Connecting the Dots ~ Fred Allebach

Fred Allebach Fred Allebach is a member of the City of Sonoma’s Community Services and Environmental Commission, and an Advisory Committee member of the Sonoma Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency. Fred is a member of Sonoma Overlook Trail Stewards, as well as Sonoma Valley Housing Group and Transition Sonoma Valley.

Archives



High rent + low pay = alienation

Posted on June 21, 2017 by Fred Allebach

At Kindergarten age, impulses rule and we are taught how to behave. Parents and Kindergarten instructors teach kids to share, to not hoard all the toys. It is here we learn how to be and what to value. In our US culture, valuing selfishness over compassion, individual over group, has won out. The innocence and comradery of childhood, and the sharing lessons of Kindergarten are long forgotten.

An orthodoxy of greed now exists, out of which sharing is seen as naïve and stupid. The impulse to hoard is enshrined as common sense, as fiscally conservative: more, more, more, never enough. Financial advisors frame greed as pragmatic common sense, and enough security is never reached.

Thus, in the US, the prime cooperative adaptations of a supremely social species have devolved. People now restrict themselves to groups of one, or of family only. There is no community, no tribe, no social control. Every dog for himself is the ruling mythos. Providence, Manifest Destiny, take all those toys from that weak kid and keep them all for yourself. For justification? God will bless you. For the non-religious, to assuage any sense of shame, a Social Darwinism invisible hand of selfishness will somehow create a greater good…

Disclaimer

Material success, or poverty alone, are not one-to-one equivalent with moral standing. There are plenty of exceptions of poor jerks and great rich people. In this essay, I am speaking to large structural trends.

Can a worker get a home?

The other day my household fantasized about moving to Santa Rosa, so as to be closer to the Redwood Forest Friends Meeting, closer to the JC, closer to a more diverse demographic, and closer to county offices and meeting sites.

After an hour-long search, we found no apartment for less than $1,400, (these were three studios in cheap, beige-ville, no frills stucco complexes), and that was considered an “affordable” price range. These less expensive, affordable units were pitifully small, not adequate for two people who have any possessions. The cost of such a studio, with utilities, would take two thirds our annual income. One third was the normal number. So much for moving to Santa Rosa from Sonoma to reduce rent.

Reasonable rate of investment return?

Owners and investors in apartment complexes claim they would not get desired “returns” if a rent control measure had been passed in Santa Rosa. What is it about current obscene inflated returns that is not good enough? Rents have doubled since 2008. What kind of greedy monsters are these people?

Sonoma has the Village Green 1 complex that was recently sold, advertising the potential to raise rents. This out-of-control rent situation just gets worse by the day. Where will all the Village Green 1 seniors go? This is not about reasonable returns on investment, or ability to perform maintenance; this is about leveraging helpless renters as much as possible; it’s extortion.

The Santa Rosa rent control measure would have allowed for a 3% raise per year. No maintenance can be done for that? How about a 3% raise in wages per year? Why is justice and equity for tenants and workers not measured along with justice for investments? Whose legal rights have precedence here? Obviously, our society values property over people. The sharing lessons of Kindergarten long forgotten indeed.

Invisible hand will bring rents down…

The rationale landlords and developers use for market rate housing does not make sense: when rents rise, developers get the signal to build, and that brings rents down. This is total BS, when has anyone ever seen any price, especially rent, go down? Prices don’t go down, they just stop going up at a faster rate. Rents that doubled in 10 years are going to go down, or start at the current average of $1700 a month? Supply and demand, and rip off.

Nowhere in the nine-county Bay Area is affordable. Anyone who is forced to move, by raised rents, will have to either leave the region entirely, or end up commuting from Lake and Solano counties. This situation correlates perfectly with the current labor shortage, the solution to which is obviously raising wages. That, somehow, is seen as impossible. The overall housing situation means efforts to reduce individual transportation, the number-one source of GHG emissions, just won’t work: inadequate mass transit in the North Bay, no way to afford an electric car.

No rent control, no boost in pay, no housing, overwhelmingly market rate solutions on the horizon. I’d have to say that after a number of years of red flag warnings, the housing crisis is not being addressed fast, or comprehensively enough here in Sonoma Valley. Market rate housing solutions are a surrender to a world of grown-up Kindergarten bullies who take all the toys. Somehow, “incentives” have to be found to make it in the interests of the hoarders to share.

