In this episode of Built to Divide we dissect the collision of NIMBY politics, Proposition 13 in California, environmental law, rising construction costs, and cultural status signaling that defined housing in the 2010s.

Dimitrius Lynch takes listeners inside the community meeting rooms where projects die quietly, tracing how California’s tax revolt rewired local incentives, how CEQA evolved from environmental shield to procedural weapon, and why housing scarcity became fiscally rational—even when socially destructive.

This episode connects Thorstein Veblen’s leisure class theory to modern zoning fights, explains why new construction skews luxury, and reveals how amenities became financial risk mitigation tools, not indulgences.

From Hudson Yards and empty towers as safety-deposit boxes to YIMBY vs. NIMBY power shifts, this episode shows why the middle disappeared from the housing market—and why scarcity today is a policy choice, not a mystery.

Episode Extras - Photos, videos, sources and links to additional content found during research.

Episode Credits:

Production in collaboration with Gābl Media

Written & Executive Produced by Dimitrius Lynch

Audio Engineering and Sound Design by Jeff Alvarez

.

2

Grab a chair.

3

We're in a community meeting room.

4

The kind you've seen a hundred times in a hundred towns.

5

Burnt coffee, folding chairs, and the faint smell of dust and old wood that never quite

leaves municipal buildings.

6

People file in already braced for conflict.

7

At the front of the room, a map of the neighborhood hangs crooked on a board.

8

Crease, taped,

9

loved a little too long.

10

Next to it, architectural renderings in muted earth tones displaying 88 new apartment

units.

11

There is a pocket park and a modest courtyard that catches late afternoon sun.

12

Half the units are income restricted, a kind gesture that lets teachers live near their

schools and line cooks sleep near their stoves.

13

Then the microphone clicks on.

14

A man in a windbreaker steps up first.

15

He's cordial.

16

He compliments the architect, but expresses concern about neighborhood character.

17

A woman in a cardigan follows.

18

Safety, she says softly.

19

Parking, a little louder.

20

Someone reads traffic counts like scripture.

21

Another waves a thick binder.

22

Historical designation studies printed that morning from a website no one's heard of.

23

But the room fills with words that sound like planning, but land like protection.

24

Setbacks, shadow studies, emergency access, wrong project, wrong place.

25

No one says it directly, but they never have to.

26

The sentiment is clear, not in my backyard.

27

The phrase feels ancient, but it's younger than it sounds.

28

On November 6, 1980, a reporter named Emily Trabolevesi

29

filed a story for the Christian Science Monitor about hazardous waste sites.

30

Her headline crystallized a century of local resistance into those four words, not in my

backyard.

31

The acronym NIMBY had surfaced earlier that year in a Virginia paper, a nickname still on

a trial run.

32

Lavezze didn't invent the instinct.

33

She formalized the name that planners, journalists, and activists would rally around or

weaponize.

34

A few years later, the term grew barbs, wielded to suit self-interest like a Swiss army

knife.

35

Nicholas Ridley, Margaret Thatcher's environment secretary, used NIMBY as a public shaming

tool, mocking English villagers who blocked housing and incinerators.

36

British tabloids amplified the fight, spreading the tactic and term across the Atlantic.

37

Then Ridley did what power often does.

38

He opposed low income housing near his own Cotswold estate.

39

Just like that, Nimby meant two things at once, resistance and hypocrisy.

40

But the political economy that locked the pattern in place arrived in California in 1978.

41

Proposition 13, spearheaded by Howard Jarvis, capped property taxes.

42

The 75 year old businessman, lobbyist, and politician captured Californians

43

with the fiery language of political firebrands like Joseph McCarthy and Newt Gingrich

stirring up and directing frustrations and anger towards government.

44

Government is filled with moochers and loafers right up to their ears and they have a

great idea.

45

The object of a lot of them is to get the job and sit there until they get a pension.

46

And in the meantime, don't move in any direction.

47

And if you think that isn't so, just go over there this morning to city council's office

and you walk through 15 city councilman's office.

48

You'll see more people asleep and reading Playboy than you do in a hotel.

49

Jarvis, originally from Utah, purchased a home in California in the 1930s for $8,000 and

50

Prop 13 set out to limit property tax rates to 1 % of 1976 assessed values, restrict

annual increases to a maximum of 2%,

51

and required super majorities for future tax hikes.

52

Reassessment would only happen when property changed hands or new construction was

completed.

