The Henry George Program

Christopher England is the author of "Land and Liberty: Henry George and the Crafting of Modern Liberalism", a history of the land reform movement in the time of Henry George and after‒today on the program, we talk about the contours of the political strategy and history covered in this text, in particular the make-or-break years of 1900-1920. How were "the interests" addressed, and what lessons does this have for us today?

Kevin Burke from East Bay for Everyone is here to talk about the latest in Housing Elements; we get into the weeds on how different jurisdictions have complied and struggled against the process, get into details on quantifying fair housing standards, talk about land value, and of course get into Builder's Remedy (which Kevin wrote about in the SF Chron in 2022.

Robert Fairbanks is here to talk about his 1988 book, "Making Better Citizens: Housing Reform and the Community Development Strategy in Cincinnati, 1890-1960"; we discuss the rise of the anti-slum movement, how it evolved from decade to decade owing to different ideological and political shifts, and how it resulted in wide-scale urban renewal and the displacement of countless residents. The environment here is Cincinnati, but with fairly universal relevance.

Rohin Ghosh has moved on to school in DC, and has been keeping busy by acquiring public office (!); he informs us all about how DC's ANCs work, as well as larger dynamics of housing in our nation's capital. Also talk on tenant organizing, as well what this means for democracy more generally.

Are you aware that it's possible to power trains from wires? It's more likely than you think; this and more, as our guest Adriana Rizzo (of Common Ground California and Californians for Electric Rail) writes in a new Streetsblog article. We talk all about electric trains, plus overall dynamics of the Inland Empire, and what UC grad students are doing to organize.

What can you find in Marin County other than redwoods? Is there is a future for people and nature co-existing? Is growth possible in such a slow-growth hotbed? Jenny Silva of Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative and Warren Wells of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition tell us all.

Professor David Colander was a co-creator of MAP: "A Market Anti-Inflation Plan", in the context of stagflation. We talk about the history and theory of this technical approach, how inflation can be understood as a political and institutional problem, and some of the other ways in which economics must be informed by an understanding of philosophy. Also featuring discussion on inflation for asset prices, including the conundrum of real estate.

New York City (famous city) is also famous for having notoriously screwy property taxes; we talk about the details of this convoluted system, how we got here, and how people are trying to make the system more equitable.

Everybody is talking about single stair reform AKA vertical shared access AKA point access blocks AKA skinny apartments etc etc etc... what's the big deal? Ed Mendoza of the Livable Communities Initiative is here to explain what it's all about, including a deeper dive about how it alleviates concerns over safety, etc, and what the costs of land assembly premiums are today. (Link to an article on land assembly mentioned in the ep)

Cincinnati is the only city that owns a railroad; they're looking to change this by selling it off permanently. Josh Junker is here to talk about all the ways this is imprudent. Discussion also about other transportation issues, including the incomplete subway, and working with hostile state government.

Donald Shoup is here to talk about parking.

Theresa O'Connor is based in Chico, and shares about the rise of anti-homeless politics on city council, what people have been doing to face off against it; changes in shelter and sweeps policy based upon court rulings, and what's next to take back city council in Chico.

Darrell Owens is back to talk about the bills of 2022 in California: will Gavin sign the bills on parking minimum abolition and commercial upzoning? What happened when the public housing bill, AB2053, died? Also the new fast food sectoral bargaining bill

Cameron Murray is an Australian economist with critiques of the common conceptions of how development takes place, generally disregarding the role of developers to landbank. We dig into the details here, talk about the promise of public housing (but also the political challenges), and dig into controversies over his discussion of "supply crisis myths"

Colin Drumm (author of a fascinating dissertation on the history and theory of money and legitimacy) is here to talk about inflation indices and housing, and what it means for largely issues of equality, governance, and far more.

Andrew Crockett is the challenger to SCC assessor (and hgp bête noire) Larry Stone, and is promising to focus on housing, competence, and honesty as part of a modernization campaign. He's previously worked in the office, and talks both about what sorts of changes he can bring to the office within the constraints of Prop 13, etc, as well as some nuts-and-bolts explanation of the office's work.

Lars Doucet authored three exciting papers on the empirics of the land value tax and is here to talk about what he's learned, some of the controversies that have cropped up over some of the studies, and the future of using data to implement LVT in as rigorous a way as possible.

Alan Joyce is back on to talk about the San Diego Padres, how Joan Kroc was not allowed to donate the team to the city; how Petco Park was part of an ambitious city-directed real estate scheme, and the future of Major League Baseball, municipal finance, and land hustles.

