Abundance

Tahanan is a public housing residential building in the Soma neighborhood of San Francisco that was built within three years for under $400,000 per unit. This is an unheard level of efficiency for the construction of public housing buildings. The reason that Tahanan was built so quickly and inexpensively was that it was constructed with private money and not government grants. Government grants come with countless stipulations, laws, and procedures. Private money does not.

A False Divide

While the traditional thinking is that liberals support a big government and conservatives support a small government, the truth is more complicated. In practice, liberals pass policy that limits what the government can do, while conservatives support the creation of an increasingly terrifying surveillance state. The big versus small government debate is a false divide, Klein and Thompson assert, as neither side focuses on “state capacity,” which is “the ability of the state to achieve its goals” (105).

When it comes to the housing crisis, some think that the elimination of zoning laws is not what would solve the lack of affordable housing. However, Houston, Texas, has no zoning laws, just land use laws, and it has far cheaper and more available housing than San Francisco or Los Angeles, in addition to a less drastic homelessness problem.