53

The measure swept the state and became not just untouchable, but politically radioactive

to challenge.

54

California homeowners cheered and retirees exhaled, and the country was watching closely.

55

This is going to be introduced pretty soon in Michigan, Oklahoma, New Hampshire,

Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania that I know about.

56

I might say that I I got calls from the BBC.

57

I might say that I got an invitation to go to Canada.

58

They want to start it there.

59

And, um, the thing is, it's just sweeping the country and it's beyond my capacity to

really, uh, comprehend it if you want to know the truth about it.

60

Jarvis was associated with the Los Angeles Apartment Owners Association.

61

During the Prop 13 campaign, a key argument to shore up the non-homeowner vote was that

lowering property tax rates would cause landlords to pass savings on to renters who were

62

upset at their rapidly rising rents driven by the high inflation of the 1970s.

63

As you might expect by now, the windfall went to the owners

64

and most renters did not see that savings.

65

This betrayal eventually helped fuel a push for rent control.

66

But for Prop 13, consider this.

67

It actually functioned like rent control itself, but for owners.

68

While critics of rent control argue that when prices are capped, supply shrinks, and

quality erodes, that same logic was not considered for property taxes.

69

So the longer you own your property,

70

the bigger your subsidy grew.

71

And for homeowners, selling, especially to downsize, stopped making sense.

72

Turnover slowed, supply tightened.

73

leapfrogged the ownership class onto governments, which meant back to the citizens.

74

When property taxes disconnect from value and inflation, governments are forced to source

revenue elsewhere.

75

Development and new housing fees rise first because they're politically easy.

76

They hit future residents and builders, not current voters.

77

New housing gets more expensive before a shovel hits the ground, reinforcing NIMBY

arguments that projects are financially infeasible.

78

Housing, especially housing that doesn't pay its way upfront, starts to look like a fiscal

liability.

79

Governments can also increase sales and consumption taxes

80

municipal service and user fees, fines, penalties and code enforcement, school and family

related fees, infrastructure and transportation charges, business fees and licensing, and

81

special assessments and district fees like Melloroo's here in California.

82

Existing homeowners now protected from rising tax bills realize that every new unit will

require services that they're capped

83

taxes won't easily fund.

84

So to avoid increases elsewhere, slogans like protect our schools, keep our streets safe

from traffic, and even save our green spaces pretty much just means no new neighbors.

85

Proposition 13 didn't invent nebbyism, it legalized it.

86

Four decades later, the playbook is refined.

87

With lawsuits as strategy and appeals as habit,

88

environmental rhetoric gets repurposed.

89

The alliances get strange, but the outcomes are expected.

90

And the money?

91

There's always lots of money involved.

92

In San Francisco, Proposition B wrote a wave of cash from wealthy donors to block mid-rise

development on the waterfront, framed as view protection.

93

It passed with nearly 59 % of the vote.

94

In Los Angeles, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation poured millions into Measure S.

95

an anti-growth initiative dressed as reform, then backed our neighborhood voices to claw

back up zoning statewide.

96

On the peninsula at Cypress Point in Moss Beach, an unlikely detractor of a 100 %

affordable housing project was a Sierra Club chapter, proof that location can prevent

97

desperately needed housing density and affordable units.

98

Elsewhere, cities brag about resisting state housing mandates

99

while quietly bleeding taxpayer dollars on lawsuits and fines.

100

Realtor boards, small property owners, and sometimes trade unions bankroll neighborhood

protection campaigns when new supply threatens leverage.

101

Now back in our meeting room, the ending is predictable.

102

The project gets tabled, downsized, or delayed.

103

The pocket park disappears.

104

The courtyard shrinks.

105

Units get cut.

106

Studios replace family-sized apartments.

107

And somewhere else, further out across a county line, a field becomes an hour-long commute

because this room said no.

108

To understand why this keeps happening, you have to step back more than a century.

109

Back to Thorstein Vibland.

110

At the turn of the 20th century, Beablin argued that economies weren't driven by rational

need or collective progress, but by social emulation, by people signaling status through

111

what they owned, what they avoided, and what they could afford not to do.

112

He called it conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure, the public display of waste

as proof of worth, expensive objects masquerading as taste, idleness,

113

masquerading as success, scarcity not utility as prestige.

114

Weiblin said something economists preferred not to hear.

115

People don't just want shelter, education or goods.

116

They want rank and institutions under influence evolved to protect it.

117

That insight lands squarely in the housing market a century later.

