How Young Donald Learned To Weaponize His Racism

Over the weekend, a tweet from Ro Khanna alerted me to a favorite Trump shenanigan-- a roll back to an Obama housing desegregation rule. The very first time the name "Donald J. Trump" appeared in the New York Times, a thrill for the young publicity hound, was in connection to a government law suit in which he and his crooked, racist father were charged with violating a civil rights act in regard to housing. In short, they were refusing to rent apartments to blacks and hispanics even though the properties were built with government loans that prohibited racial discrimination. When the Trumps were able to worm their way out of it with countersuits and by making themselves unbearably annoying it set Trump on a path of action about how to get away with criminal behavior that is apparent today-- and in every phase of his miserable life.

A few months before he managed to steal the 2016 election, the New York Times reprised that episode: 'No Vacancies' For Blacks: How Donald Trump Got His Start, And Was First Accused Of Bias. Jonathan Mahler and Steve Eder reported on the Trumps' "practice of turning away potential black tenants [which] was painstakingly documented by activists and organizations that viewed equal housing as the next frontier in the civil rights struggle."

The Justice Department undertook its own investigation and, in 1973, sued Trump Management for discriminating against blacks. Both Fred Trump, the company’s chairman, and Donald Trump, its president, were named as defendants. It was front-page news, and for Donald, amounted to his debut in the public eye.

“Absolutely ridiculous,” he was quoted as saying of the government’s allegations.

Looking back, Mr. Trump’s response to the lawsuit can be seen as presaging his handling of subsequent challenges, in business and in politics. Rather than quietly trying to settle-- as another New York developer had done a couple of years earlier-- he turned the lawsuit into a protracted battle, complete with angry denials, character assassination, charges that the government was trying to force him to rent to “welfare recipients” and a $100 million countersuit accusing the Justice Department of defamation.

When it was over, Mr. Trump declared victory, emphasizing that the consent decree he ultimately signed did not include an admission of guilt.

But an investigation by the New York Times-- drawing on decades-old files from the New York City Commission on Human Rights, internal Justice Department records, court documents and interviews with tenants, civil rights activists and prosecutors-- uncovered a long history of racial bias at his family’s properties, in New York and beyond.

...[Fred Trump's] establishment as one of the city’s biggest developers was hardly free of controversy: The Senate Banking Committee subpoenaed him in 1954 during an investigation into profiteering off federal housing loans. Under oath, he acknowledged that he had wildly overstated the costs of a development to obtain a larger mortgage from the government.

In 1966, as the investigative journalist Wayne Barrett detailed in “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth,” a New York legislative committee accused Fred Trump of using state money earmarked for middle-income housing to build a shopping center instead. One lawmaker called Mr. Trump “greedy and grasping.”

By this point, the Trump organization’s business practices were beginning to come under scrutiny from civil rights groups that had received complaints from prospective African-American tenants.

People like Maxine Brown.

Mr. Leibowitz, the rental agent at the Wilshire, remembered Ms. Brown repeatedly inquiring about the apartment. “Finally, she realized what it was all about,” he said.

Ms. Brown’s first instinct was to let the matter go; she was happy enough at the Y.W.C.A. “I had a big room and two meals a day for five dollars a week,” she said in an interview.

But a friend, Mae Wiggins, who had also been denied an apartment at the Wilshire, told her that she ought to have her own place, with a private bathroom and a kitchen. She encouraged Ms. Brown to file a complaint with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, as she was doing.

“We knew there was prejudice in renting,” Ms. Wiggins recalled. “It was rampant in New York. It made me feel really bad, and I wanted to do something to right the wrong.”





Mr. Leibowitz was called to testify at the commission’s hearing on Ms. Brown’s case. Asked to estimate how many blacks lived in Mr. Trump’s various properties, he remembered replying: “To the best of my knowledge, none.”

After the hearing, Ms. Brown was offered an apartment in the Wilshire, and in the spring of 1964, she moved in. For 10 years, she said, she was the only African-American in the building.

Complaints about the Trump organization’s rental policies continued to mount: By 1967, state investigators found that out of some 3,700 apartments in Trump Village, seven were occupied by African-American families.

Like Ms. Brown, the few minorities who did live in Trump-owned buildings often had to force their way in.

...Unlike the public schools, the housing market could not be desegregated simply by court order. Even after passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited racial discrimination in housing, developments in white neighborhoods continued to rebuff blacks.

For years, it fell largely to local civil rights groups to highlight the problem by sending white “testers” into apartment complexes after blacks had been turned away.

“Everything was sort of whispers and innuendo and you wanted to try to bring it out into the open,” recalled Phyllis Kirschenbaum, who volunteered for Operation Open City, a housing rights advocacy organization. “I’d walk in with my freckles and red hair and Jewish name and get an apartment immediately.”

...Donald Trump said he had first heard about the lawsuit, which was filed in the fall of 1973, on his car radio.

The government had charged him, his father and their company, Trump Management Inc., with violating the Fair Housing Act.

Another major New York developer, the LeFrak Organization, had been hit with a similar suit a few years earlier. Its founder, Samuel LeFrak, had appeared at a news conference alongside the United States attorney, trumpeting a consent agreement to prohibit discrimination in his buildings by saying it would “make open housing in our cities a reality.” The LeFrak company even offered the equivalent of one month’s rent to help 50 black families move into predominantly white buildings.

Donald Trump took a different approach. He retained Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting counsel, Roy Cohn, to defend him. Mr. Trump soon called his own news conference-- to announce his countersuit against the government.

The government’s lawyers took as their starting point the years of research conducted by civil rights groups at Trump properties.

“We did our own investigation and enlarged the case,” said Elyse Goldweber, who as a young assistant United States attorney worked on the lawsuit, U.S.A. v. Trump.

A former Trump superintendent named Thomas Miranda testified that multiple Trump Management employees had instructed him to attach a separate piece of paper with a big letter “C” on it-- for “colored”-- to any application filed by a black apartment-seeker.

The Trumps went on the offensive, filing a contempt-of-court charge against one of the prosecutors, accusing her of turning the investigation into a “Gestapo-like interrogation.” The Trumps derided the lawsuit as a pressure tactic to get them to sign a consent decree like the one agreed to by Mr. LeFrak.

The judge dismissed both the countersuit and the contempt-of-court charge. After nearly two years of legal wrangling, the Trumps gave up and signed a consent decree.

