Affordable Housing? - Fine, Help Me Afford St Tropez

I have my eye on a villa in St. Tropez.  Priced at $4.5 million it has everything – private marina, manicured grounds, spectacular view of the Mediterranean, palatial ball room, formal gardens, and easy access to the bistros, brasseries, and dining rooms of the town.  It is a bit above my price range, but I have heard that there are public subsidies that can enable people who cannot ordinarily afford to live in a place to move there; and legislation guaranteeing them rights to stay in perpetuam.  

The origin of this chimera has its origins in progressive political history and its skewed vision of land and tenants rights.  There was something noble about the fireman, policeman, or school teacher, and something distinctly un-American about displacing them from their old neighborhoods, their friends and family, and place of work.  Communities which took decades to assemble, create their own unique and very special ethos, and had cultural significance should never be disassembled, taken over by monied interests for profit and speculation.   These ethnic communities were anointed by the earliest anti-capitalist social reformers who promoted ‘integrity, union, and culture’.  Little Italy was not simply a stopping off point for European immigrants of the late 19th century, a step on the way to Queens and Long Island; but an intrinsically valuable place in which years of brotherhood, neighborhood, and family had been invested.  To break these prized enclaves would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing. 

Of course this is all fairy tale fantasy.  For as long as the Republic has stood, city-dwellers moved to neighborhoods they could afford.  When reformist, real estate-minded mayors transformed New York to the virtually unlivable city it was in the 70s to a metropolitan star, desirable real estate prices went up.  Those living in areas to be redeveloped and repurposed to upscale residential towers, simply moved.  There was nothing sacred about their bit of land or tenement apartment; nothing absolute in their grounding there; nothing of principle nor of permanent value.  

The same is true for rent control.  Cities like San Francisco and New York have acted on the same fanciful principal.  The city – i.e. the taxpayer – should subsidize those tenants in privileged buildings.  Regardless of market value, a way should be found for them to stay; and the same discredited reasons were given – a viable, culturally rich, highly invested community should not be disassembled; firemen and teachers should live near where the work, etc.  Commuting is a way of life for all metropolitan areas.  People move out and away from high priced center city neighborhoods when they become unaffordable, but when they do are the anchors for new, equally viable communities.  Wealthy commuters are quite happy on the North Shore, Morris County, or Greenwich and willing to invest a few hours on the train for pleasant living – not the grand, luxurious apartments of Park and Fifth Avenues, but sumptuous enough. 

Rent control, rent stabilization, and affordable housing are simply politically-driven programs with no basis in history or economic reality.  The mobility of the American population has long been its strong point, its engine of prosperity, and its distance from the change-averse Europeans. 

The DC government, like many others, has passed laws to ‘encourage’ developers to provide a certain number of ‘affordable’ housing units in any new high-rise building they construct.  The arguments for such ‘affordability’ are many.  It is important for firemen, police, and teachers, advocates say, to live near their work.  They are the backbone of middle class society, perhaps its most important members because of the charge they carry, the responsibility of safeguarding our communities, teaching our children, and saving our homes, and they need public assistance.  Theirs is a higher good, say proponents of affordable housing laws, rent control, and rent stabilization.

‘Diversity’ is perhaps the most relevant principle underlying public support of housing.  There is something inherently good about a mix of cultures, ethnicities, race, and incomes.  A city will be a better, more tolerant, and more civil place if such social mixing occurs.  It is only right and proper for government to accelerate the trend and to engineer a more welcoming and accepting society.

Neither policy stands up to scrutiny.  There is no reason why public servants cannot live where they can afford and commute to work like employees in the private sector.  Young workers in Washington routinely live in the suburbs, in small, shared apartments in Rockville and Gaithersburg, and accept the opportunity cost and Metro fare as a worthwhile expense given the attractive salaries paid downtown.  Firemen can also live out of town, come in for their shifts, and be as ready as any colleague who lives near the station to fight fires.  The same goes for police and educators.  A teacher in a Northwest DC school who lives in Falls Church performs no less well than one who lives within city limits.

Proponents of affordable housing say that public laws and subsidies enabling these public servants to live close to work has an ancillary public good – fewer commuters, less pollution, and less congestion.  Yet the number of public workers in one of the nation’s booming high-tech regions is infinitesimal compared to the number of private employees.   Washington’s congestion is due to the economic boom which has brought it out of the one-horse, one-employer, government town, to the place to live. 

