New Orleans    There’s starting to be an emerging pressure confronting housing activists and organizations, or so it seems: the fight between affordable housing versus any housing at all. The fight is particularly pronounced in the “executive” cities where most people can no longer afford to live, like New York, London, San Francisco, Vancouver, and the rest, but it also is being waged neighborhood to neighborhood under pressure of gentrification.

A recent article in The New York Times featured a self-proclaimed anarchistic, contrarian voice from San Francisco called BARF, the Bay Area Renters’ Federation. Yes, they thought the name was funny. These activists, what can you say? Essentially, they had adopted a position in the desperation of the situation in San Francisco that was essentially “anything goes,” as long as it means more housing, affordable, luxury, whatever. Longstanding tenant organizations in San Francisco called BARF, the “Tea Party” of housing groups in the city, which pretty much defines a “how low can you go” put down.

There may be worse though, and I stumbled on these notions reading a column in The Economist reporting some of the bright ideas that economists have. This is The Economist though so don’t be surprised that the argument starts from a position, similar to BARF, that development is good, and even alleges that everybody loves development, the problem is that no one wants it where they live, they want it somewhere else in the city.

Nonetheless, the ideas were, to say the least, novel. One was a straight “pay to play” proposition. Developers wanting to build in a particular area where they might counter community opposition would offer to pay neighbors in the area in cash money for the inconvenience and upset they had about the development. The exchange there was almost the equivalent of paying for “mental anguish” or some such. Taking it a logical next step though, neighbors willing to have their silence or support bought could also try to trade their position for whatever they believed the loss of value in their property might be.

In some ways this proposal isn’t so novel. Forever big developments in rural areas have bought out landowners wholesale to split communities. Developers reportedly buy out tenants in cities where they have protected leases in order to redevelop buildings in “executive” cities now, so what may seem on its face absurd, actually may be a more common practice than we realize. Many so-called neighborhood associations are so dominated by local real estate interests and individuals that it can be hard not to see them already as developer lapdogs. And, of course, when politics and money mix, this kind of business is also routine. The Mayor of New Orleans in a pique over a competing developers complaint that another developer won a bid to deal with a city building, is trying to get legislation through the state that would force any litigator in the future to have to put up a bond for the lost revenue, etc, etc, etc. You get the picture.

Another unique proposal offered was a sort of community “blackmail.” If a neighborhood fought a development in their area, essentially an ordinance or statute would require them to support a development elsewhere in the city of equivalent value and impact. The premise behind the proposition is, once again, that all development is good and beneficial, any opposition is narrow and selfish, so if you protest, you eventually pay the piper and have to saddle up to screw another community elsewhere in the city. Either way, the one thing that is certain is that the development gets built.

We might think some of these proposals are just ridiculous, but doing so is at some peril. Take a quick look at the political contributions in virtually any city for the municipal officeholders, and usually you will see the who’s who of all the local and many national developers lining up with cash, usually for candidates on both sides in the election so that they have markers down on all the candidates, as well as of course the eventual winner.