“So Are We Kind of Being Pricks?”: A Powerful GenX Housing Protest Goes Viral

The phrase “speaking truth to power” is usually applied to those who mount protests about our most dramatic issues—war, peace, civil rights.  But in a country in which key decisions are made at the local level, courageous talk can occur at obscure but important meetings. Such was the case last week at a meeting of the Planning Board in Marblehead, Mass., an affluent town on Boston’s North Shore,  median income $182,000.  It was there that a representative of GenX—notoriously squeezed out of the market for housing—addressed a local zoning issue. His subject: a Massachusetts law mandating that local communities rezone in order to permit denser, and thus less expensive, housing. His comments, captured by local community cable tv, have to date attracted more than three million views. Thirty-five year old Dave Modica, a Millennial channeling GenX, observing that the town sought to technically comply with the law by rezoning a country club golf course, where no new housing would likely ever be built, inquired , pointedly, “are we trying to do nothing?” When it became clear that was, indeed, the case, he turned the screws. “So are we kind of being pricks?” His pointed vernacular may have gone viral but it didn’t change the outcome. Nonetheless, Modica clearly struck a nerve. And he’s set an example that others should follow as the country struggles to build enough housing, and housing types, to meet demand. The White House may purport to take action on housing affordability—through such measures as jawboning the Fed to imprudently lower interest rates—but the real housing action happens at local planning boards, zoning boards, even water and sewer boards. Although we look to Washington for big decisions, consequential votes take place in the country’s more than 90,837 local governments that include  3,031 county governments, 35,705 township and municipal governments, 12,546 independent school districts and 39,555 other “special purpose districts.” Think here of the Marblehead Planning Board. It’s those locovore governments that decide such matters as how many residential units can be build on a single acre. One house per acre—or per two or five acres—is a recipe for McMansions. Five homes per acre—think here of attached townhouses, duplexes or a small apartment building—is the recipe for the elusive housing “affordability.” Dave Modica had no easy task, however. As Harvard economist Ed Glaeser has noted, housing “incumbents”—current owners—have a powerful incentive to protect the status quo. New supply risks lowering the value of their own properties. The result, in Massachusetts and elsewhere, has priced newcomers, and the new talent any state needs, out of the market. It’s zoning that explains much of the  difference in home prices between Texas and California. As Robert Ellickson of Yale Law School has written in his book, America’s Frozen Neighborhoods , “Local zoning measures may be the most consequential regulatory program in the United States. Local barriers to housing production elevate housing costs and distort household migration decisions. Nonetheless, members of the mass media tend to regard anything that happens at a city hall as unworthy of attention.”   Unless, it seems, a protestor uses colorful language. The Marblehead mantra should inspire others Dave Modica’s age to pressure local governments to open their gates. An historic example: In 1947, builder William Levitt sought to convince the Hempstead, Long Island local government too permit construction of 17,000 small homes, marketed to returning WWII veterans, on a potato field. Hempstead, at first, said no—not without basements that would drive up the cost. Levitt returned soon after, packing the room with hundreds of veterans cramped in Brooklyn with their in-laws, and such. The result: Hempstead said yes and Levittown was built. Even today, its median home price of $590,000 is cheap by New York standards. The lesson here is that showing up at local meetings can matter. GenX and GenZ should remind local officials that affordable housing need not mean low-income housing; it can be “naturally affordable” by virtue of permitting more units per acre. What’s more, even ritzy suburbs might want a place for their kids to stay in town, for teachers, EMTs, police, and firefighters to live in the towns they serve. Put another way, it’s not even in one’s self-interest to be a prick. Note: The original version of this blog post misidentified Modica as a member of GenX rather than a Millennial. The post “So Are We Kind of Being Pricks?”: A Powerful GenX Housing Protest Goes Viral appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .