The ROAD Act, is being circle jerked as a triumph of bipartisanship. It is, as they say an example of what we all want. Media and think tanks have amplified it as a “rejection of gridlock” and proof that the administrative state can still function, even with a fas/cist in the White House. But bipartisanship neoliberalism does not walk hand in hand with justice, no, no, no, THIS Act is a reformist skip in the predatory park. For all the op-eds of its bipartisan wonder, “See America still works!! See!!” The ROAD Act is a deeply flawed and delusional neoliberal document.
It replaces human dignity with market access and supply-side deregulation speed.
The ROAD is entrenching the very exclusions it purports to be fixing.
Most Americans don’t have inherited wealth or someone who can help with a down payment on the American Dream: the Single-Family Home. So the dream has become a means-tested obstacle course of credit scores and down-payment lotteries. This ACT changes NONE Of this, in fact it supports it with classes AND after these classes the endpoint for many won’t even be a secure home, but a manufactured house on leased land.
A manufactured ADU on someone else’s land now counts as a Single-Family Home in this ACT, which can now be subsidized, but NOT FOR YOU, not for the Working Class.
And nothing in here about the practice of the reverse mortgages that snatch so many homes from people after they are past working age. There is no rest for the working class under capitalism.
That is utter madness.
The dream is a nightmare of predatory contracts and regulations that offer “ownership” without control, like sharecropping or Uber driving. Is an Uber Driver a small business person? Is a person who bought a manufactured home on someone’s else’s land a homeowner? Who knows, if we just do enough thought exercises, we can make it so!
We are now asking people to accept an even lower rung on a ladder that is missing many of the middle rungs.
The ROAD is a descent to hell, but this time with more tech. It resuscitates the supply-side fantasy, that more roads and more greenfield development will somehow (god willing) produce affordability. It’s Lucy and the football for the working class and mother earth.
It is neoliberalism’s last séance. It thinks a dead orthodoxy can be summoned just one more time with streamlined building regulations and 3D printing.
It won’t.
This Act mistakes (if I were to be generous, I think they totally know) the reasons for this crisis. No financial literacy class will solve the problem of not making enough money, because the US gutted the unions and their ability to organize.
This crisis is NOT about financial illiteracy nor is it about the free market being henpecked. Public policy, land-use rules, a coddling of the finance system, and decades of state via private interests (see Citizens United) action built this housing crisis by concentrating wealth (for the working class I use term wealth very loosely) through property ownership.
Another glaring issue with this legislation is that it acts like the climate crisis is a manageable slight inconvenience, this is wrong, very wrong.
The climate crisis is a hard constraint and the fires, floods, and the insurance agents are daily reminding us about these hard constraints.
A just ACT for the housing and related climate crises starts with walking away from the lies told by the manifest destiny of sprawl and grasping this truth: human thriving and our planet’s healing begin on shared prosperity and shared space. We don’t need bigger lots and longer commutes (or faster commuter trains, to and from exurbs). There are many attractive and affordable models exist for climate conscious dense, walkable cities. NYC’s Co-Op City has 1-bedroom units for $16,500 equity and $750 monthly maintenance. The Mitchell Lama model needs to be revived in NY.
In medium-sized cities, the Co-Ops in Madison, Wisconsin, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, have rooms that average $535 a month. These models are in place, have functioned successfully for decades. Therse are models that are free of predatory landlord relationships.
We can create a road to wealth that is rooted in community and cooperation rather than each person having a little castle made of debt.
A better American dream is possible, but we need to end this necromancy with Milton Friedman and the Chicago School.