Derek Sagehorn is the author of East Bay for Everyone's 2021 paper California Housing Corporation: The Case for a Public Developer, and is here to take about the overall case for a public houser as a way to create a more robust, equitable, and efficient housing industry, as well as new legislation taking up the issue: Alex Lee's AB2053 (californiasocialhousing.org). We also get into some talk about UC Berkeley's CEQA woes: how can we make environmental law work better?

California nearly toppled minimum parking laws last year, and will likely try again (bless the name of Shoup); some weird discourse arose around why this is a bad thing... because of value capture?!!? (???) Enter Michael Manville of UCLA Luskin who spoke out against this analysis; he's here to talking about the nuts and bolts of value capture paradigms and parking policy, what happens when we create planning that we don't really intend to use, and much more; how can we undo the knots of our parking nightmare?

"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946, Frank Capra) is a Christmas classic, but also offers a great deal of insight into 20th century urban issues, the ideology of self-improvement through homeownership, lines of credit, and ex-urban sprawl. Do we live in George Bailey's world today, and what does this mean for us?

Josh Albrektson of South Pasadena talks about his work fighting against illegality in his city's housing element, and how PlaceWorks is a contractor at the heart of a massive scheme to underbuild housing and make many rich. We also dig into the nuts-and-bolts of HCD's process, legislation to keep it on rails, and how people can keep our Housing Elements honest.

Gene Slater's new book is the secret history of Realtors, their role in create modern housing markets and politics, and importantly, their role for incubating racial segregation in our cities.How did Realtors manage to create a backlash against Fair Housing built around "freedom", establishing a California constitutional amendment, and laying the future of the modern right-wing?

Paul Williams has new article on public housing out, talking about the various potential space we have to explore the benefits of public ownership, with an emphasis on the bureaucratic apparatus we wield to achieve it; we talk about what this means for the future of economic justice in cities, and effective governance.

Darrell Owens is back to talk about the 2021 legislative wins (SB8, SB9, SB10) and losses (AB1401); and also to discuss the debut article on his new Substack ; what do we talk about when we talk about vacancies?

Patrick Condon, Vancouver-based urban design professor, published Sick City in the last year, which invited a good deal of controversy; though the book was all about overcrowding, inequality, and georgist theories of land rents, it was most rapturously praised by Livable California and various homeowner NIMBYs. Why? And can we agree with all the book's conclusions?

Rohin Ghosh was a high-schooler in Palo Alto just a few months ago, but has already had years of involvement in renter and houseless campaigns throughout the Peninsula, and is here to talk about what's it's like for teens in this crazy environment, as well as his perspective on the landscape of non-profits throughout the Peninsula, based on his work. Also talk about how cities are reflecting to RHNA allocations, tenant organizing in Palo Alto, and more

While moratoria expires federally, California has one more go-round of "eviction protections"; landlords get paid out 100%, but where exactly are tenants today? Shanti Singh of Tenants Together is back to talk about how Sacramento crafts tenant bills; also talk about how SF CLT's is held up by dismal city institutions.

Alex Contreras is from Downey, CA (southeast LA County), which is facing off against a freeway expansion, which will destroy homes and take away public space. Who's responsible, and how is Alex and everybody else in the Happy City Coalition organizing to stop it?

Jennifer Bradshaw is a housing activist in Vancouver, and is here to talk about how social housing and public housing works in her city, and the dismal politics that pits them against each other. Who controls property wealth, and how can we organize to achieve more equitable ends?

Derek Sagehorn of East Bay for Everyone and Common Ground California is the co-author of a paper on transit value capture, and is here to talk about the dismal history of Bay Area transit and recapturing land value, and its more rosy future. What is Link21, and why do we need to take on Prop 13 and Prop 218 to make it work? Also featuring a discussion of the sort of *bad* "value capture" beloved by lazy non-profits, and how they almost killed AB1401.

Alex Fisch is the mayor of Culver City, and a powerful poster on California Housing Twitter; we talk about projects within the city to improve the homelessness crisis, as well as recapture value from land value uplift; also talk about regional cooperation amongst the many governments, and how Culver City addresses its racist foundations a century ago

Shane Phillips of the UCLA Lewis Center is on to talk about his recent Atlantic article about the limitations of homeownership of a wealth-building tool; we also dig into his 2020 book "The Affordable City" and talk about what tools cities can use so that everything is less screwed up. Only the most controversial topics get discussed: vacancy studies, vacancy control/decontrol, the politics of rent control, home equity, generational inequities, and much much more

Ma'ayan Dembo, formerly of KZSU fame, is back on the airwaves to share her academic research, done in conjunction with ACT-LA, about alternatives to policing in transit. In Los Angeles as well as the Bay Area, what interventions are effective, what best works to actually make riders feel safe, and how does this integrate into the larger homelessness crisis?

We finally talk about McDonald's, and the big business of landowning with McDonald's expert Alan Joyce. How did the McDonald's Corporation leverage land speculation to grow faster than its competitors? What special relationships did the rise of McDonald's have in common with suburbanization? And should McDonald's just go all-in on becoming a REIT?

The Embarcadero Institute is a think tank based in Palo Alto, producing slick-looking white papers about how California doesn't need so much housing, actually. Stan Oklobdzija, research director for CA YIMBY, is on to pick apart the claims these papers make. We talk shop on headship rates, RHNA adjustments, derpy quadratic fits, and much more.

Senator Stanley Chang is here from Hawaii to talk about Aloha Homes, a proposal to import what works about Singapore-style public housing (cheap, dense condos built on public land). History about housing and land in Hawaii, including its public trust model.

Palo Alto has a large park that has a unique ban on non-residents. They're changing this prohibition... but not if Lydia Kou's referendum has anything to say about it. We have on former Palo Alto councilmember Cory Wolbach to talk about the history of this park, the legal challenge which Palo Alto settled but may resurrect, and how this fits into the particular ideology of many Palo Alto residents: “Residentialism”.

It's been a painful election in many ways (Prop 15 losing, Prop 22 winning), and local races were a mixed bag. Darrell Owens of East Bay for Everyone is one to give a post-mortem. For obvious reasons, we get to talking about municipal annexation, vacancy rate controversies, and value capture.

We check back with Shanti Singh of Tenants Together to find out about Gavin Newsom's eviction moratorium and its many flaws, talk about how this relates to the financialization of housing, and talk about action plans between here and February.

There's one wild race in the South Bay for the state senate, in which one candidate took dubious positions on housing, labor, taxes, and more... but still got the endorsement of Barack Obama. We talk about this race and more, with Prop 15 advocate Natasha Cougoule and transit advocate Monica Mallon; what's the deal with Prop 22, how do local and national political organizations align and depart ... and what's the role for young people in the changing political landscape?

It's election time! We have on Angie Evans and Jordan Grimes of Peninsula for Everyone to talk about each of the roughly 1,000 city council elections up and down the peninsula, plus local and statewide ballot measures... as well as discursions into the weird and woolly world of housing.

John Lashlee is running for Mountain View City Council on a Democratic Socialist Platform; we talk about what this means, in terms of creating a "snowballing" effect for municipal housing policy, police issues, and economic justice for residents. We also talk some theory, getting a marxist perspective to housing policy.

Darrell Owens of East Bay for Everyone is back, and answering the big questions: is disinvestment in minority neighborhoods the right approach for anti-gentrification (no); are there Black anti-tenant NIMBYs in SoCal who get confused for anti-gentrification advocates (yes); are duplexes scary (listen to find out). Finally, hear about Berkeley becoming the first US city to take the police out of traffic enforcement

Jordan Grimes has been live-tweeting Livable California calls over the last year, and comes on the show to share his insights into the ideology and political framework of California's NIMBY conspiracy. Learn more about Joel Kotkin, Jeffersonianism, what 'WIMBYs' are, and what the left should do about it. Also some brief updates on anti-eviction bills and whatever the hell was going on with Caltrain.

Chris Beiser is back to talk about his recent article on Administration Markets; we talk what this means for the bureaucracies we see all around us. Topics covered: structured competition in South Korea, Estonian e-residency, automation, railroad standards, Zume pizza, railroad standards, city planning, and the role for risk and debt during the COVID crisis.

We're in the midst of an eviction crisis in the danger of getting much, much worse. Shanti Singh of Tenants Together is on to talk about what is getting done, and what can be done to stop this. (We agree not to go at each other's throats about land-use for an entire show!) Talk about local-level, state-level, and federal-level interventions; talk about neoliberal vs forward-looking approaches to remedy tenant issues, and on the struggle to organize tenants and build power.

Max and I check in with San Francisco, in the aftermath of COVID, and discover it's still cursed. Talk about its aesthetic identity, the baffling lack of ideology of the progs, and more.

Laksh Bhasin (of the SF Berniecrats) is a co-author of the SF Community Housing Act, which looks to cross-subsidize public housing so that the city can operate units with less dependence on the vagaries of federal financing. We talk the nuts and bolts of the policy, interesting new ways it empowers its tenants, its political challenges, as well as the future of Article 34.

COVID has nuked tax receipts, and cities are hurting; what patterns do we see in their budget crises, and what can we do to avoid a new regime of austerity?

Monica Mallon is a SJSU student and transit advocate, active in the plans to improve regional buses and more before COVID, and now active in trying to best help our transit agencies as we deal with a transit-unfriendly crisis.