All posts by Zachary

Politics

Nick DeBoer: Our Rent Is Too Damn High

I was told by a friend that Councilor DeBoer had a website up on the Internet for his 2015 re-election campaign. After some searching, I came across Our Rent Is Too Damn High. Sadly, the web site has been suspended from Ghost.io, but luckily there was a cached version of it. This one is from March 11th, 2015.

One area of concern is Councilor DeBoer’s painting of the development and rent problem in West Lafayette: City Council along with a confederation of long-term residents have exercised their political interest to limit where, when, and how new development occurs.  The rise in rents can be traced to the regulations imposed by these interest groups intended on thrwarting [sic] density in the name of postarity [sic].

Councilor DeBoer, I can assure you that there is more at play here than the City Council (does the Mayor sit idly by?) and a confederation of long-term residents.  I look forward to working with you Councilor, on shedding light on these other forces and interest groups in our community.

A question that I have asked for a couple of years now: Why there isn’t more of a focus along the Southern side of West Lafayette in terms of densification?

Instead, we have 5 or 6-story buildings cramping 3-story buildings in the historic Village of Chauncey, a 6-story building in a residential neighborhood, and countless cases of sprawl.

If there was less emphasis on changing the northern corridor along Northwestern, which abuts New Chauncey, Northwestern Heights, etc. there would be more of a celebration by the confederation I am sure.

The Problem

The rent in West Lafayette is too damn high. Our rent is the highest in Indiana, the median one bedroom leases for $932 a month. That’s nearly $200 more than Indianapolis. That’s insane. That’s why I am running for re-election.These prices are a result of West Lafayette being a really desirable place to live. A lot of people want to live close to a major university, within walking distances of bars and restaurants, near their friends and peers, a short walk to class and work, in one of the safest cities in America. The result is we have way more people who want to live in West Lafayette than we have housing supply.When more people want to live somewhere than there are places to live, what should occur is a housing boom. A canopy of construction anchors appear and apartments are built in plentiful supply. But West Lafayette is geographically small. The best places to live are already developed, they are the homes and apartment we already live in, encompassing a really small geographic area directly sorrounding the University. We have no where to build but up.The problem is we can’t build up. Or to put it more bluntly, the City Council along with a confederation of long-term residents have exercised their political interest to limit where, when, and how new development occurs. The rise in rents can be traced to the regulations imposed by these interest groups intended on thrwarting density in the name of postarity.

These interest groups insist that no building be taller than a few stories, they demand that every structure meet an arbitary parking quota. Over time, this has caused an imbalance in the negotiating power between the customer and the rentier class. With insufficient stock, landlords are free to extort you into renewing a lease before you have the opportunity to unpack. So now we live under an omnipresent anxiety that the best places to live for our budget will soon be off the market. When too few ideal dwellings exist, it’s a sellers market. We deserve better as a community. We are owed a leveling of the playing field.

The Solution

West Lafayette’s physical dimensions are constrained by geographic obstacles and proximity to the University. Thanks to the miraculous technology of the elevator, it is perfectly possible for lots of people to live, learn, and work in a small geographical area via the mechanism of tall buildings. But when we make tall buildings illegal, space becomes scarcer. When we demand every unit be bundled with a parking spot, the rent gets higher. And when space is scarce, the tendency is that the richest people around will be the ones who are able to bid for it.There’s a great deal that the City Council can do to increase the affordability of rent in West Lafayette. However, any solution that doesn’t immediately address density will simply act as a band aid. We must relax the restrictions on the size of buildings that can be built, particularly near Chauncey Hill and greater South Campus. This is the most practical place to ease restrictions, would be most advantageous to lowering rents, while provoking fewer complaints from long term residents. After all, their stake in down town and South Campus development is at best tangential.Easing and eliminating parking quotas would further reduce the cost of rents across the board. These quotas on their own, even absent formal prohibitions on tall buildings, work as a de facto limit on density. Minimum parking requirements create logistical constraints on where and how that parking will be created. For denser buildings, this often requires some sort of parking garage, and there’s only so much a developer can accommodate before costs become exorbitant, costs almost always running several millions of dollars. What’s more, developers must recoup the cost of building the parking one way or another, these costs are passed on in the form of higher rent.The solution to all these problems if for local government to get out of the way. We must still set a minimum threshold for public safety, utilities, and uphold a general philosophy of what sort of architecture is appropriate for given area. But after that, just get out of the way. Let the capitalist and developers bet their money as they see fit. Let them be rewarded for being prudent and punished for failure. This is all very simple. If a developer thinks a 10 story building in South Campus makes logistical sense, and they have the capital to make it a reality, let them start hiring workers and break ground.

The market knows more people want to live here than we can currently fit. It’s why we are treated to flashy shows and detailed drawings about proposals for new buildings throughout the year. But these developers are always playing toward the sensibility of legislators who aren’t suffering under the economic pain of exorbitant rents. We must fix that, together. And we can.