118

By the 2010s, cities weren't just places to live.

119

They were symbols to curate.

120

Neighborhoods became brands.

121

Views became assets.

122

Height limits, parking minimums, and historic character hardened into tools of exclusion.

123

Defended not as protectionism, but as preservation.

124

Nimbism wasn't accidental.

125

It was leisure class conservatism in modern form.

126

Freezing the built environment to preserve social position.

127

New construction skewed luxury, not because developers misunderstood need,

128

but because prestige sets the price ceiling.

129

Rooftop pools, coworking lounges, dog spas, these weren't indulgences, they were signals.

130

Tech office perks bled into housing because both competed for the same class identity.

131

Waste became marketable.

132

Amenity replaced affordability.

133

Global capital followed easily.

134

Homes became slots in a portfolio.

135

towers became safety deposit boxes in the sky.

136

Empty units weren't failures, they were stores of value.

137

The creative class arrived as cultural cover while long time residents were priced out and

pushed aside.

138

So from gilded age millionaires like John D.

139

Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vanderbilt to modern billionaires like Elon

Musk, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos,

140

Wealth concentrates because the entire social structure trains us to admire their image,

protect it, and futilely chase it, even when it hurts us.

141

Fieblen argued that the economy serves two functions, meet society's material needs while

generating profit for those who control production.

142

But socially, those functions split.

143

For most working people, you're told that respect comes from working hard and being

useful.

144

Having a job and doing it well is how you earn status.

145

But here's the road.

146

For the wealthy leisure class, what brings respect is not having to work and showing that

you have time and money to spare.

147

With that dichotomy on display, discontent is bound to brew below the surface.

148

But Veeblen noticed that even though luxury items are meant for the rich, people with less

money still try to copy them.

149

They buy expensive things or lifestyles not because they need them, but because they want

the leisure class's level of importance and respect.

150

A relationship of admiration, emulation, and blind hope quells frustrations enough to keep

up the charade.

151

But when paths to wealth and status are under pressure, how much can the system take?

152

Beeblin warned that when status governs institutions, progress stalls.

153

The instinct to build collides with the instinct to conserve rank.

154

And in housing, that collision defined an error.

155

I'm Demetrius Lynch, and this is Built to Divide.

156

We are seeing one of the greatest human migrations of all time.

157

As members of this creative economy, highly educated and highly skilled people move to no

more than a half dozen to a dozen mega regions in the United States and perhaps another 10

158

worldwide.

159

Our economic fortune, like it or not, is structured around about 25 mega regions

worldwide.

160

Well, if we think the American dream is embodied in a suburban home with a yard and a

white picket fence,

161

then I think we're making the American dream much more accessible.

162

Rent your American dream.

163

You can rent the American dream.

164

Last time we followed the migration from ownership to access.

165

We watched how subscription logic, born in technology, slipped into housing.

166

How the foreclosure crisis opened the door for bill to rent.

167

How capital fell in love with rent as a river instead of sales as a storm.

168

And how a culture tired of debt learned to call flexibility freedom, sometimes until the

bill came due.

169

If you haven't listened to that episode, I encourage you to go back

170

and listen to all of the episodes of this series in order.

171

As an architect, I've heard many reasons and excuses for rising housing costs from inside

the industry and from neighbors at the mic.

172

Some are honest, some are camouflage, but all of them add up.

173

Today we examine the 2010s where every facet of the housing industry is under pressure all

at once.

174

We'll trace the evolution of NIMBYism's favorite tool in California, Sequa, look at why

new construction skews luxury, how tech office perks leaked into apartment amenities, and

175

what those choices do to the block and the budget.

176

We'll talk gentrification and displacement, empty towers as safety deposit boxes in the

sky, Hudson Yards and the creative class,

177

and the way global capital treats homes as slots in a portfolio.

178

And we'll get into all of that after the break.

179

Episode 9 Under Pressure Once NIMBY entered the Lexicon, it did two things.

180

It gave reformers a clean word for localized obstruction, and it gave opponents a reason

to fortify.

181

A label can clarify a conflict, but it can also harden it.

182

And over time, the word began to do more hiding than revealing.

183

Because NIMBYism isn't just a temperament, it's a structure.

184

In California, that structure was set in concrete by Proposition 13, which rewired local

incentives to distrust new housing.

185

When property taxes can't rise with value and inflation, growth stops looking like

opportunity and starts looking like risk.

