Can’t Back That Republican Agenda

by Tony Chavira

Our primary goal is to interest the public in issues of affordable housing and affordability, a very careful and deliberate type of investing in comparison to blowing cash on huge developments like L.A. Live. We want accountability and a substantial return on our investments. Most important, we want honest, hardworking Americans to be able to afford housing on their own. People who want affordable housing don’t want handouts; we’d all love to own our own houses and live out the American Dream.

When you scour the Internet for articles that relate to the shifting landscape of Southern California, policy issues that affect housing and affordability, environmental issues that can provide affordable utilities, and transportation issues that will ultimately have a daily effect on how you get around Southern California, you might begin to wonder why so many environmental, affordability, New Urbanism and transportation websites lean to the left. Why did this community of news sites, bloggers and professional advocates explode in ecstasy when Barack Obama was elected President? Why was it so afraid that John McCain might win?

The last great investment in our infrastructure was made by a Republican president. The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways resulted from the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, and cost America something like $25 billion dollars over 12 years. And those are 1956 dollars. Obama’s initiatives outlined in The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are numerous and generally less specific than those of the 1956 act, but that doesn’t necessarily lessen its effect. Thirty-two billion dollars will be given to transportation projects (highways, light rail, bicycle lanes, etc.), which is better in some ways since it allows local governments to determine (and budget) their needs specifically.

Investment in the interior isn’t a partisan issue; it’s utilized when needed and right now it’s needed. So why would the Republican minority in government mull so heavily over a budget that supports a forceful reinvestment in the interior? It will spur responsible development that advocates walkable communities in affordable areas. It will reduce the number of cars on the road, instead promoting clean and widely-used public transportation. This kind of investment is necessary in Los Angeles particularly, where our communities are sprawled and disjointed, where a lack of transportation options keeps us trapped on the freeways, and where luxury housing is always built before affordable housing.

Republicans have spent the past eight years pushing our economic priorities away from goals that have been substantiated by scientific and social research. Public Housing Agencies (which were a staple of the New Deal) were created and managed by Democrats, turning those properties over to for-profit agencies was a policy developed by Republicans. By 2005 (during the “economic boom”), 5% of all renters lived in overcrowded housing, 11% in housing that was structurally inadequate. In terms of affordability, 22% were paying from 30%-50% of their household income on housing; another 23% were spending more than half. Between 1999 and 2005 alone, the number of renters with these problems increased 7.7%, while the number without these problems decreased by 9.7%.

Where was the Republican-led congress and administration to assist these 14.2 million renter households, half of which had one or more of these housing problems? When peer-reviewed data points to a clear path for affordability and economic recovery; the Republican Party does not support that path only because it differs ideologically. We want affordable housing and transportation for all citizens, and they just don’t. Or they just don’t care. Either way, they’re a political party that ignores pragmatism and research.

It offended me when I heard Bobby Jindal’s response to President Obama’s speech, when he spoke about how much the former Republican administration had done for the state of Louisiana. Organizations are spread wide throughout his state, searching desperately for a solution to the homeless problem. Hell, even before Katrina, Louisiana had an estimated 45,000 homeless. Jindal advocates the rhetoric of “less government intervention.”  But the true test of Republican ideology in New Orleans wasn’t the immediate emergency response, as that kind of incompetence could have come from a Democratic administration. The true test of the Republican ideology came a year later, when every Louisiana citizen should have been back at their jobs and back in their homes. Because the downtrodden citizens, who had nothing left at all, were afforded no government “intervention,” they were not able to just pick up where they left off.  The tragic reality of the situation is that this lack of government intervention left the downtrodden down. Would a more responsible government have given them whatever help they needed in their time of despair? I tend to think so.

I turned on Jindal and his speech as he was lying about some Las Vegas/Disneyland high-speed rail system. Here’s the map for potential projects, and that project isn’t on it. Go ahead and snoop around the Department of Transportation website if you want, you won’t find it. But what if there were such a project? Is Jindal attempting to deny us a comprehensive high-speed rail system by touting a specific example that he knows will piss off a former McCain voter? Does he believe that we somehow don’t deserve it? Or that it’s somehow not important, thereby not worthy of funding? This rhetoric has stopped or slowed transportation projects throughout America for the past 40 years: “Do we really need federal money going to affordable housing, transportation, or well-planned cityscapes when it could be spent on ____?” Unfortunately, this argument has slowly broken our infrastructure down into a state of disrepair. Now we’ve been forced to pass a bill in the trillions of dollars to fix the problems, when it would’ve been cheaper and more strategic to provide consistent funds for upkeep and innovation. Instead, our budgets for these things diminished as our taxes dropped and we paid for several expensive wars.

There is no life, liberty or pursuit of happiness without a home. If you pay taxes, no matter the amount, you are paying for a government to watch out for your best interests. Homelessness is not in your best interest. Rampant homelessness isn’t in the best interest of society. Without the opportunity to afford a home, when would the homeless ever be given a real chance at the American Dream? When you’re paying more than 50% of your earnings on housing, are you living the Dream?

Then again, maybe you dream of paying 50% of your earnings on housing and dishing out a hundred dollars to fill your gas tank just to sit in traffic for six hours a day. If so, then you’re welcome to support the goals of the Republican Party.

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