As is customary, it did not include an admission of guilt. But it did include pages of stipulations intended to ensure the desegregation of Trump properties.

Equal housing activists celebrated the agreement as more robust than the one signed by Mr. LeFrak. It required that Trump Management provide the New York Urban League with a weekly list of all its vacancies.

This did not stop Mr. Trump from declaring victory. “In the end the government couldn’t prove its case, and we ended up making a minor settlement without admitting any guilt,” he wrote in The Art of the Deal.

Only this was not quite the end.

A few years later, the government accused the Trumps of violating the consent decree. “We believe that an underlying pattern of discrimination continues to exist in the Trump Management organization,” a Justice Department lawyer wrote to Mr. Cohn in 1978.

Once again, the government marshaled numerous examples of blacks being denied Trump apartments. But this time, it also identified a pattern of racial steering.

While more black families were now renting in Trump-owned buildings, the government said, many had been confined to a small number of complexes. And tenants in some of these buildings had complained about the conditions, from falling plaster to rusty light fixtures to bloodstained floors.

The Trumps effectively wore the government down. The original consent decree expired before the Justice Department had accumulated enough evidence to press its new case.

This past October, ACLU staffers Linda Morris and Alejandro Ortiz, warned that Trump was about to slam the door on fair housing: Trump Administration's new rule would dismantle critical housing protections for the most vulnerable and marginalized communities. It's as though Trump was looking for revenge against a government that called him and his family out on their racism. "Fifty years after the enactment of the Fair Housing Act (FHA), housing discrimination remains a national disgrace in the United States. Across the country, a growing tide of housing providers, perhaps emboldened by Trump’s anti-“other” rhetoric, discriminate against the very communities the FHA was designed to protect. In 2017 alone, there were nearly 29,000 reported complaints of housing discrimination across the country. Despite growing diversity in population, residential segregation persists at alarming rates hurting local schools, property values, and much more. Just this year, Black homeownership rates dropped to a record low of 40.6% which is the lowest level recorded by the Census Bureau since 1950. Despite this ongoing crisis, the Trump Administration proposed a new rule that will dismantle critical housing protections for the most vulnerable and marginalized communities.

In one of this administration’s most outrageous attacks on civil rights yet, the proposed rule will make a mockery of one of the FHA’s most critical enforcement tools: the Disparate Impact Rule. The Rule allows potential victims of housing discrimination to challenge unjustified policies or practices that disproportionately harm them. Courts have recognized disparate impact liability under the FHA for decades, culminating in the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision affirming disparate impact liability in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project.  There, the Court explained the significance of disparate impact liability: “[H]ousing restrictions that function unfairly to exclude minorities from certain neighborhoods without any sufficient justification . . . reside at the heartland of disparate-impact liability.” Under the Obama administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) acknowledged this principle by formally codifying the Disparate Impact Rule in 2013, and consistently affirming the existing Disparate Impact Rule through its fair housing enforcement and guidance as recently as 2016.

...Why does Trump want to undermine this rule? Because it works. Disparate impact liability is a tool like none other in the law with numerous examples of how it has helped dismantle the many systemic barriers to fair housing. The Disparate Impact Rule has been critical in challenging covert or disguised forms of housing discrimination that otherwise escape easy classification. Advocates have invoked the Disparate Impact Rule in challenging discriminatory zoning regulations, predatory mortgage lending practices that charge excessive rates to people of color or people with disabilities, overly restrictive occupancy requirements that shut out families with children, and policies that threaten housing for survivors of gender-based violence and women of color.

By early January, HUD was proposing a rule that would redefine the way jurisdictions are required to promote fair housing and scrap a key assessment tool used to map racial segregation under the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. The 2015 rule-- which the Obama administration introduced as a way to beef up enforcement of the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968-- required local governments to track patterns of poverty and segregation with a checklist of 92 questions in order to gain access to federal housing funds.

Lisa Rice, executive vice president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, said the proposal is "a step in the wrong direction. It would weaken fair housing enforcement and basically abdicate jurisdictions and public housing authorities from their fair housing responsibilities. It’s even weaker than the scheme that HUD had before the 2015 rule was implemented …That’s the system that the [Government Accountability Office] found to be completely inept and ineffective."

“The Obama administration’s fair housing rule made the strongest effort in decades to reverse harmful patterns of segregation and discriminatory practices in communities across the country,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Carson, the only black member of President Donald Trump's cabinet, “is scrapping years of extensive input and intensive work that went into the fair housing rule and essentially reverting to the agency’s previous flawed and failed system,” Yentel said.

Boston progressive congressional candidate, Brianna Wu told me that affordable housing is the single biggest issue for many voters in her district. "Of course Trump would reverse any protections to end segregation and discrimination of affordable housing," she said. "Any initiative from the Obama Administration that actually works and helps people is on Trump’s hit list. This is yet another example of Trump’s blatant racism and trying to line his pockets. Affordable housing and gentrification is a significant issue in Boston and other areas of my district. My opponent, Stephen Lynch, has been silent on the issue to appeal to his donors from the real estate industry. I know this has been said many times before, but it bears repeating-- elections have consequences. If we keep electing real estate 'moguls' and representatives who are owned by the real estate industry, change will never happen. We have a lot of work to do, and truly affordable housing for all will be a top priority for me when I get to Congress, both for my district and the nation."

Green New Deal Begins... With Public Housing

The Green New Deal resolution-- (H.Res.109) is not a bill that funds anything or specifically passes any legislation; it's a resolution calling for "the creation of a Green New Deal with the goals of..."

• achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions;
• establishing millions of high-wage jobs and ensuring economic security for all;
• investing in infrastructure and industry;
• securing clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all; and
• promoting justice and equality.

"The resolution calls for accomplishment of these goals through a 10-year national mobilization effort. The resolution also enumerates the goals and projects of the mobilization effort, including..."

• building smart power grids (i.e., power grids that enable customers to reduce their power use during peak demand periods);
• upgrading all existing buildings and constructing new buildings to achieve maximum energy and water efficiency;
• removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation and agricultural sectors;
• cleaning up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites;
• ensuring businesspersons are free from unfair competition; and
• providing higher education, high-quality health care, and affordable, safe, and adequate housing to all.

The resolution, proposed by AOC early last February now has 96 co-sponsors and is wending its way through Congress-- or at least sitting in the hostile Energy and Commerce Committee, the Science Committee, the Education and Labor Committee, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the hostile Agriculture Committee, the Natural Resources Committee, the hostile Foreign Affairs Committee, the Financial Services Committee, the Judiciary Committee, the hostile Ways and Means Committee and the Oversight Committee.

The first actual piece of legislation stemming from the resolution was introduced by AOC Tuesday (Nov. 19)-- H.R.5185, the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act. It was assigned to the House Financial Services Committee and there were 14 immediate co-sponsors:

• Barbara Lee (D-CA)
• Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
• Peter DeFazio (D-OR)
• Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
• Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
• Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)
• Ilhan Omar (D-MN)
• Adriano Espaillat (D-NY)
• Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)
• Steve Cohen (D-TN)
• Joyce Beatty (D-OH)
• Ayanna Pressley (D-MA)
• Andy Levin (D-MI)
• Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)

Long Island Congressman Tom Suozzi (D-NY), an original co-sponsor of the original AOC resolution, was the next member member to sign on as a co-sponsor to the housing legislation. Yesterday he told us that "Climate change is an existential threat and we need to start treating it like the emergency it is. Dramatic bold ideas that protect our environment, reduce our reliance of foreign relationships tied to fossil fuels, create jobs, improve our infrastructure and create safer, more livable public housing are all goals we can achieve. We must be bold!!"

The Sunrise Movement, which is working to organize support for the bill, explained that "We are in the midst of a climate emergency and an affordable housing crisis. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Sanders' Green New Deal for Public Housing Act presents a once in a generation opportunity to address both of these issues at once by weatherizing, electrifying and modernizing our public housing so that it may serve as a model of efficiency, sustainability and resiliency for the rest of the country. The Green New Deal is more than one bill. It's a governing agenda for the coming decade. We need a complete transformation of every aspect of our economy and society to tackle climate change and give young people a secure and prosperous future. This is the first in a series of bills that together will lay out the ways that the Green New Deal will transform and boost all sectors of our society. It's time for our government to invest in our infrastructure, our most vulnerable communities, and our future."

What's in the bill?

• Creating seven grant programs to improve and modernize public housing energy efficiency, ensuring that all associated structures, buildings, and tribal dwellings are brought to the highest standards of indoor health and safety, including the eradication of toxic mold and lead, and committing to adequate climate adaptation and disaster response and recovery programs through dedicated investment.
• Boosting federal workforce development programs to encourage residents to own and run their own businesses, have a direct-hand in the renovations, and allow for financial agency.

• Expanding resident councils, empowering residents to actively participate in the management of their own public housing community.

• Repealing the Faircloth Amendment to further prevent unjust barriers to the construction and access of new public housing.

Benefits: The federal government already owns and manages over 900,000 residential buildings and structures, most of which haven't been updated in decades. These buildings are both large emitters of carbon and house millions in unsafe and unhealthy conditions. This bill would:


• Invest $119 to $172 billion in green retrofits that include all needed capital repairs, vastly improved health, safety and comfort, and eliminate carbon emissions. This would lift the living conditions of nearly 2 million people, living in roughly 1 million units.
• Directly create from 22,297 to 35,755 career-track, high-paying jobs per year in skilled maintenance and construction for public housing residents. Thanks to the injection of billions of dollars into the 21st century green retrofit economy, the bill would create up to 240,723 jobs per year nationally across multiple sectors.
• Reduce annual carbon emissions by roughly 5.6 million metric tons annually compared to recent years, the equivalent of taking over 1.2 million cars off the road.

Kathy Ellis is running for a congressional seat in southeast Missouri where the congressman, Jason Smith, is a climate change denier who opposes all any any action to deal with the Climate Crisis. "The Green New Deal is an opportunity to invest in our rural areas, create new jobs, and protect our planet," said Ellis. "I fully support the Green New Deal Resolution, and specifically the Green New Deal for Public House Act. Our infrastructure-- including our public housing-- is crumbling and in many areas, residents suffer health consequences as a result of the conditions. This is an innovative way to address this issue, and address the rising need for green jobs and sustainable infrastructure. When elected, I would be proud to co-sponsor this bill."

Texas progressive Mike Siegel is also running for a seat held by a crackpot climate change denier, Republican Michael McCaul. Yesterday, Siegel told us that he loves that "the first specific bill to implement a Green New Deal focuses on housing. This action addresses perhaps the most important crisis affecting families right now. Too many Americans are experiencing homelessness, housing insecurity, skyrocketing rents, lack of access to quality public services, and other negative impacts from a brutal housing market that constantly displaces poor and working-class communities. In addition, it shows how the Green New Deal will be a massive benefit to families and workers, strengthening our safety and putting millions of Americans to work in well-paid and often-unionized positions. I applaud Rep. Ocasion-Cortez and Sen. Sanders for their leadership and look forward to supporting this and similar efforts after we replace McCaul in 2020."

Homelessness In L.A.-- Can We Learn From How Utah Solved Their Homeless Problem?

Local county government doesn't get a say in whether or not the U.S. gets Medicare-for-All. But I ask local candidates about it-- and other federal issues-- anyway, primarily to get an idea of how progressive they are likely to be when it comes to solving local problems. Darrell Park is running to be elected an L.A. county supervisor, in the last district held by a Republican. And it's a blue district.

He's a Berniecrat who's all the way in on Medicare-for-All and the other issues that are important to progressive voters-- things like improving L.A.'s environment by powering L.A. County with 100% renewable electricity by 2030, one of his top planks. He's an author who wrote the book, Better Than We Found It: Simple Solutions to Some of the World's Toughest Problems, much of it based on his own experience working at the Office of Management and Budget in DC and as an environmental entrepreneur here in L.A. "I believe elected officials have a responsibility to make our community better and to solve problems," he says. "When a public servant fails to meet this basic standard, it's time to elect a new leader.

That's why I am running." The current occupant of the seat, Republican Kathryn Barger, has a very different approach to solving L.A.'s problems: "America needs President Donald Trump's approach" and on Trump's inhuman treatment of immigrants Barger said, "I'm hoping tough love does it because obviously playing nice in the sandbox has done nothing."

I asked him about the issue that is foremost in the minds of many Angelenos-- homelessness. His "let's Fix It" approached is why I asked him to write a guest post. If you like what he had to say, please consider contributing to his campaign here.








Fixing Homelessness
by Darrell Park


L.A. County gets an F for its handling of homelessness. It is a humanitarian crisis worthy of a third world country-- not the richest county in America. More than a billion dollars of your taxes are spent every year on the problem-- but where does it go? And the problem gets worse every day.