If one were for a moment to consider affordable housing proponents’ argument, how might government assure fair and equitable distribution of public resources?  It might be all well and good for the City Council to vote in favor of its firemen, teachers, and police; but no law could be that exclusive.  Anyone falling under an income threshold  would and should be eligible for such housing.  Such a law is a boon to young private sector workers happy to be able to live in high-rent, exclusive neighborhoods of the city paying low rent.  Why should government support them?

As importantly, what would be the threshold?  One cannot fix rent limits without considering income; and how indeed could that be determined? Prevailing firemen’s salaries? And how to fix the rent?  One could match base (fireman’s) income with rents paid, and fix ‘affordable’ rates accordingly. However, this would tend to keep rents lower than they should be given ‘aspirational valuation’.  Families with modest income may be willing to pay a higher proportion of their disposable income for housing in a desirable neighborhood, and any rent below this aspirational level would be uneconomic.

There are two forms of government support for affordable housing.  The first is by law which requires developers of new buildings to reserve a certain percentage of units for lower-income families.  The second is to enforce rent control, a program whereby landlords can only raise rents minimally and gradually for existing tenants. 

The argument for the first option is that taxpayers pay nothing for the program.  Landlords simply will charge more rent for their market-based units in order to cross-subsidize the low-rent ones.  This however will result in two undesirable  consequences.  First, the higher rents will discourage those families of modest means who, as above, assess a high aspirational value to apartments in desirable neighborhoods.  In other words, the market could, left alone, serve the same purpose as government mandates.  Perhaps bottom-rung middle class renters would be excluded, but why should government make that choice or distinction?

Second is that developers under an affordable housing mandate will build units inferior to those at market rates.  They will be smaller, lower, with less light and access while the higher-than-market rents will assure luxury accommodations for those renters on higher floors.  The buildings will be de facto segregated.  Such physical segregation will ensure normal, predictable social segregation.  The young lawyers and lobbyists on the higher floors will be even more unlikely to mix with the police and fire fighters on the lower.

Rent control is an even worse option, for, as in the case of San Francisco and other cities with strict rent control laws, landlords simply hold properties off the market, benefitting from increases in land values while avoiding the losses incurred because of insufficient rents. Not only that, the city benefits from high rent districts.  Former NYC Mayor Bloomberg understood that the development of the High Line, a rails-to-trails pedestrian walkway through lower Midtown Manhattan, would generate economic development nearby.  He was right, and the property taxes from the new desirable high-rent buildings have helped fill the city’s coffers and permitted it to invest in better infrastructure, parks, and public services.  Lower income residents and small business owners were indeed displaced, but such displacement is part of a dynamic economy.

Finally, ‘diversity’.  Despite the clamor and the insistence on its higher good, there is no evidence that it in fact contribute to civil harmony, tolerance, and good governance.  In fact, as this era of identity politics has amply shown, diversity has contributed to divisiveness and disunion. Engineered diversity – like any other public distortion of the economic or social marketplace – is more likely to set back social, racial, and ethnic integration than to encourage it.

Likes have always attracted likes.  Well-paid, well-educated professionals want to interact with people like them – not policemen, firefighters, and utility workers.  They want their children to grow up and be educated in a homogeneous environment and do not want them to be held back by students from less-motivated if not dysfunctional families.  For all the public expressions of support for diversity, ambitious families want none of it.  This conviction has nothing to do with, as many critics claim, racism – the desire to keep schools white.  It has only to do with keeping them upper middle class, high-performing, and socially homogeneous. One of the greatest advantages of Washington’s private schools is that students will be in a uniform community of highly intelligent, motivated, interested, and intellectually curious classmates.

In other words, given fundamental social behavior, the market works quite well.  Despite insistence that social engineering works, human nature will always trump interventionism.  ‘Affordable’ housing is but one example of ill-considered social engineering and perhaps the most visible and obvious.  Yet such engineering occurs throughout the public system.  Schools have become experimental laboratories for social reformation.  Academic excellence is no longer the unique guiding principle of elementary education. Teachers are now responsible for ensuring tolerance of ‘difference’, promoting ‘multiple intelligences’ at the expense of high-performance, socially practical disciplined cognitive learning, and readjusting gender behavioral patterns – e.g. discouraging typical male behavior in favor of a more collaborative, cooperative female environment) .

It is no surprise that parents who can afford it, quickly move their children to private, parochial, or charter schools.  Not only are they in search of a higher quality education; they are fed up with prescriptive administrative policies and government interference.

Affordable housing, like all other public social engineering programs will wither and die, removed without notice by economic dynamism.  It will be revived in down times – the New Deal was never finished and buried – but in good times or even modest ones, it will remain marginal and insignificant.

Elegant Deception - Truth? The Beautiful Art Of Charm And A Silver Tongue

“Charm and a silver tongue will get you everywhere”, Farley Burnham told his young son. “The only lesson you will ever need to know.”  This bit of wisdom is of course was not new, and ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’ was the guiding principle of P.T. Barnum, the greatest huckster in American history.

Although there have been plenty of pretenders to his throne, none understood the absolute gullibility of the American consumer more than Barnum.  No matter how exaggerated his claims or preposterous the creatures in his side shows, people packed his big tent and kept coming back for more.

The list of evangelical hucksters is long and storied.  Starting with Amy Semple McPherson, many followed in her footsteps - Billy Sunday, Elmer Gantry, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Rick Warren. Every Sunday these pastors and many more like them sold a bill of goods to the faithful who packed their revival tents and mega-churches, filled the offering baskets, and wrote generous checks.

Dostoevsky suggests that Christ was the original huckster, offering man the promise of redemption and salvation but guaranteeing him nothing and consigning him to a live of hunger and misery.  Christ’s rejection of the Devil’s temptations in the wilderness and His crafting of a message of hope to billions who would follow him – “Man does not live by bread alone” – was no more than a bill of goods.

Everyone is on the snake oil circuit – salesmen, politicians, Hollywood moguls, evangelical preachers, and the Catholic Church.  Ivan, railing at Christ says that the Church never took Him seriously but were overjoyed at His words which provided the foundation for millennia of deception, manipulation, and venality.

Robbie Burnham went on to an impressive career in law – the profession in which the power of persuasion is supreme.  Too many facts will confuse a jury, too few will leave them unconvinced; but a few facts spun within elegant, smooth, and sophisticated oratory will win them over every time.  

The best lawyers know that this fluid, seductive, and engaging oratory is not reserved just for opening and closing arguments, but is never be absent.  The questioning of witnesses is an opportunity to display confidence, an apt theatrical ability to introduce suggestion and innuendo, and to embellish the principle themes of the legal argument.

The impeccable dress of successful trial attorneys complements their eloquence.  A well-tailored, expensive, but tasteful suit, matching silk tie, and modestly stylish Italian shoes are the symbols of confidence, professional attainment, and ability.  A handsome man in an Armani suit who addresses the jury with charm, clarity, and an unhesitating, well-timed delivery is unbeatable.

Robbie knew this, and was especially careful in selecting jurors who not only would be favorable to the legal arguments he would make but who would be admiring of him.  He selected women who wanted him and men who liked him – not hard to do in a society which places supreme importance on looks, charm, eloquence, and wealth. 

Of course charm, looks, and a silver tongue, are only ninety-percent of success; and Robbie never slacked in his legal preparation – careful review of precedent, the facts of the case, inconsistencies to be exploited, weaknesses to be exposed.  It was no surprise to anyone that he was The Lawyer on K Street.

As much has his adversaries tried to come up to his impeccable standards, their futile attempts made them even more secondary.  When Robbie and the prosecutor were standing side-by-side, no one could help but notice the prosecutor's ill-fitting inexpensive suit, cotton socks, badly-patterned tie, and scuffed shoes.  He was public sector from head to toe, and while jurors might identify in principle with government and respond to lawyerly appeals to democratic spirit and judicial equality, they wanted to be Robbie.  His demeanor, carriage, and perfectly-turned out attitude spoke to the aspirations of the jury, not their current life.

Donald Trump has none of Robbie Burnham’s grace and sophistication, nor his polished silver tongue; but few politicians can match him on the stump.  Trump is a master of a particular kind of oratory – not the stirring, brilliantly crafted speeches of Marc Antony who won a credulous, emotional crowd with his irony, his turn of phrase, and his diffidence, but one of bombast, vaudevillian low humor, and a carny barker’s appeal.  

Trump, jowly, overweight, bad hair, and ungraceful, can never compare to the harmonious sophistication of Robbie, but he can turn a crowd his way in a minute.  His one liners, ad hominem right-on cynical caricatures of his opponents, and his unconcealed mockery are part of his shtick, all delivered with perfect timing, gestures, and attitude, but balanced with an equally exaggerated patriotism and political savvy.

