The Never Ending Paper Chase
Forever and ever. The end.
That’s the bureaucratic snarl that surrounds the standard American community due to mandates from Sacramento and Washington.
We just had 13,000 potential new housing units shoved down our throat by the State of California Housing and Community Development pointy-headed paper pushers with the connivance of SCAG – the Association of Southern California Governments, that supplies the cooked up numbers. The good folks at SCAG answer to nobody, and the State Legislature just loves them some housing bureaucracy – and the more intrusive, the better, apparently.
And now what, you ask? Why another mandate – a five year “2025 Housing Consolidated Plan” required by the people at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Here’s the City of Fullerton’s grand announcement of…a survey to get the ball rolling.
A cynical type person might suspect that the only real reason for any of this massive and seemingly eternal paper chase is to keep public employees employed: hiring consultants, reviewing surveys, gathering “data,” writing reports of compliance, reading reports of compliance, writing notifications of compliance and non-compliance, writing more reports, reading more reports, handing out awards for compliance, and general bureaucratic backslapping all around.
The effects of all this mumbo jumbo on the communities it impacts are neither here, nor there. The government Kabuki-hustle described as public participation is necessary, but let’s be honest. The goal of this splendidly vast empire is simply to amass more budget and hire more people at government agencies. If only American industry could match this amazing growth record over the past 60 years.
So what motivates local compliance with all this gobbledygook? Well, there’s the old carrot and stick, as you might imagine – two sides of the same metaphorical coin. If you play nice and do what you’re told you get Federal and State money, part of which you can use to hire people into your city’s “housing” department, a thing that didn’t exist until the 60s and 70s. That’s empire building, a point of pride for your garden variety city manager. Everyone wants a cookie, right?
But if you don’t go along and try to fight back against the idiot mandates, like Huntington Beach is doing right now, you incur the full wrath of State and Federal magistrates; from houseacrats to attorneys general and judges – the latter really just loyal public employees in silly robes. The reluctant jurisdiction will be threatened with a cut of of State and Federal payments, grants, and other beneficent distributions from far away capitals. No cookie for you, naughty boy.
SCAG ain’t working for us. And then there’s the odious League of Cities.
Ha! A never-ending cycle of housing lobbyists pushing this shit through shit funnel.
“To ensure the plan reflects community priorities.” What a cruel hoax.
Step 1 in building a phony consensus that reflects the priorities of staff.
Gee, we hired a consultant and conducted a survey!
So you’re bitching about housing mandates. You don’t seem to be presenting an argument that we have plenty of housing.
You can fight the mandates like the right wing loonies in HB. I guess.
I don’t see how you’re dealing with the reality of insufficient housing units. Cannot govern with wishful thinking. But it is all you need to fuel your whine machine.
The voice of the NIMBY people will be muffled by the supply-demand imbalance that favors the developers/builders/trade unions/etc. I am not convinced the housing policies that the state is mandating is the best policies but I agree that we need more housing. As for Huntington Beach, they have wasted a lot of money and are likely to waste a lot more before the voters care.
Why do we need more “housing?” According to what metric?
The other side doesn’t need you to make up a phony argument for them. Shut the fuck up.
The “other side” lives and breathes by phony arguments. It’s their meat and drink. Just look at Hoogerboohoo. And the Kennedy sisters. And that ancient harridan Karen Lloreda, and the moron Diane Vena. And the numbskull eye doctor Anjali Tapadia.
The other side just misses the point completely and whines about bureaucracy. Never mind the reasons: implementing policy created by duly elected officials.
So the whiners leave ntelligent people to argue with an empty chair. Not my fault.
Ntelligent people?
Don’t worry, I wasn’t talking about you if you couldn’t read that with the typo.
U R a boob.
Of course if you just redistributed the billions and billions wasted on giant housing bureaucracies back to taxpayers they would be able afford better housing.
Your beloved HUD is now 70 years old. And still the same “problems” flourish. Why is that Professor Donkey?
Your fault.
Who says we don’t have adequate housing, except those who profit by cramming 13,000 new units in Fullerton, of which you seem to approve? The houseacrats and the speculators, that’s who. Both play our idiot Legislature like a fiddle.
Hooger – just as fucking stupid as ever.
The excessive price of housing in California is caused high demand for insufficient supply.
And that supply has been artificially constrained by NIMBY activists.
“Artificially constrained”
You really need to stop commenting on blogs and playing SIMCity on the shitter, John.
Spend some time in reality after you flush today, ideally with your kids.
What complete nonsense. Of course.
It’s the liberal “everybody deserves something nice” mentality. Even Steve Greenhut is now falling for that tripe,
No, it’s the problem solving mentality. You have a problem, you look for solutions and address them.
There is no real problem. Just a ginned up “housing crisis” courtesy of the houseacrats and the low income housing mafia.
JRH prefers the housing mandate models of the USSR and CCCP. They tell you where you can live and what you will live in. JRH wants less California and more Commifornia.
No, lol. I’m a capitalist. In this case, NIMBY citizens through government are distorting the market, artificially constraining housing supply, and I’m advocating for fixes.
And learned that via your diploma mill MBA from Cal State Freeway? Hahaha! What a joke.
It’s basic economics.
Housing prices will come down if there’s sufficient supply.
When my little 5 bed 2 bath stick home is worth $1.2M you’d expect a building boom to be going on. Yet it isn’t, even with the government pushing as hard as it can to get housing built.
Zoning and other laws allow NIMBY activists to stand in the way of market forces
You live in house? I had you figured for mercy House.
Glad to hear you oppose zoning laws.
He’s lying. He lives under the Euclid/91 bridge.
You hear whatever you want, nothing I can do about it.
5 bedrooms!! Yowser. So you’re housing three previously homeless people, right? Right.
You can do that if you want. I house my family in my house.
Right. So we pay for your philanthropy. Empty your playroom and let a couple homeless in.
NIMH
Real bitch distinguishing between your backyard and your house.
Ok, comrade.
What errant nonsense. You’re arguing backwards – like all boohoos.
What sort of hominid is the creature on the survey graphic?
Our “Government” can save billions, provide super affordable housing and Make Amerika Great at the same time; Greyhound to Omaha is only $165. There are plenty of cheap houses in the Midwest.
The chick with the big cookie is even hotter than Jamie Valencia.
Not to worry, the Orange Sultan will fix this too.