The Councilor

I have called West Lafayette home since arriving in 2006. I graduated from Purdue in 2011 with degrees in political science and history, and now work in Marketing. I love this city, its people and its culture. Yet I am not content with the status quo.I have been fighting to reduce the cost of living and improve our community since I assumed office in August 2014. Serving the residents of District 1 is the privilege of a lifetime. One that comes with a responsibility to ensure the interests of student residents are balanced against entrenched landlords and the overbearing influence of neighborhood groups.I want us to have more bars, offices, restaurants, and affordable apartments. I want us to maintain a close and responsible relationship with our community. That includes maintaining a relationship with law enforcement that has made our community safe, while also preventing unnecessary non-violent arrests that can damage careers and opportunities for decades after graduation.

I want our city to look more like Ann Arbor and Madison. A community with job opportunities for graduates that extends further than joining the permanent proletariat serving class. I will continue the fight for increased urbanization, a more walkable city, a city with a safe but active nightlife, a city with interesting and fulfilling job opportunities, a city where a grocer and a pharmacy don’t demand you have a car. That’s my promise to the residents of District 1. A promise I intend to uphold until the day this privilege of a lifetime comes to an end.

Further Reading

[The Atlantic] The Miracle of Minneapolis: No other place mixes affordability, opportunity, and wealth so well. What’s its secret?If the American dream has not quite shattered as the Millennial generation has come of age, it has certainly scattered. Living affordably and trying to climb higher than your parents did were once considered complementary ambitions. Today, young Americans increasingly have to choose one or the other—they can either settle in affordable but stagnant metros or live in economically vibrant cities whose housing prices eat much of their paychecks unless they hit it big.These studies, and similar findings, tap into a broader worry. When a city grows rich, its wealth tends to outpace its housing supply, forcing prices higher and making vast swaths of the city unaffordable for middle-class families. And once the rich are ensconced, they typically resist the development of more housing, especially low-income housing, anywhere in their vicinity. In America’s 100 biggest metro areas, six in 10 homes are considered “within reach” of the middle class. But in the 20 richest cities, fewer than half are.

[Ebook] The Rent Is Too Damn High: What To Do About It, And Why It Matters More Than You Think

There are two housing markets in the United States: the owner-occupied market and the rental market. Since most people live in houses they own and since renters are disproportionately poor and young, media coverage tends to treat the market for owner-occupied housing as “the” housing market. But the rental market is still a big piece of the overall economy, and unlike the owner-occupied housing market, it’s primed for a boom…

The cause of this decline in household formation isn’t mysterious: It’s the joblessness, stupid. But now that the economy’s back to creating jobs, people are going to want to get places of their own.

That’s going to mean even more demand for rental apartments at a time when vacancy rates are at their lowest level since the dot-com era. During ’90s and aughts, we consistently built fewer buildings with five units or more than were normal in the ’70s and ’80s. The country has been on a decades-long drought of large-apartment-building construction. We’re now facing a perfect storm of demand, thanks to a growing population of empty nesters with busted 401(k)s looking to downsize and the huge backlog of twentysomethings who still need their first place.

How to relieve this shortage? One possible solution is the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s new initiative to try to bundle and resell foreclosed homes as rental properties. It’s a good idea, but it has two flaws. One is that it’s not a coincidence that we normally associate renting with larger structures rather than single-family homes. The logistics of landlording are much better in multi-unit buildings. The second is that the biggest gluts of foreclosed properties aren’t where the demand for living space is. New rental housing in Phoenix, Las Vegas, or Tampa doesn’t help relieve the razor-thin vacancy rates in New York, Portland, Minneapolis, or San Jose. Only new construction will help. That’s good news for owners of existing apartments and for investors in the firms that can build new ones. Unfortunately, intrusive anti-density regulations will make it difficult to build as much or as quickly as there’s market demand for. Mayors looking to boost their local economies should move to deregulate and unleash the pent-up demand.

But even under optimal public policy, there’s no getting around the fact that apartment construction takes time. For the short term, that means rents are only going to go higher—inflicting serious pain on the poor, on young people, and on those whose credit history locks them out of the mortgage market.

Participatory Culture, Politics

Letter to the Editor for Sunshine Week 2015: Attend a public meeting, it is your right

Journal and Courier Letters to the Editor, March 13th, 2015.

Here is the original letter I sent. Some of my punctuation was changed.

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Our Indiana Code 5-14-3-1 opens with the following: “A fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government is that government is the servant of the people and not their master. Accordingly, it is the public policy of the state that all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and employees.”

It is essential for the Public to exercise its rights in this regard to maintain a healthy, vibrant, and educated community.

The Freedom of Information Act was signed into law over 50 years ago, playing a critical role in making our government more open and transparent, empowering citizens to shine sunlight and improve our governance. A key ingredient in fostering the public’s trust is an open and accountable government.

We all have the right to know what our government is doing — both its successes and failures. Exercising our right to access information gives us power at the ballot box and beyond.

I recently joined the League of Women Voters of Greater Lafayette. The League has, for decades, acted as government watchdogs on Federal, State, and Local levels, believing strongly that transparency and accountability are in the interest of both citizens and government. In short, the League works to ensure that all voices are heard as decisions are being made about our community’s future.

March 15th-21st is National Sunshine Week. Call a public official. Ask questions. Make a public records request. Attend a public meeting. After all, it’s your right.

Education, Participatory Culture, Politics

Ask the Mayor – John Dennis – 2015-03-05 – Citizen Watchdogs

Another week and another Ask the Mayor is in the can.  So happy that this show exists.  This past week was the 7th installment of Mayor John Dennis of West Lafayette.

You can listen to the entire episode here  on WBAA’s web site or download the MP3.

This week, I wrote in with the following question:

In the latest issue of the City’s newsletter, West Lafayette Connection, there was a small blurb about updating our 2010 Strategic Plan.  In looking at our previous Strategic Plans, there used to be a committee, The West Lafayette Forum who met regularly, appointed by the Mayor and the Council, whose charge was to oversee the execution of the City’s Strategic Plan and report back success and failures to the City.

What Public, Citizen-based group currently oversees the achievement of the stated goals in our many Strategic Plans and how can we reconstitute the West Lafayette Forum?

I am honored to have had my question read during the show.  Even more to my delight was to hear the subsequent conversations about transparency, my involvement in the local political scene in Greater Lafayette, and Citizen input in the political process.

Mayor Dennis stated:

Well, the Strategic Plan is based on Citizen input.  Ummm.  You know, we don’t sit in a room with the doors closed and the lights on low, trying to craft our, I love the term Master Plan, our Master Plan for the future of the City.  It’s a Citizens driven plan.

[…]

I understand where he is coming from.  It is, you know, Zach is very passionate about having the Citizen Watchdog approach to how we provide services here in West Lafayette.  And we feel that we’re very transparent.  We feel that we do as much as we possibly can to make sure what we do is in the best interest of our Citizens and in our Community.  And like I said before, I think we are doing a pretty good job with that.

I, too, am extremely happy with the transparency level I and others enjoy with the City of West Lafayette (some other areas of Tippecanoe County a little less so, but that is another post).  Mayor Dennis has done a pretty good job in making information open and accessible to those who seek it.  Clerk-Treasurer Judy Rhodes does an amazing job at keeping the City Council Agenda up-to-date with the latest supplemental material, frequently updating throughout the cycle of pre-Council to Monday night’s official meeting and beyond.

Some other boards or committees are less proactive and open without being asked officially in the form of a Public Records Request.  I understand and am happy to oblige.

Stan Jastrzebski continued:

Let me ask at the risk of honking Zach off a little bit, let me ask the other side of it, which is, Citizens generally are not people who are given to any sort of special training that would allow them to be City Planners or to know how to use City resources.  Don’t you have to be somewhat careful how much input you take from people who have their own axe to grind, for lack of a better way to put it.

This particular question did honk me a little bit (nice work Stan!  I heard you chuckle Mr. Mayor ;-).

I quickly asked my computer (which was playing the show), “What about City Councilors?  Most, if not all,  lack special training regarding the issues they are voting on.”  Afterwards, I calmed down.

Or if you look at our Mayors in Lafayette and West Lafayette, both are former police officers.  I am sure people do not discredit their contributions of input regarding issues under the purview of the various departments in the City that they lack special training in.  They may have to be brought up to speed on the particular nuances of problem, decision, or plan, but their input is still valued.

The Mayor continued later:

A lot of folks ask, you know, “Why can’t you do this?” or “How come this doesn’t happen?” or “What’s wrong with this process or product?”  It gives us an opportunity to explain to them specifically how the process works and why some of those things really aren’t that practical for local government to try and accomplish.

Following this train of thought, since education, special training, or whatever you would like to call it, seems to be the missing component from constructive input from Citizenry, how can we most effectively bridge that gap?

My current contribution to this effort is The Exploratory Committee.  A civic minded Citizens group whose goal is to:

Bring a diverse group of people together to present a variety of engagement opportunities: both at the ballot box and beyond.

Education is a key component of our engagement process.  We’ll see what the future brings.

For now, I will continue doing what I have done for most of my life; building my own bridges and educating myself.  Not in isolation, but with the Community.  I am ever so thankful for our library systems in Tippecanoe County (TCPL, WLPL, & Purdue University).   See you in the stacks, online, or in the streets.

You can listen to the clip of the question and subsequent conversation:

 

One person's venture into life.