It is the nature of the Left to be serious.  There is nothing to laugh about in today’s racist, homophobic, Robber Baron era, they say.  Climate Armageddon is near, adventurous wars on the horizon, regression to a patriarchal, fundamentalist, boorish past is upon us.  Let the buffoon in the White House laugh and make fun of us, they shout, his time will come.  Their principles are permanent, unalterably good, and persuasive in their own right. There is no need for oratory. 

There is no room for reasoned argument on the stage with Trump, only a tit-for-tat fabulist show.  Few progressives, harnessed as they are to an old-fashioned faux rectitude and old chestnut notions of kindness, compassion, and understanding, cannot possibly throw charges around like old-style political mudslingers. Their supporters, it seems, would prefer losing while maintaining dignity and respect for the essentiality of the progressive agenda than winning at any cost.

Because of Trump’s time in Hollywood, on television, in Las Vegas, and on the streets of New York; his art of the deal, his outrageous personality, and his unabashed courting of the low bourgeoisie  - yachts, mansions, football, NASCAR, and arm candy – he is quintessentially American.

Robbie Burnham’s friends suggested that he go into politics, but although he had been able to win over juries for decades, living in a world of nothing but Alexander Hamilton’s unwashed masses would be too much.  There would be too much compromise involved, too much repetition, and far too little reward.  

The power of the Presidency was nothing compared to looking into the eyes of jurors, seducing them, winning them over, making them believe him.  This was real power, influence, and authority.  He had no shills, no cheering supporters, no political machine.  It was he and he alone in the arena, and he loved it.

Diversity - A Beautiful Bisexual Octoroon Scams Progressive Washington With Charm And A Bit Of Color

Back in the Nineteenth Century, New Orleans was truly a diverse city, proud of its interracial culture, its mix of Caribbean, Creole, black, and Anglo residents. In this heady brew one wasn't just of mixed race but a quadroon or octoroon - one-quarter or one-eighth black - and this classification had its own set of rules, perks, and prohibitions.

Octoroon consorts were considered among the most desirable for white men. They were beautiful, Caucasian-featured but with copper, light mahogany, or burnished oak skin that gave only a hint of their parentage.  The client could have it both ways - crossing the color line without censure, and enjoying the delights of a foreign -looking princess. 

Octoroons could step out in New Orleans society, never in the highest echelons of course, but nevertheless in good company.  Adela Beaumont was considered an international beauty, compared to Nefertiti, Cleopatra, and a Phoenician princess; and she was often featured in magazines for both blacks and whites. 

Although Adela enjoyed a privileged and storied reputation, she could never aspire to any class above her own.  Racial tolerance even in welcoming New Orleans had its limits.  This never concerned Adela who was visited by wealthy men from the Americas to Europe. 

Emmanuel de Miramon-Fairmont was a French aristocrat, a man of eclectic but fine tastes in wine and women who had heard of the legendary Adela Beaumont and her alleged French royal  heritage.  It had been rumored that in the days before the Haitian revolution, the Third Duc de Guiche, a Bourbon second in line for the French throne, had relationships with a number of Haitian women of whom was Adela's great-great grandmother.

Emmanuel booked his travel to New Orleans by steamer from Le Havre, and spent long days awaiting his arrival at the Port of New Orleans.  He was not disappointed, invited Adela to be his concubine, and promised her all the treasures of Europe. She agreed and thanks to her beauty, charm, and savoir-faire became the toast of Paris. 

 

This is all preamble, for the story is about Lutece Millington, also an octoroon, who lived in rural North Carolina but who, thanks to her beauty, natural sophistication, and enviable charm had other desires. She came into her own in the era of 'diversity', that peculiar American political ethos which recognized the colored, the ethnically diverse, and the sexually fluid and gave them social priority.  As in all cultures and subcultures, beauty has always given added luster to already desirable ensembles, and Lutece felt that it was the right time to leave Booneville and head north. 

The progressive canon being what it was - featuring diversity in all its forms and including them along fluid spectra of race, gender, and ethnicity - Lutece's sexual orientation was a plus. From the age of twelve when she blossomed into a fully mature, desirous, and vitally sexual young woman, she realized that she was sought after by both men and women, neither of whom could resist her seductively mysterious origins.  Although many suspected her parentage to be that of most mixed race women - fieldhand, tenant farmer, and former slave - they willingly suspended disbelief and imagined her a Persian princess. 