The non-profit housing that has been put in, or proposed to go in, is a drop in the bucket for addressing demand at moral prices. Non-profit housing development represents a remnant of childhood’s innate idealism and compassion. To make more of this non-profit affordable housing will require navigating a gauntlet of various vested take-all-the-marbles interests that will fight needed higher density and building heights, or fight housing land use on contiguous greenfields on the edge of the valley urban area.

Schoolyard bullies rule: Lord of the Flies, Social Darwinism

The market rate housing system we have in place is hopelessly corrupt and immoral. The whole thing is based on ripping people off as much as possible, and on protecting the interests of those who already have property. And somehow major actors are going to be able to slow down greenhouse gas impacts, and conserve groundwater voluntarily, when the most helpless people can’t even be housed and fed properly?

We’re going to put our faith in a system based on rip offs as our salvation? Houston, we have a serious problem. You know there is problem when incentives to modify bad behavior have to be worked to arrive at anything good. This is tantamount to admitting people have no self-control, that they are not well motivated from the start.

This surrender to shameless economic behavior is ingrained to such a high level that anyone calling the baseline rip-off assumptions into question is seen as a radical nut job. And you thought you were sending your kids to Kindergarten to learn how to be decent human beings and good citizens, all the while Johnny was terrorizing your kid, and learning to become a future apartment complex or mobile home park owner.

Regulations spin serves only the top dogs

Since Reagan, Republicans, apologists for the 1%, who have read too much Ayn Rand, have worked hard to destroy any faith in government by framing public benefits such as clean air and water, controls on machine guns, and voting and civil rights, as negative “regulations.”  Unions have been destroyed, along with prosperity for the little guy. This was Nixon’s work, the war on crime, the silent majority, push back against the little guys gaining too much. The US now has the highest level of income inequality of all time. Self-serving billionaires buy the political process and pull us out of the Paris Climate agreement. And guess what? People with lots of money are doing better. The world is upside down.

And against all reason, modern metaphorical yeoman farmers are buying in and supporting modern slave masters. Why would the people who are getting ripped off support the people who are ripping them off?  How dumb can you get!? Trump is an appropriate reward.

The current market rate thesis appears to be that people should value the opportunity to grab all the toys, and if they don’t have them all now, why compromise the ability to get them all in the future?

Death grip struggle

There is no scenario in which I can imagine powerful government and economic elites voluntarily becoming socially and environmentally conscious on a scale to make real difference. The lack of sharing and preservation ethos is too profound. The Bay Area is one of the most liberal places in the country, yet our regional liberal power players cannot come up with any better on housing and wages? This failure to step up was there before Trump, can’t blame blondie for that.

US culture as a whole is hopelessly lost in a struggle of maladaptive selfish values vs. the common sense of sharing and preservation. This is a death grip struggle I am afraid. People of conscience stand up, go to meetings, chip away, try to create policy, programs and studies, but the overall kleptocratic architecture is so big and pervasive, and the US so outsized in its world effect, that the efforts to resilience and sustainability are just not going to save the day.  A small percentage of cheaters, hoarders and bullies will ruin and undermine the impulse towards good work. Business as usual will prevail. This is a real tragedy. In spite of people of conscience being morally called to act in good faith, I’d say we are about completely screwed.

High rent + low pay = alienation

With this kind of alienated baseline, it’s no wonder we get a Brexit, or a Trump. People and the environment are not being taken care of. When its clear there is no justice, it also becomes clear that citizens, investors, and voters have nothing to lose by trying radical solutions to a status quo that is going nowhere but down the drain. Hard times, and every dog for himself only begets more selfishness, and makes it less likely people will be able to pull together and solve large-scale problems.

Paradise lost

People only change when the sewage is coming in the front door, and with 7 billion people, that time will be too late. Humans: a tragic legacy of great potential lost in hubris, maladaptive  business as usual, and selfishness. What a shame. Who would have thought the grown-ups really didn’t know better?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



3 thoughts on “High rent + low pay = alienation

  1. Great article. Add some parcel taxes, sales tax increase and high Sonoma gasoline prices on top! A child’s only option is to live at home until the parents pass away. Sad but true.

  2. As usual the Johnjdp does not understand what Fred is writing about. I often wonder if the dp part at the end stands for drip. Fred, you summed it all up and did not miss much. I feel sometimes there really is very little hope. I think one thing many of us could do, as we can not control this so called “free market”, is to impress on those we elect to office the need to spend some of our tax money on subsidies for housing. We can not build our way out of this, but instead of using the money to attract more money, maybe a housing fund for the people working in Sonoma and the Sonoma Valley. Eligibility would be determined by income and working in the city or valley.

Comments are closed.


Sonoma Sun | Sonoma, CA