I found amazing solutions to the problem in Utah, where they have reduced their homeless population by more than 95%-- with the radical idea of actually putting the homeless into housing. During my stay, I counted only five homeless folks during my time there. Had I done the same in L.A. County for the same period of time, I would have counted thousands of homeless neighbors.

Although the problem seems insurmountable, we can follow Utah's lead and get 200 of our homeless into permanent supportive housing every day for a year and reap the humanitarian and monetary benefits. You may not realize this, but every unhoused person costs you as a taxpayer $40,000-- while permanent supportive housing costs only $20,000. You don't have to be a math professor to realize that you will save more than $1 billion per year just by providing permanent supportive housing. And that doesn't even include the economic growth that occurs by a double-digit percentage of the homeless becoming taxpayers within 30 days. We often forget that 50% of our homeless are without housing because of job loss. The quicker we can get them into housing and back to work they enjoy, the better off they (and we) are.

The key to getting our homeless neighbors off the streets and into permanent supportive housing is to make sure that every single person gets into a permanent supportive housing situation that fits their particular set of needs. 50% of the homeless became unhoused due to job loss. For those folks, quickly helping them get into housing and finding a job close to where they live is imperative. Each person in this circumstance will be provided with a mentor and a support group that helps them with things like figuring out transportation to and from work, getting job training so they can advance and get promoted.

For those that are severely mentally, they will be treated with the kindness, dignity, and respect that upper middle class folks undergoing treatment for mental illness receive. Their housing will reflect the level of support which is appropriate for them on a person by person basis, with no one being pigeonholed.

For homeless families, housing will be provided that enables them to live in community with other families yet with enough privacy and individual support So they can thrive and not just survive. Parents will be given job training In areas such as solar, that pay extremely well and kids will be given extra support including tutoring, and whatever else is needed to help them in school.

This is not a pipe dream. We have all the tools, money, and experience to have ours every single homeless person in LA County. And when we do We will save $20,000 per homeless person, Or more than $1 billion per year.

Too often in L.A. County our government just throws up its hands and pretends that problems cannot to be solved. Utah is the proof that these problems are solvable and if they can do it, so can we-- and they are willing to help us get there. Please join me in committing to end homelessness. I will take only 50% of my salary if elected, until 99% of the homeless are housed in permanent supportive housing.

______________________________________



This is a video from a couple years ago but it will give you an idea of Park's thought process and way of looking at problem-solving.

Replacing A New Dem Chieftain With A Democratic Socialist Who Works For PEOPLE, Not Wall Street-- Meet Rebecca Parson

Derek Kilmer is the head of the Wall Street-owned and operated New Dems, part of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. But Kilmer's district-- WA-06, the northwest corner of the state Tacoma north through Bremerton to Port Angeles to Neah Bay and down to Copalis Beach and Aberdeen-- is nice and blue. Trump didn't even manage to score 40% there. The PVI is D+6 but ProgressivePunch has rated Kilmer an "F" for his lifetime crucial vote score (70.14%), the worst voting record of any Democrat from Washington.

This cycle, Kilmer has a serious Democratic primary opponent, Rebecca Parson. Rebecca is a Tacoma Area Disabilities Commissioner, tenants’ rights organizer, small business owner, and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Parson has served as a human rights observer in Mexico and as an AmeriCorps volunteer. She also worked for several years with the International Association of Genocide Scholar and as a substitute teacher. Her experiences have informed her strong commitment to human dignity, equal rights, and building a home for everyone-- not just the wealthiest few. She is the most recent Blue America-endorsed candidate and we hope you'll take a look at this video at the bottom of the page that she shot for us and at her guest post below and contribute to her campaign by clicking on the 2020 congressional thermometer on the right.


Time For A Moral Economy
-by Rebecca Parson

Tacoma was recently declared the "hottest" housing market in America.

The hottest market for who?

Not for the two people who have died since being evicted from the Tiki Apartments in Tacoma, so a developer could renovate and raise rents.

Not for the senior who spent three days and three nights sleeping in her wheelchair in a bus station because she had nowhere else to go.

Not for the people who died of fentanyl overdoses in the parking lot outside a shelter.

Not for the Kenyan immigrant who died in a field last winter, alone and freezing in the snow.

The market is "hot" for developers and the wealthy. It's deathly cold for the poor.

Yet the governmental response across my district, Washington's 6th Congressional District, is to criminalize poverty and homelessness, enacting "sit-stand-lie" bans, tent bans, and constant sweeps of homeless encampments. It's to give tax breaks to developers to build unaffordable housing. I's to form commissions to study the data, look for market-based solutions to the problem, and "bring all stakeholders to the table." (Interesting that they never seem to bring poor people to the table.)

Well, you know what? The market created the problem. The market will not solve it.

What we need is not more market-based, tiny, incremental "fixes" that take wealth from the public to line the pockets of developers and corporations.

What we need is a bold, comprehensive housing program that eradicates homelessness and guarantees housing as a human right. That's why in Congress I will fight for a Homes Guarantee that will:

• Enact national, universal rent control

• Build 12 million social housing units

• Reinvest in existing public housing

• Pay reparations for centuries of racist housing policies

• Protect renters and bank tenants

• End land/real estate speculation and de-commodify housing

• Further the Green New Deal through the construction of green homes

• Abolish private ownership of public housing

• Perform deep energy retrofits of all public housing units by 2030

• Create millions of new, living-wage, union jobs for green construction and retrofitting


Housing is for housing people, not creating profit. That's what all these policies are about. They're about telling people: you matter. You deserve a home.

They're about creating a home for all of us-- not just the wealthiest few. For that to happen, corporate rule of our housing market-- in my district and across the nation-- has to end. It's time for public money to be used for the public good.

It's time for a moral economy.

The Difference Between Bernie And Elizabeth And The Rest Of The Field-- Bernie And Elizabeth Aren't Full Of Crap

Beto has lost a lot of momentum since he decided to run for president instead of taking on John Cornyn for the Texas Senate seat. Even some guy named Andrew Yang is polling better than he is. When Beto joined the presidential race, his fresh face gave him a startling 8.5 in the polls. Since then, though, Domocrats have reconsidered and his average polling number is now 2.8, seventh. The most recent credible poll, by YouGov for The Economist last week, has him at a dismal 1.0.