186

New residents means new services, schools, streets, sewers, without the revenue to pay for

them.

187

Preservation becomes fiscal prudence.

188

Resistance becomes rational.

189

But the movement found a powerful tool, moral cover.

190

That cover came from the environmental movement, one of the most consequential and

well-intentioned political awakenings in American history.

191

The 1960s and early 1970s marked an explosion of ecological consciousness.

192

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, then later the Clean Air Act, the Water Quality Act, and

the Whole Earth Catalog.

193

By January 1st, 1970,

194

President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requiring

federal agencies to study and disclose the environmental impacts of their actions through

195

formal environmental impact statements.

196

California followed nine months later.

197

On September 18th, 1970, then Governor Ronald Reagan signed the California Environmental

Quality Act, or CEQA, into law.

198

Like NEPA, it required environmental review.

199

However, CEQA made stopping projects easier.

200

Under NEPA, a project with serious environmental harm can still proceed as long as the

damage is disclosed.

201

CEQA gave courts, agencies, and ultimately private litigants the power to halt projects

altogether.

202

Transparency became leverage.

203

And that leverage was first tested in a case that began not with cynicism, but with

concern.

204

In 1971,

205

a developer proposed a large condominium and retail project in Mammoth Lakes.

206

Local residents worried about water, sewage, and the loss of open space.

207

They formed a group, Friends of Mammoth, and sued Mono County, arguing that the project

shouldn't move forward without a full environmental review.

208

In 1972, the California Supreme Court agreed.

209

In Friends of Mammoth v.

210

Board of Supervisors,

211

The court extended CEQA beyond public works to cover private development as well.

212

Any project requiring a government permit, which is to say nearly all of them, would now

require environmental review.

213

Limiting review to public projects, the court said, would quote, frustrate the

effectiveness of the act, end quote.

214

Environmental considerations had to shape all government decision-making.

215

The ruling included a caveat.

216

Only projects with significant environmental impacts should trigger the full weight of

CEQA.

217

But the court never defined significant.

218

Local governments fearing lawsuits did what bureaucracies always do under ambiguity.

219

They slowed everything down.

220

Permits stalled, reviews multiplied, banks watching timelines stretch from months into

years.

221

began to avoid financing projects that could be trapped in litigation purgatory.

222

Later that year, the court tried to narrow the interpretation, but the damage was already

done.

223

Sequa had become a procedural choke point, and NIMBYs learned to use it.

224

What began as a shield for ecosystems became a sword against density.

225

Sue for an air quality report, challenge the traffic study, or demand another shadow

analysis.

226

If you can stall for five years or more, the financing window closes.

227

Normally, if you sue a public agency, your odds are not good.

228

Think about suing the IRS.

229

How many of those lawsuits are you going to really win?

230

Not too many.

231

And that's by design.

232

We don't want people to sue the IRS.

233

We want people to pay their taxes.

234

So we make the requirements clear.

235

That's a rule of law.

236

You can't have a rule of law if you don't know what the law requires.

237

And what CEQA has always been, remember CEQA 1970?

238

Beatles were together, know, Nixon, Reagan.

239

It was like a different time.

240

We didn't have the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the

Coastal Act.

241

We didn't have modern environmental law.

242

It was only CEQA and the National Analog NEPA.

243

And in that world, judges and advocates on both sides, as well as agencies, had to invent

stuff.

244

And in that invention world, when this law was first emerging,

245

It was kind of case by case, right?

246

Is this enough?

247

Is this too much?

248

Maybe this should be different.

249

That ethic in litigation continues, which means, as a couple really noted experts on the

sequel preservationist side have noted, it is entirely unpredictable to predict, to kind

250

of think about what are the odds in court.

251

Because of that unpredictability, the threat of a sequel lawsuit has a lot of power.

252

This is clip from the state of gold podcast in an interview with Jennifer Hernandez, a

land use and environmental attorney at Holland and Knight.

253

A 2015 study by Holland and Knight found that only 13 % of sequel lawsuits were brought by

groups with any prior record of environmental advocacy have targeted publicly funded

254

projects with no private sector sponsor.

255

The most frequent targets weren't polluters.

256

but mass transit projects.

257

The very infrastructure that not only reduces per capita emissions and air pollution, but

makes density more feasible.

258

The study found that CEQA was often used to block the state's own environmental goals.

259

CEQA lawsuits have stalled infill housing in Sacramento, solar farms in San Diego, and

transit in San Francisco.

