Affordable Housing Institute : US

 

Housing civilizes in more ways that one.  Homeownership improves people’s behavior, and the development of financial markets and respect for property rights inculcate civilizing beliefs.  As I previously posted:

 

Homeownership is personal wealth anchored to a place.  It may be even less mobile than we would like (Hernando de Soto’s ‘dead capital‘), but whatever else may be, owned homes represent wealth earned, accumulated, and planted.  Homes are the visible manifestation of excess labor, which is why we instinctively equate an attractive home with success.  Look at my owner, says the house, he could afford to work on me.

 

Some houses were even built with sod

 

I have described homeownership as “the sod on civil society’s hillside,” and that’s why: homeowners invest their capital long-term, and in so doing they add wealth to a neighborhood, wealth that can internally circulate.  This is part of why so many great American immigrant fortunes came through property ownership, because they were the first-mover entrepreneurs who helped changed what had been slums into neighborhoods, communities, and urban assets.

 

The dynamic of incumbency claiming rights over gentrifying neighborhoods leads quite directly to civic engagement, with unexpectedly powerful consequences, as revealed in this recent article from the Economist:

 

RETIRED workers who once made everything from nuclear-bomb components to wireless equipment are now living miserably in cockroach-infested slums in this corner of north-east Beijing. Many of them are also disgruntled with the compensation offered by developers who want to move them out.

 

Back in April, around the 332nd anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride, I commented on a remarkable standoff taking place in Chongqing, where a lone holdout has been challenging the status quo system:

 

 

Defenders of eminent domain for economic development (ED4ED) — among whom I generally count myself one — tend to argue that when a redevelopment entity has created an overall plan, it is legitimate to use eminent domain to remove minority holdouts.   My view does include the idea of an expanded and increased definition of ‘just compensation,’ which acts as a check on unbridling trampling of property rights … but that view is also predicated on sound due process, which even in the United States can be colored by municipal self-interest, and which here in Chongqing is evidently honored more in the breach than the observance.

 

The Economist’s current story reveals another side of the same coin:

 

Disputes over relocation are rife across China, but this one is stirring a broader debate: about the meaning of democracy.

 

De Tocqueville went looking for democracy in America … and found it.

 

Democracy, you may recall, is something China is supposed not to have or to need.

  

Dashanzi is a well-known trendy part of the capital, where avant-garde artists have set up studios in the abandoned factories that once formed the proud hub of China’s military-electronics industry. Far less visited is Jiuxianqiao to its south, where the workers lived.  Their blocks of flats, built by the Russians and East Germans in the 1950s, were once among the best in Beijing.

 

Moscow blocks: “I want a microwave, comrade”

 

These days, the 20,000 former workers and family members who still live in them mostly agree that housing in Beijing does not get much worse.

 

 

Public housing as far as the eye can see

 

But they cannot agree on a common approach to the developer that wants to knock down their buildings and, reportedly, to build them new ones, as well as luxury-apartment blocks.

 

There are times when a neighborhood is best served by rebuilding from scratch, but that presupposes the residents are on board with the plan, and that is often contentious:

 

The company will give them new flats free of charge, and cash to tide them over until these are built.

 

New housing, and relocation during redevelopment.  Is it good enough?

 

Some residents say the offer is inadequate.

 

Others, desperate to leave the cramped barrack-like buildings, where kitchens and lavatories are often shared between families, are happy to take it.

 

Lots of people have lived in barracks, but nobody wants to retire there

 

How to resolve competing interests?  As they did at Briny Breezes, Florida, with a residents’ vote:

 

For the first reported time in the fractious history of China’s recent urban makeover, residents on June 9th had a chance to vote on the offer.  A month later state-owned newspapers are still poring over that event.  

 

Anywhere in the world, counting votes is serious business

 

Some called it a referendum, a term not used lightly in China. Under the Communist Party there should be no need for referendums since the party represents the will of the people.

 

No, it was not a referendum at all

 

Ba Changrui, deputy party chief of Jiuxianqiao, which includes the slums as well as Dashanzi and its now arty factories, says he is angry with the Chinese media for portraying this as a referendum. It was, he says, merely a way of canvassing public opinion.

 

Goodness no, not a vote, no, not at all.

 

No votes here

 

The result imposed no obligations on the developer.

 

But it obviously meant something, or there would never have been a vote.

 

In any event, it was not clear-cut: 44.8% of households voted in favour of the offer and 22.4% against, and the rest [32.8%] did not vote at all. But Mr Ba’s denials have not stopped a torrent of media comment, some of it pasted by residents on outdoor walls.

 

Many Jiuxianqiao residents are long-term tenants rather than owner-occupiers.

 

Though rental by itself conveys no ownership, longevity of tenure confers political if not judicial rights — provided the residents can form themselves into an effective negotiating entity.

 

Many press articles have nevertheless denounced the use of a referendum to decide the fate of individuals’ private property. Property rights, argued one commentator, were a “core human right” that could not be taken away by democracy.

 

Delicious indeed is the paradox of a Communist nation arguing that property rights are so sacrosanct they cannot be compromised even by vote — and this vote has nothing to do with losing rights, just trading them for other economic consideration.

 

But as the Legal Daily noted this week, democracies could tamper with property rights by imposing taxes.  And to say that a referendum was a tyranny of the majority was a misunderstanding.  “Modern democracy also means protecting the minority,” it argued.

 

Sounds very reformist, doesn’t it?

 

Democracy can also be confusing. In Jiuxianqiao a simple majority has approved the developer’s offer. But no one knows what to make of that. As those with more experience of ballots could have told them: voting is the easy part.

 

Voting is Tocquevillean. 

 

Not just a good idea for America, but for the world

 

Tocqueville […] had become convinced that there was an evolutionary progress in human affairs.  Democracy was the next stage through which civilized countries would progress. Thus the answers he found in America would be extremely significant not only for himself but also for France and the entire civilized world.

 

In the very first sentence of his introduction to Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville declared his most significant insight: “No novelty in the United States struck me more vividly during my stay there than the equality of conditions.” It was “the creative element from which each particular fact derived, and all my observations constantly returned to this nodal point.”

 

Voting expresses equality of conditions.  It acknowledges rights, and therefore implies participation.  Once you give people a taste of voting, it makes them think about what they want, not simply what they are being offered.  It’s a process, not an event, and the process never stops.

 

According to the Web site: “A sculpture of wine immortal, which gives the name of the Jiuxianqiao sub-district, Beijing.”

Send post as PDF to