Brilliant! And Beto has been trying to walk it back ever since

Sometimes Beto wants to get some traction with progressives so screams "fuck" or he stakes out a position to the left of everyone else and then argues for it passionately-- like he did with assault weapons at Thursday's debate, going way beyond what any other Democrat is calling for. "We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore," he asserted, arguing for mandatory confiscation, an ultra unpopular position at this point. "If the high-impact, high-velocity round, when it hits your body, shreds everything inside of your body, because it was designed to do that, so you would bleed to death on a battlefield. Not be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers... When we see that being used against children. And in Odessa, I met the mother of a 15-year-old girl who was shot by an AR-15. And that mother watched her bleed to death over the course of an hour, because so many other people were shot by an AR-15 in Odessa and Midland, there weren’t enough ambulances to get to them in time. Hell yes. We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against fellow Americans anymore."

Right now David Cicilline's assault weapons sales ban-- not confiscation-- bill, HR 1296 is being kept from being voted on by... not by Trump, not by MoscowMitch... by Pelosi. There are 211 co-sponsors, 210 Democrats and one Republican. Only 25 House Democrats, led by walking garbage dump and DCCC chair Cheri Bustos, have refused to co-sponsor the bill. Beto's self-serving grandstanding isn't helping; it's hurting the cause. Since the spate of NRA-GOP massacres this summer, some of the conservative Blue Dogs and New Dems-- Beto's compatriots when he was a New Dem member of Congress-- have reluctantly signed on as cosponsors to a bill they shunned when Cicilline introduced it last February 15. Of the 20 converts who co-sponsored since the deadly mass shootings began, one is a Republican (Peter King) and 14 are from Beto's New Dems Caucus.

New Dems-- like Beto-- the House's yellow-bellied cowards. Beto wasn't a progressive when he was in Congress, not on much of anything. Occasionally he sounded a little like one. After all, he represented a solid blue district that was clearly to the left of himself. Trump only scored a puny 27.2% there and the PVI is D+17. Beto did nothing in Congress-- nothing good, nothing bad... nothing. It was a waste of a good seat. And I don't mean to single out or pick on Beto (who I like). But most of these presidential would-be candidates don't do crap, or, worse, did actual bad while they had the chance.




Biden, of course, was worst of all-- a complete villain for his entire career, the definition of a DINO from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, a war-monger, a vicious racist and the very worst kind of corporate whore you'll ever find. Kamala's résumé is so thin as to be nearly non-existent and what there is of it is mostly puke-worthy, illustrating how assiduously she worked to assure wealthy liberal and moderate campaign fonors that just because her skin was a little darker than theirs it didn't mean she leaned left on anything. She was my attorney general and my senator and I never cast a vote for her in a primary or a general election. She may not be as bad as Biden but that's because he's had more time to do more evil.





Compare the rest of the schlubs who were on the stage Thursday night to Bernie or Elizabeth Warren. What Bernie and Elizabeth talk about in their platforms and on the debate stage is what they've spent their entire political careers working on. That's what makes them different from Beto and Biden and Kamala who are just trying to curry favor with voters as though there were no yesterdays. While Biden and Kamala were locking African-Americans away in prisons and Beto was eating lunch with the New Dems-- it's what he told me he did with them-- Bernie spent his life pushing exactly what he talks about with the voters today: Medicare-for-All (aka, original Medicare before conservatives whittled it down, between 1905 and 1965, to what it is today), human rights, peace, environmental justice, workers rights, women's rights... 

Take his newest announced policy position: a national housing policy. Bernie started working on that-- successfully-- in the 1980s when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont (and when Beto was a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow-- a computer hacking collective that stole long-distance phone service-- and listening to Hawkwind and writing poetry based on their songs). Not even a dedicated Bernie-hater like NY Times slime ball and twisted Wall Street shill Sydney Ember could make Bernie's plan to end homelessness and nationally limit rent increases sound bad. And even the hateful, vile Ember admitted that Bernie "has long advocated for affordable housing, even during his days as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in the 1980s." Here he was in 2000 on the floor of the House talking about the issue he's bringing to the fore of the presidential campaign today. That's who Bernie is. He shines with integrity and authenticity, especially when you put him next to the sad-sack opportunists like Biden, Mayo Pete, Kamala, Beto...

Affordable Housing Is Becoming A Crisis In California-- Don't Expect GOP Hacks Like Tom Lackey To Be Part Of The Solution

Los Angeles doesn't have any Republicans in its congressional delegation any longer-- and there's only one left in the delegation it sends to the Assembly in Sacramento, Tom Lackey of Palmdale (AD-36). His name is an apt description. The Antelope Valley seat stretches from southern Kern County through the northeast corner of Los Angeles County and into northern San Bernardino County. There are 9% more registered Democrats than Republicans in the district, but that number is deceiving because there are more Independents than Republicans and they tend to lean right.

There are 3 relatively viable Democrats in the race, two conservatives, Steve Fox (a reactionary who lost to Tom Lackey the last 3 elections) and Johnathon Ervin (who hasn’t won an election despite trying 3 times for City Council and once for State Senate). As of today, Blue America is endorsing the progressive in the race, Eric Ohlsen. Eric enlisted in the Coast Guard right out of high school. After this service he enrolled in L.A. City College and ran up $30,000 in student debt. His wife and her family are from Palmdale and that's where they settled. Today he works as a producer and is an unabashed progressive which he believes gives him the best chance of winning over independent voters and beating Lackey. He's a booster of the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. He feels he can not just pinpoint the problems that his neighbors care about but that he has the solutions to deal with them.

One of the big ones in the Antelope Valley is an affordable housing crisis that is kicking in all over the region. I asked Eric to introduce himself by talking about that specifically. If you like what you read, please consider contributing to his campaign by clicking on the Blue America state legislative thermometer above. As you can see, he's the only Californian on the list.


California’s Housing Crisis
by Eric Ohlsen

Housing costs continue to increase faster than income levels. The financial strain pushes too many good citizens further and further toward the fringes. While there is no magic policy pill that will solve California’s affordable housing crisis, as a State, and a community, we desperately need to find solutions. That means changing the way we approach the problem as a whole.