260

Often the mere threat of a lawsuit is enough to kill a project before it begins,

especially housing.

261

Environmental law didn't fail.

262

It was repurposed and money followed the opportunity.

263

Neighborhood groups sprouted overnight, complete with 501c3s and PACs.

264

Donor lists revealed the strange coalitions.

265

Landlords worried about competition.

266

Trade locals wary of non-union crews.

267

Boutique hoteliers who have

268

pose Airbnb and apartments alike, and tech millionaires insisting the schools will

collapse if a duplex appears next door.

269

But by the mid 2010s, a growing counter movement had a name of its own, YMB.

270

Yes, in my backyard.

271

Renters, young families, climate advocates, and workers priced out of the cities that they

power, organized around a simple claim, housing scarcity is a choice.

272

Yard signs now dueled in the same planter.

273

At City Council's, collided.

274

Protect our neighborhood versus homes for people, not just cars.

275

EMB strategies sharpened behind the Housing Accountability Act, a 1982 California state

law designed to promote infill development by speeding housing approvals.

276

Renters organized as a voting block.

277

shifted power from district-captured councils to citywide elections and pushed for

by-right approvals near transit and jobs.

278

The Housing Accountability Act was strengthened by subsequent amendments in 1990, 2017,

279

But while the NIMBY vs.

280

YIMBY signs fought for attention, something quieter and more decisive was happening inside

the cost stack.

281

If you've built anything since 2010, you've felt it.

282

Land prices and job-rich metros surged.

283

Lumber whipsawed, steel climbed, concrete, gypsum, copper.

284

None of them got cheaper.

285

After the financial crisis, the construction workforce shrank and never fully recovered.

286

Skilled trades retired, immigration policy tightened, and younger workers steered toward

four-year degrees, drifted away from the trades, driving up labor costs.

287

Inevitably,

288

Whenever costs arise, someone will blame immigration as if the very people who pour our

slabs and hang our doors set the price of plywood.

289

The reality, however, is boring.

290

Construction relies on immigrant labor, especially in the trades.

291

Tightening immigration reduces labor supply, which raises costs and slows delivery.

292

If you want more housing, you want more skilled trades.

293

Through apprenticeship pipelines, vocational education,

294

and immigration channels that respect and reward the people who actually swing hammers.

295

A labor shortage met material inflation and married into a zoning regime that asked for

two parking spaces where a bus should suffice.

296

At the same time, the population plateau in parts of the country hid a key fact.

297

Housing formation patterns matter more for housing demand than crude head counts.

298

Later marriages, more single adult households,

299

and aging in place all increase unit demand per capita.

300

Add in the investor shift to single-family rentals.

301

You really eat up the supply.

302

We're expanding.

303

mean, when you think about it, we have an incredible amount of demand for what we do.

304

So, Leslie, in any given week, we might have 200 300 homes available.

305

For renting.

306

For renting.

307

And we get about 10,000 leasing inquiries a week.

308

This is clip from 60 Minutes with host Leslie Stahl interviewing Gary Berman, CEO of

Tri-Con Residential, a Toronto-based company that rents single-family homes in the U.S.

309

So today we own about 30,000 single-family rental homes across the U.S., largely in the

Sunbelt, and we've got probably about 75,000 people living in our homes.

310

Millennials, debt-loaded and late to buy, crowd the rental market longer.

311

Well, if we think the American dream is embodied in a suburban home with a yard and a

white picket fence, then I think we're making the American dream much more accessible.

312

Rent your American dream.

313

can rent the American dream.

314

The result?

315

Demand for certain kinds of housing stays hot.

316

Near jobs, transit, schools, even as overall population growth cools.

317

All of this creates what developers call a pro forma squeeze.

318

Your hard costs.

319

materials and labor, and soft costs, fees, design, finance balloon while achievable rents

or sales prices can't rise fast enough across the whole market to keep pace.

320

In many jurisdictions, it only pencils, that is, generates a return that banks and equity

partners will fund at the top end.

321

Are there alternative design solutions?

322

Yes.

323

Smaller units.

324

modular and panelized construction, mass timber, reducing parking minimums from two spaces

per unit to one or zero, especially in air transit, pre-approved plan sets and

325

standardized details, missing metal forms, duplexes, fourplexes, courtyard housing that

slot into residential fabrics without the visual shock new towers can bring.

326

But for each of these, the zoning code, fire code,

327

or neighborhood opposition can turn one step forward into three steps sideways.