Black men who characteristically want only the whitest women as sexual prizes were no different.  They followed Lutece like a pack of bloodhounds. Lutece wanted  no part of them.  Her white ancestry had diluted three-quarters of whatever 'Bama blackness she had in her, and she was not about to roll over for some homeboy. 

White men, however, were the most insistent.  The idea of actually living diversity, not just talking about and promoting it, was something else indeed; and what greater honor than to squire the likes of Lutece Millington and show the world their political commitment and virility. 

It was a matter of serendipity, pure luck with a little ambition added, that she met Mrs. Buxton Longworth, a woman who, despite her ties to the Roosevelt family and the wealth and social privilege that came with it, was a woman on the prowl; and when she saw Lutece sitting alone in the Russian Tea Room, she made her advances.  She must have this oriental beauty at any cost. 

The affair became the talk of Georgetown, for although Mrs. Longworth's bisexuality had been rumored, it had never been confirmed; but the besotted Buxton never hesitated to show off her love in the best social circles; and before long it was the stunning octoroon who became the center of Washington's attention. 

The Nation's Capital is like that - it fixes on something, anything, and makes it a cause celebre, a shibboleth, a temporary icon; and the beautiful, mixed race, bi-sexual Lutece was it.  She was fawned over, given public fora, adulated like no other. Progressives were delighted to know that someone like Lutece - young, nubile, beautiful, and sexually complaisant - was out there. Liberal lesbians were the toughest Bernal Heights bull dykes, blue-haired, nose-ringed, ugly Subaru-driving butches, and here came Lutece, a woman out of pasha's harem or the Arabian Nights.

Finally, they applauded, the real face of diversity.  For progressives it was like the Second Coming, a long-waited, spiritual epiphany.  This would show the country club Republicans across the aisle what diversity really meant. 

None of this was lost on Lutece, a savvy, politically attuned woman as well as a sexual siren; and so it wasn't long before she left the rather staid and dour Mrs. Longworth for more spicy fare. Men who otherwise might be put off by a gay woman - despite the caricature of men loving lesbian pornography, these well-heeled gentlemen wanted to avoid any semblance of gayness either way - forgot their hesitancy, and jumped whole hog into the competition for the delights of the beautiful octoroon. 

Lutece was no concubine, consort, or kept woman by any means.  She, like most women gifted with a special allure, used their charms to best advantage.  'Feminine wiles', that old-fashioned and now discredited misogynist term, never lost currency among the brightest women, and Lutece was a master. She easily had the swells of Washington wrapped around her little finger.

She was not adverse to lavish gifts, weekends on St. Bart's, and dinners at the best restaurants; but kept her eye out for her political future.  One of these men would surely be able to place her somewhere in the hierarchy; and so it was that a junior Congressman from a neighboring Southern state, as smitten with Lutece as any of his more senior colleagues, offered her a position in his office.

As smart as they come, Lutece took every advantage of the office, sleeping with the Congressman when necessary, but heading his initiatives on a number of progressive causes. She was indifferent to them, cared little for their supposedly utopian promise, and found them ponderously officious; but until something better came along, she was agreeable. 

With Lutece around, politicians could check off diversity boxes with pleasure and ease. This was no dutiful exercise of fidelity to the movement, but one of pride.  Here was a woman who embodied the very best of the New America, a beautiful, mixed race, mixed sexuality goddess. 

During this heady period of her political acceleration, Lutece discouraged the advances of women, most of whom were second fiddle, either married to someone who mattered or wannabees, in any case not worth the trouble.  Moreover, the whole bi-sexual thing was never a keeper in the first place.

She enjoyed the spotlight, for she was invited to speak at a variety of public forums.  She could be counted on to look great, to flaunt her racial and sexual mix, and to mouth the words of her ambitious handlers.  Before long, someone decided it might be time for this now well-known woman with an impeccable progressive pedigree to run for office; but by then Lutece had had enough of the Washington merry-go-round, had managed not only to turn a profit from her stay but to manage a multi-million dollar Wall Street portfolio. 

She was last seen in Santa Barbara at a party with the Windsors but that bourgeois royal scene was but a stop along the way to something more je ne sais quoi, or at least accommodating to her now highly refined, eclectic, 'diverse' tastes. 

'An American hero', said one observer of the Washington scene who was onto her political brilliance, a woman who could work a crowd, take progressives for all they were worth, and claim both sides of any aisle or street. 'I wonder where she is now?', he mused, but  he really didn't want to know.  Icons are not real, after all.