It’s Time to Embrace Abundance
As a pro-housing advocate, the abundance agenda is music to my ears because it’s the same philosophy HAC has been guided by for years.
If you're tapped into the lefty, progressive political world, you’ve probably heard of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book: Abundance. It centers around the idea that modern American life has suffered because of past decisions that created barriers to economic, political, and cultural progress. The national housing crisis, growing wealth inequality, mediocre transit systems, unaffordable health care – all of these socio-economic issues are primarily the result of political decisions that created a scarcity of the things that make for a good life.
An uncomfortable truth we learn in the book is that many of these decisions have been made by Democrats. Abundance highlights how the Democratic Party has fallen in love with imposing rules and regulations that render government ineffective. The, as the authors put it, “endless catalog of rules and restraints” represent an anti-growth philosophy that exacerbates inequality, particularly in the most progressive parts of the country. To reverse the mistakes made in the past and create a better future, Klein and Thompson put forth the simple idea: “We need to build and invent more of what we need.”
As a Democrat and pro-housing advocate, the abundance movement resonates with me deeply.
HAC isn’t a politically affiliated organization. Our goal is to solve California’s housing crisis. However, I’m a lifelong Democrat. And as a Democrat, who co-founded a Democratic club in San Francisco, in recent years, I’ve become dismayed with the direction of the Democratic Party.
Since Trump’s election in 2016, so much of the left’s political discourse and energy seems focused on an anti-Trump agenda. While this is understandable given Trump's rhetoric, Democrats haven’t provided a credible or unified vision of how they’re going to help improve the lives of the American people. We saw this most notably with the post-Obama presidential campaigns. The message hasn’t been “vote for us because we have a concrete plan to improve social outcomes”, but rather, “vote for us because we’re not Trump.”
Klein and Thompson share my critique of the Democratic Party. In Abundance, they highlight the pattern of well-intentioned progressive policies that hamstring the government’s ability to solve problems effectively. Our housing crisis, for example, is the product of the complex rules and regulations that have made it incredibly difficult to build new housing quickly and affordably. The book uses my home of San Francisco to illustrate the “grim absurdity of liberal housing policy.” You don’t need me to tell you about the byzantine homebuilding process in San Francisco. Bad housing policy exists everywhere in America, but no other major metropolitan area beats San Francsico in how long and expensive it takes to build new housing.
San Francisco’s housing woes are largely a product of decisions made by its residents and elected officials. The irony is that every elected official in San Francisco is a democrat. And practically every one of them would agree we need to build more housing.. Yet, our housing laws and processes are designed in a way that paradoxically prevents us from achieving that goal.
And it’s not just San Francisco. There is an unfortunate relationship between how progressive a city is and how severe its housing affordability and homelessness issues are. Here in California, we have about 12 percent of the nation’s population, 30 percent of the nation’s homeless population, and 50 percent of its unsheltered homeless population. While it’s a sobering reality that one of the most politically progressive places in the country is also one of the least equitable, there is also reason to be optimistic. As Klein and Thompson emphasize, our housing crisis isn't inevitable; it's the result of policy choices. And if policy choices led us into this crisis, better policy choices can lead us out.
Abundance offers progressives a blueprint for how the party can govern more effectively. For housing, this means dismantling the restrictive regulations and anti-growth policies that have constrained housing supply and replacing them with solutions that streamline production, incentivize affordability, and accelerate development.
Having spent the past eight years advocating for more housing at HAC, I'm excited to see pro-housing ideas populating mainstream progressive politics. At HAC, our core principle has always been simple: supply and demand are fundamental truths, not ideological preferences. When housing supply fails to meet growing demand, prices inevitably rise, exacerbating inequality. That’s why we’ve always believed that the path to a more affordable California is best achieved through building more housing. If we grow our cities in a smart and measured way, we’ll not only align with economic principles — we’ll also create more equitable and prosperous communities.