328

Behind council and community debates, CEQA analysis, rising costs, and shrinking supply,

every delay raises risk.

329

Every appeal adds carrying costs.

330

Every year of uncertainty narrows the pool of lenders willing to play.

331

The result is a funnel.

332

Only projects large enough to absorb friction survive.

333

And that's how choice disappeared.

334

Not because people didn't need housing, but because the system made building it expensive,

slow, and fragile.

335

By the time a project cleared the gauntlet, it had to be big, high rent, and overinsured

just to pencil out.

336

So when you see a rendering with a rooftop deck and a dog spa and a coworking lounge,

you're not just seeing an architect or developer gone wild.

337

You're seeing a margin defense.

338

That lounge rents the building for $175 more per month.

339

The pet spa attracts the tenant who renews consistently.

340

The extras signal what's called Class A asset, convincing lenders that risk is lower,

which cuts interest costs just enough to tip a red spreadsheet black.

341

Now, there's no federal statute that defines luxury.

342

In the industry, we use proxies.

343

High initial asking rents

344

amenity sets, and high-quality finishes.

345

By those measures, the post-2012 pipeline skewed unmistakably toward the top.

346

Analysis of large apartment buildings found that roughly 79 % of 2017 deliveries and 87 %

347

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies has tracked the same trend

348

Recently, multifamily completions concentrate in bigger, amenity-rich buildings at higher

asking rents.

349

Data shops like RealPage show record apartment deliveries from 2023 to 2025, with Class A

product performing closest to lender expectations.

350

Now let's dig further into why.

351

As we discussed, with steep land, material, labor, and development costs, you either build

bigger,

352

spread fixed costs where you don't build.

353

Bigger buildings almost always mean structured parking, excavation, lots of expensive

concrete and formwork, elevators, more code complexity, pushing you further into Class A

354

amenities and finishes just to justify and cover the costs of the box.

355

Zoning restrictions and land scarcity in job-rich areas also push developers to maximize

revenue per legal square foot.

356

So if you can only build five stories where demand would support 10, you push each unit's

rent to the ceiling.

357

After the financial crisis, lenders and equity partners favored institutional quality

projects.

358

They'd rather back 220 upscale units downtown than 28 modest ones scattered across three

parcels.

359

Vacancy rates, whether through actual occupancy or investment, are usually lower at the

top in tight markets.

360

which matters to debt underwriters.

361

Delayed home buying and income growth for the upper class meant a ready audience for

luxury rentals.

362

In tech hubs especially, class A occupancy rebounded quickly after shocks.

363

And while we provide some housing support through low income housing tax credits and

project based vouchers, we don't do much for the middle.

364

So the private market fills the top

365

The public sector barely helps the bottom, the middle gets squeezed like toothpaste.

366

Cultural changes also contributed to the shift towards luxury.

367

In the early 2000s, Richard Florida popularized the idea that the creative class,

knowledge workers, artists, techies, drove urban revival.

368

When you divide the economy into three pieces, three sectors, manufacturing, service, and

creative, the creative sector of the economy accounts for more than 50 % of all wages.

369

and salaries paid, we will generate, as we lose another half million jobs in

manufacturing, we will generate over the next decade another 10 million jobs in the

370

creative economy.

371

And those jobs are not distributing themselves evenly.

372

They're concentrating, as I will tell you in a minute.

373

They are concentrating in particular places.

374

As I wrote recently for the Atlantic Monthly, we are seeing one of the greatest human

migrations of all time.

375

as members of this creative economy, highly educated and highly skilled people, move to no

more than a half dozen to a dozen mega regions in the United States and perhaps another 10

376

worldwide.

377

Our economic fortune, like it or not, is structured around about 25 mega regions

worldwide.

378

Now people don't pay enough attention to the influence that the creative class,

specifically the tech industry, had on building design.

379

By the mid 2010s,

380

Apartments weren't just places to sleep.

381

They were brand experiences.

382

Coworking nooks, podcast rooms, barista bars, dog spas, cold storage package lockers,

wellness suites, and maker spaces.

383

If it sounds like an office perkless circa 2014, that's because the cultures converged.

384

Google kitchens and WeWork lounges reset expectations for what space should feel like.

385

casual, social, service-rich.

386

Cities listened.

387

Bike lanes, galleries, coffee shops, live-work loss, and zoning overlays that made

makerspaces out of warehouses.