First, let’s start at the state level with Proposition 13. Because of Prop 13, both commercial and residential properties are only reassessed for tax purposes when they are sold. So owners pay property taxes based on the value of the property when they acquired it, not at its current market value. The problem with this is that a municipality’s revenue does not reflect the rising costs of its operations, and must therefore cut costs any way possible in order to account for annually increasing shortfalls. And the easiest budgets to slash are social services and education. Prop 13 was a bill that was sold to the public in a way that sounded good at the time, but has ultimately had far too many unintended consequences. It has hamstrung local governments and deprived them of necessary civic revenue, forcing cuts to important social services including affordable housing initiatives.

Another unintended consequence of Prop 13 is on construction of new housing. The city still has the same costs associated with new construction, but not the same revenue. So now cities are forced to work around those costs by passing them onto the developers in the form of up-front fees that must be paid before construction. This additional burden of up-front costs drives up the initial investment and makes it more difficult for developers to build much needed housing throughout the state. This exacerbates the problem of housing shortages and rising home costs to everyone. Also, the front-loaded development fees that cities have become increasingly reliant on, favor large-scale housing developments and shopping malls.

There are currently efforts underway to treat commercial property different than residential property, which has become known as “split roll.” By enacting the split roll, nothing would change for residential properties, but businesses would have their properties reassessed to market values every three years or less and these commercial properties would still be taxed at their value plus 1 percent. These additional funds would help communities across the state pay for much a much needed upgrade in our educational system, fund social programs, affordable housing initiatives, and rebuild civic infrastructure. In short, it will give our communities the resources they need to thrive.

Rent control solutions are also an option, such as AB 1482, which recently passed the State Assembly, and caps rent increases at 7 percent plus inflation. But this legislation falls woefully short because it not only does not go far enough, but it also lacks any renter protections. What good is rent control if a landlord can evict a tenant without any just cause, only to raise the rent as much as they want with the tenant gone? We can and should do better than this, but it is at least one direction where we can find progress.

Next, let’s look at local solutions like Community Development Block Grants (CDBG). CDBGs are allocated to social service programs locally and can be used in very specific ways targeted to the individual needs of the community, for example, subsidized housing or maintaining the stock of affordable housing in the area. CDBGs can also be used to keep small business real estate more affordable, which creates jobs and retains locally owned businesses.

Another local solution to help address California’s housing shortage is to amend zoning ordinances to ease restrictions on second dwelling units. While from a State level these units do not require additional reviews or hearings to build, many local municipalities have restrictive city ordinances in place that create a barrier to secondary dwelling units on a property. These units are beneficial to a community because they increase the supply of affordable housing, increase the urban density, and help homeowners with financial stability. Zoning ordinances can also be amended to account for the development of “tiny house” communities which have been successfully used to help the chronically homeless, but also as an alternative housing solution in other areas.

Finally, and most urgently, let’s look at the housing crisis from the street level. Immediate action must be taken to give help to our most vulnerable neighbors. Those with the greatest housing needs can be helped through expanded programs for subsidized housing. These programs can be paid for in part by the proposed changes to Prop 13 and can help our neighbors now, before they face the devastating effects of homelessness. We can also work to make the system easier to navigate for those in need by continuing to improve the coordination of services through L.A. County’s “No Wrong Door” policy. This helps people to avoid getting swept up in bureaucracy and to find their way to the help they need.

These are all specific things that can be done to help ease the crisis of housing costs in California, but I think that the biggest change has to come with how we approach this problem as a whole. We need to seek out a comprehensive solution rather than treating the problem as an afterthought. This is a problem that impacts literally every Californian and solving it must be seen as a priority by legislators and not some secondary or tertiary problem. We must demand a bolder approach from our State Legislature.

A.L.O.H.A. Homes-- Guest Post By State Senator Stanley Chang (D-HI)

Stanley Chang is a progressive Democrat representing the 9th District in the Hawaii State Senate, which-- until he won his election, was the last Republican Senate district in Hawaii. Recently, he was named Chair of the Committee on Housing, which is tasked with finding solutions to Hawaii’s chronic housing shortage.

A recent poll from the University of Hawaii Public Policy Center lists housing as the number one issue for voters in the State of Hawaii. If you are from Hawaii, this wouldn’t surprise you. At least as long as I’ve been alive, the headlines and news coverage have lamented our island community’s lack of housing and the growing need for affordable units.

There are many reasons for the housing shortage. But they are not primarily technological, economic, or even legal. They are political. In the private sector, the mantra goes, “The customer is always right.” In government, the voter is always right. The political stalemate that exists today is because all of the existing proposals have gone against the interest of some important group of voters. I hear three main reasons why voters in Hawaii oppose new housing supply.

• “You’re blocking my view.”
• If the proposed project is near you and will potentially block your view, there is a high likelihood that you’ll never support it. Fortunately, even the most ambitious project would only block the views of a small fraction of the state.

• “No more growth.”
• Many Hawaii residents don’t want large amounts of new housing stock. In fact, they want the housing stock to go down, because they believe that Hawaii is already too crowded with too much traffic, too many tourists, and too many tall buildings. They believe Hawaii has already reached its “carrying capacity.” I wouldn’t be surprised if this were a majority of Hawaii voters, but I still think it’s a minority. When I ask them if they believe their children and grandchildren should be able to live here, they still say yes, and that implies acceptance of some level of population growth.

• “Wealthy investors from overseas.”
• The largest group-- and I believe a majority-- of Hawaii voters fear that any new homes will be snapped up by wealthy investors from overseas before local people are able to buy. Often, these investors will convert these units into vacation rentals, removing from the housing supply a unit that could otherwise house a local family. To address this concern, my housing plan is designed to ensure that newly built homes will be available only to local people.

Often in Hawaii, we look to mainland jurisdictions like California for ideas and precedents. The only problem is, places like Southern California and the Bay Area have even greater housing shortages than we do. Luckily, there are other places that have solved housing crises and today provide an abundance of affordable, high quality housing. By taking inspiration from successful existing models, we can craft a housing solution that will both 1) move the needle and 2) be politically realistic.

Two of the major success stories in affordable housing today are Vienna, Austria and Singapore. In Vienna, 62 percent of the population lives in public housing. In Singapore, 82 percent of the population lives in public housing. Interestingly, these two models are opposite in their approach. In Vienna, as in much of Europe and the United States, the public housing system is a high tax, high subsidy, rentership system. Singapore has a low tax, low-to-no subsidy, ownership model. Both are extremely successful and popular among their respective populations. A key element to the popularity of both systems is that they are available to a large majority of the population. In Hawaii, I believe Singapore’s unsubsidized, ownership for all model would be the most politically viable.

