Windsor Diaries Chapter 2

See Chapter 1 here.

The Powers That Be

If your household makes more than $150,000 a year, or has more than $500,000 in net worth, your household is in the country's top 20%. In other words, you are the upper-middle class.

Windsor, Colorado is a town for the upper-middle class. If you are upper-middle class, you have time to really explore and learn about what benefits you and what doesn't. To have time to attend the local meetings. To do your research and gather information. More importantly, to spread your message far and wide.

If you are not in the upper-middle class, the rent is too damn high to do much of this.

In other words, Windsor isn't a real democracy, and most of the UMC is not interested in fixing that.

I thought I could convince enough members of the UMC to care about this. I thought I could make enough inroads with the poor of this town to get them to vote for the right issues. But most of the UMC treats affordable housing as a fifth-class priority, and they convince the poor to see it that way as well. They get them to vote against their own interests, keeping the rent high, keeping them from having any meaningful participation in local democracy.

In the first version of my blog, I talked about:

My backstory
How Windsor is racially segregated
My hope that the town could welcoming for poor people and minorities.

So I tried going out to make inroads. I've met good people in this town. I've gone to hearings, meetings - and my conclusion?

At the very least, Windsor will continue to be segregated for the next fifteen years. And so, I've given up on making Windsor my home.

Denver, Pittsburgh, Fort Collins, somewhere - I'll be able to leave soon, and I'm leaving.

Build Build Build Build

For some people, for some reason, they think that building more won't help affordability.

One Type Of Person, One Type Of House

You have 200 people wanting a house, and there are only 100 houses. So the price of a house is high.

You build 20 more houses, the price of the houses goes down.

You build 80 more, the price goes down even more.

Over time

Every year, assume 10 people enter the market to buy a house.

Every year, 5 houses are built. Prices are high.

But if you build 10 houses a year, prices are lower.

Induced Demand

A city is known for being affordable, so a few more people want to move there every year.

So instead, 11 people enter the market every year.

It might raise prices, but only if you don't build enough housing. In fact, you can keep prices low if you just keep building.

And you keep building until the place reaches its natural limit, until the number of people entering the market slows down. Because of course an infinite amount of people won't want to move there.

Smaller Units

So, the minimum price for a single-family home is pretty high. Not only are you paying for the home itself, but you're paying for empty land around that. So that raises the price even more.

If you want to lower housing costs even more, you can make the lots smaller. So instead of your home taking up only half the lot, you can have two homes taking it up.

Or, you can build up.

Of course, not everyone is interested in letting any of this happen.

Where Goes The Neighborhood

A lot of people in this town want to be able to choose who gets to live in their neighborhood. A lot of them are worried about the "wrong" kind of people making it in.

They assume that a person who can afford a down payment on a single-family home is more trustworthy than someone who can't.

So they live in a single-family neighborhood, and they don't want that neighborhood to be more affordable. If their neighbors build apartments nearby, well - now anyone can move in.

Anywhere But Here

And of course, on some level we all know that locking poor people out just makes it worse.

I can show Brookings' Community Safety Blueprint. I can show them that you reduce violence by getting rid of this class segregation.

That there are plenty of job opportunities in Windsor, and that these employment opportunities will help.

And they're afraid of people with mental illnesses, but we can invest in good public health programs that have already been tried-and-tested everywhere else.

But then people would say,

"Well, build that first! And then we'll talk about de-segregating."

So then I could go to other people and say, "Hey, let's build these public health programs in this town."

And then they would say, "Why are we building things for poor people who aren't even here yet? Let's wait for them to come here first!"

Not enough people here care about that type of infrastructure for things to get done.

Something Could Be Done

But indirectly - here's the thing. These NIMBYs - the "Not In My Backyard" people - they're not a monolith. Not all of them are scared of class integration. And some of them are against it because of the traffic and parking.

They know that it's impossible to get around Windsor without a car, so they think, "Well, more apartments mean more cars. And I don't want more traffic."

So I tell them -

Walking

If you build more density, then everything's closer together, so you don't need to travel ten miles to get some eggs, so more people don't need a car, and that means less cars on the road.

Bikes

If you build protected bike lanes, more people will choose to bike instead of drive. We're talking about physical barriers, like bollards and raised curbs.

I want to bike. I don't like driving a car because it takes so much energy to drive safely, and I could be spending that finite energy doing work, or having fun.

I also don't want to be hit by a car, and those painted bike lanes aren't helping me at all.