388

Multifamily developers mirrored that vibe to rent to the same talent pool.

389

Design language followed.

390

The hotelification of real estate.

391

Lobbies began to look like boutique hotels.

392

Leasing offices began to behave like concierge desks.

393

programming.

394

Yoga nights, food trucks, plant swaps sold community even as leases remained 12 months

long.

395

Some of this is harmless, turning dead space into useful rooms.

396

Some of it is expensive, which pushes rents.

397

All of it is signal.

398

Amenity checklists say to lenders and tenants alike, this is the top of the stack and in a

capital regime that prices risk

399

to the hundredth of a percent, those signals open financing windows that otherwise slam

shut.

400

But add up the incentive to build at the top with the local appetite to block anything in

the middle, and you get the barbell economy we live inside.

401

Subsidized units where we fight like hell for a handful of lottery slots, and glossy

buildings where we either stretch beyond prudence or walk away.

402

In between, long time tenants,

403

face renovations they can't afford and rents they can't match.

404

The creative class idea had truth.

405

Talent clusters matter.

406

But the policy version too often sprayed amenities and hoped affordable housing would

magically follow.

407

It didn't.

408

In some places, the creative class thesis helped rationalize gentrification without a

housing plan, deepening exclusion even as it sold vibrancy.

409

But gentrification is a progression, not a singular villain to strike.

410

It arrives in stages.

411

First, a coffee shop, a yoga studio, and a promise that it's all fine.

412

Then a condo conversion.

413

Then hire assessments.

414

Then a landlord who decides to test vacancy decontrol.

415

Then someone's aunt who has to move back in with cousins an hour away.

416

The displacement is both direct.

417

Evictions, buyouts, rent hikes.

418

and indirect.

419

Neighborhoods become unaffordable to the next wave of the same working class that made

them vibrant.

420

In New York, sheer spectacle makes the contradictions easy to see.

421

Towers along 57th Street as safety deposit boxes in the sky.

422

Investment properties with their blinds forever drawn while working class tenants in

walk-ups see rents jump as the neighborhood brand rises.

423

In San Francisco, luxury micro units sprout near offices, even as teachers carpool from

Vallejo.

424

In Austin, cranes bloom alongside tents.

425

If you want a monument to the 2010s development psyche, take a stroll through Hudson

Yards, a large scale redevelopment program in Manhattan.

426

Steven Ross, chair of related companies, shepherded the redevelopment of rail yards into a

gleaming plateau of glass and steel, a city within a city with its own zip code swagger.

427

was a lot of talk at that point about the High Line, but we knew that that also was going

forward.

428

Hudson River Park.

429

We didn't know for sure, but we thought that there would be a renovation of the Javits.

430

So you could see the things that were evolving around that site and knowing that in

Chelsea, even at that point, that was a very strong market.

431

That's where the young people wanted to be.

432

Hudson Yards is impressive.

433

Engineering on a massive platform over tracks.

434

Stores that sell nothing you need.

435

restaurants that plate art, an observation deck for Instagram, and office towers for firms

that live on spreadsheets.

436

It's also a parable.

437

The financing stack leveraged public subsidies and tax breaks designed to spur growth.

438

The product largely targets the global elite, luxury condos and high-end retail, while the

surrounding boroughs grapple with repair backlogs and public housing.

439

and schools that can't hire counselors.

440

It's not that Ross did anything illegal.

441

It's that the system asked him to do exactly this.

442

New York wanted a private solution to a public problem, vacant rail yards.

443

So it wrote the terms that would make the solution happen.

444

The outcome reflects the inputs.

445

Capital went where the return was.

446

And Hudson Yards is not unique, but how do we harness private horsepower for public

purpose without giving away control?

447

As we've established beneath the politics, labor, and supply pressures of housing,

financialization has transformed the purpose of housing altogether.

448

Homes are no longer just shelter.

449

They're assets, both for families trying to build stability and increasingly for investors

trying to build returns.

450

In the 2010s, global capital hunted yield in safe cities.

451

Buying a condo in London, Vancouver, New York, or Miami became a way to park money

452

in a rule of law regime.

453

Some owners rented them out, but many didn't.

454

An empty homes phenomenon took hold in high amenity neighborhoods.

455

Lots of lights off, lots of land values up.

456

Some local governments experimented with vacancy taxes while developers pitched global

lifestyle brands as if a city were a resort.

457

The portfolio city emerges.