Let’s take a look at how it works in Singapore.

Central Provident Fund

It starts with the Central Provident Fund. Singapore requires all working citizens to save 37 percent of their pay (23 percent for housing, 8 percent for healthcare, 6 percent for retirement) into the Central Provident Fund (CPF). It’s a bit like our Medicare and Social Security, which are mandatory savings programs. The difference is, Medicare and Social Security go into a black hole and come back out of the black hole. In Singapore, the CPF is your money. You keep track of how much is in your own accounts, you have some flexibility in how to invest it, and you have flexibility in how to spend it.

Qualification

You’ve been working and saving into your CPF accounts. Once you pass certain milestones, you become eligible to buy public housing.

• Married and over 21 years old OR Single and over 35 years old
• Own no other real property
• Must be an owner-occupant
• Must be a Singapore Citizen or Permanent Resident

Housing Development Board

In the meantime, the Housing and Development Board (HDB), Singapore’s public housing agency, has been building a ton of new housing. A ton. During the 1980s, at its height, HDB built 322,000 apartment units in 10 years, or over 10,000 units per year. Currently, they build about 20,000 units a year, which is actually more supply than they have demand for. By contrast, Hawaii’s housing demand is about 5,000 units per year, and we only build about 2,000-3,000 units per year, so our shortage grows by 2,000 every year.

A 969 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom unit, new construction, in Singapore will run about US$180,000. On top of that, the down payment is only 5 percent, not 20 percent, so you move in with $9,000. Most Singaporeans already have that much saved in their CPF account, and for over 90 percent of Singaporeans, the monthly mortgage payment is less than the mandatory 23 percent CPF housing savings. For most people, there’s nothing “out of pocket” to buy a home. That is how Singapore has been able to achieve 90 percent home ownership. In contrast, the US home ownership rate is 63 percent, and in Hawaii, the lowest state, it is only 57 percent.

A.L.O.H.A. Homes

In the coming legislative session, I will propose a bill to create a new public housing system that adopts many of the best practices from the Singapore and Vienna. The system will be called ALOHA, an acronym standing for Affordable, Locally Owned Homes for All.

Under the ALOHA plan, a state agency will redevelop existing state lands near stations of the forthcoming Honolulu rail line with very high density housing. For example, McKinley High School can be redeveloped with 20 towers and 10,000 housing units. These homes will be distributed under the ALOHA system:

• Affordable
• These homes will be affordable with a target cost of $300,000 for a 3 bedroom unit. Existing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac programs allow a down payment of only 3 percent for those making 100 percent of the area median income (AMI) or less, so residents can move in with just $9,000. Under current HUD guidelines, such a unit would be affordable to those at the 50-60 percent of AMI, or about $64,000 for a family of four. While that’s still a lot of money, we’re now within reach of school teachers, bartenders, or bus drivers--the middle class.

• Locally
• These units will only be available for Hawaii residents who will be owner-occupants and own no other real property at the time they buy them. These three conditions alone should eliminate all of the overseas investors. It’s true that one can become a Hawaii resident the moment you step off the plane. But given the planning and permitting process, even if the bill were to pass tomorrow, and people signed up for the waitlist tomorrow, it would probably take at least 5 years for the first units to open to the first buyers. That’s a de facto durational residency requirement. If someone moves here and lives here at least five years and disposes all their real property, I’d say that person is now a part of our community.

• Owned
• ALOHA homes will be for sale, not for rent. Buyers will receive a 99 year lease on the unit, which means they will not have to worry about having to move before the end of their natural lives. Like any other property interest, the lease can be passed down to one’s heirs. Although the property will revert to the state after 99 years, buyers will still be able to build their net worth. The biggest source of wealth-building in home ownership is not the price appreciation of the property-- which increases in value more slowly than the stock market--but the freedom from paying an ever-increasing amount of rent. And after 30 years, no more rent will be due, which means that one can spend or save a much larger proportion of one’s paycheck.

• Homes
• ALOHA homes will be true homes, not just empty boxes in the sky, or tiny homes, or warehouses for people. They will be large enough to raise a family, with two or more bedrooms. They will have a number of amenities, such as swimming pools, playgrounds, state of the art vertical schools, tennis courts, community gardens, and music practice rooms. A luxury developer might provide one pool for every 200 units. ALOHA homes would have one pool for every 2,000 units, for example, which brings the cost way down per unit. But with so many units using each of these amenities, there will be much more social integration through communal interaction. In addition, by using design competitions instead of awarding the designs to the lowest bidder, there will be a much more direct incentive by the planners and architects to compete on the basis of providing the best amenities for the same cost.

• All
• Last but not least, these homes will be for ALL. Remember the qualifications: Hawaii resident, owner-occupant, owns no other real property. That’s it. There will be no other requirements, such as a first-time home buyer requirement, or an income caps. Now, some people say our current public housing system is too socialist. Actually, that’s exactly the wrong perspective. In the US, public housing comprises only a low single digit percentage of the overall housing stock. Whatever the definition of socialism may be, giving benefits to three percent of the population is not socialism, it’s the opposite of socialism. Socialism is for all. Look at the three biggest pieces of the federal budget: Medicare, Social Security, and defense. What do they have in common? They’re for everybody, no means testing, no income caps. Even Donald Trump is eligible for Medicare and Social Security, and of course everyone is protected by our armed forces. That’s why these programs are wildly popular, and even Donald Trump has pledged never to cut Medicare, Social Security, and defense. If health care, retirement, and defense should be available to all, why not the basic need of housing?

I am hopeful that we’ve devised a plan that helps all the stakeholders in housing issues: environmentalists, neighboring residents, real estate developers, realtors, construction unions, and most importantly, the grassroots voters of Hawaii. It’s a narrow political path to satisfy all these groups while at the same time moving the needle on the housing shortage, but the ALOHA proposal is the only plan currently being discussed to do both those things.

Actually, the problems of growth are good problems to have. Problems of decline are much, much worse. In 1992, Japan had about 2.1 million 18 year olds. Today, Japan has only about 1.1 million. Japan and other countries must deal with the reality that their civilizations could simply cease to exist over time. They are facing a huge shortage of people even to care for their elderly.

