you create the appearance that the Madison rental market has crashed. Wall is deliberately setting up a false comparison in order to dishonestly amplify a statistical discrepancy. The discrepancy does exist, but is it statistically noteworthy or related to the inclusionary zoning ordinance?
It might be, but there’s no good-faith effort to account for other trends in the housing market that are almost certainly far more important. Rising interest rates? Sub-prime lending? Adjustable-rate mortgages? A saturated housing market?
An understanding of the fact that inclusionary zoning emphasizes home ownership instead of long-term renting? That it’s designed to make it easier for low-income families to own their own home? That it’s not rent control?
Although there are philosophical reasons to reject government initiatives like IZ outright, none of them are mentioned in the article, presumably because hands-off libertarians have next to no support in Madison’s political environment. Unwilling to ground their opposition in libertarian terms, opponents must do so for pragmatic reasons. But they don’t have any, because they haven’t taken the time to collect the necessary data, or to display an understanding of the issue that is goes deeper than an Econ-101 lecture.
Instead, they selectively cite numbers which support a pre-determined viewpoint. It’s the same intellectual dishonesty that manifested itself in the sick-leave study last year. As for myself, I prefer our local “ill-considered do-goodism”. It has the benefit of being reality-based, and responsive to the facts on the ground.
A special “conservative greatest hits” bonus: Don’t miss to total non sequitur reference to 9/11. It’s almost as fun as the gratuitous mention of “the mayor’s trolleys!”
March 16th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Ben,
I think first one has to decide what the problem is. Many of the things the Isthmus discusses are not even IZ. IZ is fundamentally about income integration. Should we have integrated communities and community schools, segregated communities and integrated schools, or segregated communities and segregated schools. IZ’s goal is NOT and never has been affordable housing. It fundamentally want developers accountable to what kind of communities we as a city want to live in.
If one looks at a house on the east side 80% is at medium (220K) or below. If one looks downtown or west its quite a different story. The number I saw awhile ago was below 40%. So, unless one is solidly middle class the chance of you owning a home on the west side becomes unlikely. West siders work at the stores and shops and send there kids to school and should have an opportunity to raise their kids in integrated communities with community schools.
If I had to answer if IZ was a success I’d say no. It has not held developers accountable to our communities and they promise one thing to the council and then do the exact opposite. I am sure to some IZ, along with the neighborhood plans it feels like the Soviet’s 5 year plans.
March 17th, 2007 at 9:19 am
The local government definitely has a role in determining the kind of communities we want to build. There are all sorts of important things — parks, schools, road layout, population density, mass transit, sustainability, etc — that developers will obviously ignore if they can. They’re in the business to make money, and their incentives are somewhat different from those of the community at large.
So I have no problem with IZ-type regulations that say “this is the sort of community we want Madison to be”. The question is whether or not IZ is accomplishing, or has the potential to accomplish that goal.
(My vote is obviously for integrated communities and community schools. The harder question arises when integration and community schools are exclusive to each other, because of segregation in the city itself.)
April 18th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
This is a response to Nate’s comments.
Ben’s argument addresses the issue of whether inclusionary zoning has worked. His discussion is about the questionable effectiveness of IZ, and the manner in which the results of IZ are presented to the public. One of the problems with a lot of advocates of inclusionary zoning is that the argument doesn’t stay focused on whether the measures actually work. For example, instead of reacting to Ben’s post by addressing the issue he presented, Nate shifts the argument to discussing the laudable social goals of the program of integrating neighborhoods and providing the same opportunities to all and by focusing on developer accountability. His argument continues, suggesting that without IZ, our society not only reverts back to segregation–but that our social castes are cemented and are not unlike the Soviets. Can we please just discuss the efficacy of IZ? I want to better our community; I want integration; I want social mobility; I want opportunities for all. But can we just ask ourselves whether these measures work? I’m expressing no opinion as to whether I personally think they do or do not. I only comment because comments like Nate’s are essentially bad faith arguments. They appeal to a sense of social fairness–an issue not before the table; one in which has already been settled in Nate’s favor.
My community had a commissioners’ meeting a while back where we discussed IZ with an open mic about what to do about affordable housing. Nate’s people were right there to put in their two cents about social fairness and how the community was becoming exclusionary to lower income levels. But we already settled that! After all, we would not be having the meeting unless we had all agreed there was a problem. Similarly, we would not be having this posting if we didn’t think something should be done–or, for some, at least have a discussion to determine if we should do anything. Nonetheless, our meeting continued, and Nate’s people were unable to divorce themselves from the question of whether the measures work. Whether it works or not, blind acceptance of IZ does nothing to better our communities.
So, this is a call to all the Nates if you haven’t grasped it yet: affordable housing is a problem in this country and we can all agree that something must be done. Let’s not make pleas to natural justice principles, and let’s just forget about putting up the smoke screen with talk about the Soviets. Let’s instead have an intelligent discussion on whether these measures work–a discussion in which we use facts and in which those facts are presented fairly.