458

Towers owned by funds that were

459

to pension boards continents away, cul-de-sacs owned by LLCs, i-buyers, companies that

purchase residential properties directly from private sellers then flip suburban homes

460

with algorithms, and Airbnb turning neighborhoods into hotels on long weekends.

461

When a place becomes a bundle of instruments, the decisions that shape it drift away from

the people who actually live there.

462

Is building luxury inherently bad and useless for affordability?

463

Not entirely.

464

New units are new units.

465

And over time, as buildings age and compete with newer stock, they do eventually filter

down the price spectrum.

466

Multiple analysis, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and Pew find that adding

supply even at the high end tempers rent growth in older, more affordable stock nearby.

467

But it doesn't meet demand fast enough.

468

While every unit is necessary, just luxury is not enough.

469

To address the issue, we need to lower production costs, open more sites, and add middle

income tools so we don't keep producing only at the top.

470

That means letting fourplexes bloom in places zoned for only single family.

471

It means cutting parking minimums where people can realistically live without a second car

472

and green lighting mass transit projects so they can.

473

It means permitting by right so every project doesn't have to survive 12 gladiator rounds

of discretionary review.

474

Housing security policy is also necessary where people will otherwise get pushed out

before supply has time to catch up.

475

That means that residents need a right to counsel and stronger just cause eviction rules.

476

Rent stabilization is needed where legal.

477

and building programs need to target what the market won't.

478

Deep affordability in the missing middle.

479

This isn't an ideological wish list.

480

It's a practical one.

481

If we want a country where teachers, truck drivers, line cooks, nurses, grad students, and

retired bus operators can live in the places they serve, this is the work in front of us.

482

Because beneath every policy fight sits the same engine.

483

Wealth built through property

484

and the weight of housing borne by those locked out of ownership.

485

Both ends of that system reinforce the same divide.

486

What we've seen are doors slammed shut on black families by redlining, contract sales and

discrimination that still shows up in today's numbers.

487

Even life-saving solutions like Housing First get distorted as public dollars meant to

solve homelessness get misdirected.

488

Media trains neighbors to despise one another.

489

algorithms quietly coordinate rent hikes.

490

Software replaces collusion with code.

491

Meanwhile, design innovations, micro housing, modular construction, passive house, net

zero, even 3D printed homes are solutions that miss the actual problem.

492

And powerful institutions like the 1.5 million member National Association of Realtors

continue to shape the rules.

493

resisting upzoning today while apologizing for segregation yesterday.

494

So here's the edge we're standing on.

495

If property remains America's primary wealth machine, what happens when half the country

is permanently priced and programmed out of ownership?

496

When the latter still exists, but rungs are missing by design?

497

That's where we're headed.

498

Next time on Built to Divide.

499

The deconstruction of administrative state, which is a huge element.

500

Remember, you've got two forms of populism.

501

You have right-wing populism, you have left-wing populism.

502

Right-wing populism is about deconstruction of administrative state.

503

Bernie Sanders and AOC is about more inclusion of the state.

504

We're both populist, but they want more state intervention.

505

We want less.

506

In fact, we want to start to take apart certain parts of the apparatus.

507

Thanks for listening.

508

Built to Divide is presented by Lines, my architecture and creative studio.

509

This podcast is produced in collaboration with Gable Media.

510

If you enjoyed the show, please tell a friend and rate and review it on Apple podcasts and

Spotify.

511

It really helps others find it.

512

And if you're looking for similar content, Built to Divide is part of the Gable Media

network where you can find even more like this.

513

Visit gablemedia.com.

514

That's G-A-B-L media.com.

515

And before I go, if you want to see additional photos, video clips, and content that went

into this episode, you can visit me at lines.studio slash podcasts.

516

Talk soon.

517

this is the most brilliant of the rooms that we've seen.

518

I can see why they call it the Red Room.

519

What is the fabric?

520

It's silk with a scroll border of gold.

521

It's copied from an American Empire document.

522

Everything in this room is Empire because the style of the room is dictated by the

mantelpiece, which is Empire.

523

This is one of the only two remaining mantels in the White House.

524

1817 after the fire.

525

All the ones before were burned and all the others in the house are either 1902 or 48.

526

You see it has the same Egyptian columns as the pier table we saw in the hall.

527

That was because of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign and his desire to think of himself as the

Roman Emperor had very heavy things.

528

That's American Empire in furniture not in politics.

529

That's right.

530

Then this room has a beautiful carpet.