In America, we assume population growth, which is fairly unusual in the developed world. What most people don’t know is that Hawaii has lost population for not one, but two straight years now. Every single day, 37 more people move away than move here. I believe the primary reason is the high cost of housing. I refuse to stand by idly as Hawaii dwindles to the very rich and the people who serve them. But without a dramatic change to our housing policy, that’s the legacy we’ll leave to our future generations. I was not elected to do nothing, but to at least address the biggest problems in our society, and the ALOHA homes plan is one way to do just that.

Join me in my fight to solve the housing crisis in Hawaii. Contact me directly at senchang@capitol.hawaii.gov or 808-586-8420. If you’re interested in learning more, you can watch my full presentation on YouTube here:



To access the presentations and materials from our housing conference, “How to Achieve 65,000 Housing Units by 2025,” or to express interest in our upcoming Singapore-Hong Kong delegation May 21-30, 2019, scan the below QR code or visit https://bit.ly/2zS7HAn.

Bad Combination: Rising Housing Prices + Stagnant Wages

A little over a week ago, Taylor White penned an article for MarketWatch that alarmed me, This is why Americans are losing confidence in the housing market. Basically a combination of rising house prices, salary stagnation, generational trends and higher interest rates have hurt consumer confidence in the housing market. Today Ben Casselman narrowed in one one factor: rising prices outpacing wages.

With unemployment below 3% and construction everywhere, Denver is booming. "Yet," wrote Casselman, "Denver’s once-soaring housing market has run into turbulence. Sales and construction activity have slowed in recent months. Houses that would once have drawn a frenzy of offers are sitting on the market for days or weeks. Selling prices are rising more slowly, and asking prices are being slashed to attract buyers. Similar slowdowns have hit New York, Seattle and even San Francisco, cities that until recently ranked among the nation’s hottest housing markets. The specifics vary, but economists, real estate agents and home builders say the core issue is the same: Home buyers are reaching a breaking point after years of breakneck price increases that far exceeded income gains." The problem is clear: wages are not keeping pace with increased prices and would-be buyers are being pushed out of the market.

Nationwide, sales of previously owned homes fell 1.5 percent in August from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. Residential building permits were down 5.5 percent over the past year, according to the Department of Commerce. Many economists say the housing market may have turned into a drag on the gross domestic product.

...Introductory economics textbooks suggest that high prices should attract more supply or suppress demand-- or both. Inventories of unsold homes have risen in Denver and other markets in recent months, and the real estate site Zillow found that price cuts have become more common.

Over all, however, the housing market is not behaving as the textbooks say it should. Inventories remain low despite the recent increases, and new construction is slowing, not picking up.

Part of the problem, local real estate agents say, is that the furious pace of price growth has essentially gummed up the market, making homeowners reluctant to sell for fear of being unable to find a new home.

Rising interest rates are compounding the problem because would-be sellers do not want to give up their low interest rates, a phenomenon economists call the lock-in effect.

...Ultimately, the key to breaking the logjam is to build more homes. Downtown Denver is crawling with cranes, many of them erecting amenity-filled apartment complexes aimed at young professionals. A drive in almost any direction from downtown reveals freshly built subdivisions with names like Tallgrass, The Enclave and Green Gables Reserve.

Most of those new homes, however, will list for more than $400,000. And hardly any builders are selling properties for under $300,000 without government subsidies. Even many home builders worry they are pricing themselves out of the market.

“I see the biggest threat to our business as the affordability challenge, that we are building houses that people can’t afford,” said Gene Myers, chief executive of Thrive Home Builders.

The problem, Mr. Myers and other local builders say, is cost. The price of land, building permits and other fees can run close to $150,000 for a single-family lot-- before construction.

Some of the challenges are specific to Colorado. Quirks in state law, for example, make it easy for condominium buyers to collectively sue builders over construction defects, making developers reluctant to build condos.

But other issues are common to many cities. Building materials have become more expensive, in part because of tariffs on lumber and other products that President Trump imposed this year. Labor costs are rising, too, especially for skilled trade workers. Restrictive zoning makes it hard to build denser developments that make cheaper homes profitable for builders.

“They’re producing what they can produce,” said Sam Khater, chief economist for Freddie Mac, the government housing-finance company. “The problem is, it’s uneconomic for them to produce affordable.”

This big-city conundrum is spreading. People priced out of San Francisco moved to Seattle and Portland, driving up prices and displacing people who moved to Denver and Austin. Next on the list: Boise, Nashville and other cities offering some of the same attractions at lower prices.

Sure enough, the online real estate site Redfin this spring found that Denver had joined Seattle and San Francisco as cities with a “net outflow” of users-- that is, there were more people on the site looking to leave Denver than to move there.

“City after city is going to face this,” said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s chief executive. “At some point, the buyers step back and say, ‘Enough is enough.’”

More people are moving to Denver than leaving it, but migration has tapered off in recent years. J. J. Ament, chief executive of Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, said he had seen no sign that rising home prices were making the region less attractive. Last month, VF Corporation, an apparel maker that owns brands like The North Face and Vans, announced it would move its headquarters to Denver from North Carolina, partly because of the area’s reputation for outdoor activities. The state also offered $27 million in incentives.

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘crisis,’” Mr. Ament said. “The work force is still willing to move here.”

Plenty of people in Denver do use the word “crisis,” however. A January report from Shift Research Lab, a local research group, concluded that years of under-building have left the region with a shortfall of tens of thousands of housing units.

That shortfall could threaten Denver’s growth, said Phyllis Resnick, a Colorado State University economist and one of the report’s authors. The skilled workers moving to the area, who have been so important to attracting companies and jobs, want to be able to eat out at restaurants, drop off their dry cleaning and send their children to school, all of which require lower and middle income workers. If they cannot afford to live in the area, Ms. Resnick said, Denver will not retain its allure-- and the economy will not keep growing.

“My concern is, at some point it sort of breaks because we can’t house the folks that we need to fill out all the economic activity in the region,” she said. “I’m not convinced that in the near term it will correct itself just through market forces, unless that’s through people moving out.”

Unmentioned is that in some of the most desirable markets-- particularly New York, San Francisco/San Jose, Los Angeles/Orange County, Seattle, San Diego, the DC area... huge amounts of money from Asia and Russia have flooded into housing as a safe investment or a place to launder and park shady money. [Trump's entire business model was based on this.] Condos and houses in all these markets sit unoccupied while housing prices rise so high that American workers can't buy them. Back in June, the Wall Street Journal reported the western cities want to slow the flood of home buying by Chinese nationals-- but can't. The flood of capital "washing over cities" is distorting home prices and irritating locals who are squeezed out of the market.