Month: January 2026

You can’t get everything you want

(Reading time: 5 minutes)

There’s a sign posted in many small businesses that reads more or less like this: “Fast. Cheap. Quality Work. Pick any two.”

That brevity gets at a simple truth. You can get things fast and cheap, but the quality will suffer. Or you can opt for good quality and fast turnaround, but it won’t be cheap. And maybe, just maybe, you can get good quality at a cheap price, but you’ll have to wait for it.

A different but similar set of trade-offs bedevils efforts to resolve the affordable housing shortage. We can build cheaper houses, for example by increasing zoning density, but at the perceived cost of dragging down overall real estate values—almost invariably provoking local opposition from existing homeowners. Or we can build homes more quickly but at market rates, staving off NIMBYism but failing to meet the need for housing at prices that most people can afford. We can, in other words, view housing either as a form of wealth accumulation or as essential shelter. It’s not at all clear that we can do both.

Because of that simple disconnect, virtually every housing “solution” being tossed around not only misses the mark but often promises to make things worse. In recent weeks, for example, the Trump administration has floated the ideas of allowing 50-year mortgages, of banning institutional investors from buying single-family homes, and of having Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds, a purchase we are assured will “make the cost of owning a home more affordable.” None of these proposals, you’ll note, do anything to increase the actual housing supply. All will, almost assuredly, increase the cost of housing.

“Whenever we subsidize mortgages, guess what? It all gets capitalized into home prices,” Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, real estate and finance professor at Columbia University’s graduate school of business, told The Wall Street Journal. “All these demand subsidies don’t really work in a world where you don’t supply new housing.”

Given a generally agreed-upon shortage of 4 million homes nationally, housing “solutions” that don’t increase housing supply only prolong a game of musical chairs: someone will always be left out, regardless of mortgage terms or rates or whether corporate investors are barred from competing with individual homebuyers. And as in any market in which demand continues to outstrip supply, prices inexorably will move in only one direction. That’s presumably great news for anyone lucky enough to have grabbed a chair, but it’s a growing hardship for those without, and a tragedy for society overall.

Here’s how extreme things have become: Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Michigan, last week introduced a bill calling on the Trump administration to declare a national emergency over the housing crisis. For a Democrat to urge this administration to declare any kind of national emergency is like handing a gallon of gasoline to an arsonist, but the National Housing Emergency Act nevertheless seeks to prohibit state and local governments from imposing regulations that place “a substantial burden” on housing production, including many traditional zoning and other regulatory restrictions. The “period of the emergency” is to last until 2031, or until a goal of 4 million new housing units is met.

Slotkin’s bill springboards off the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950, which gives the U.S. president the authority to require businesses and corporations “to prioritize and accept contracts for materials and services as necessary to promote the national defense”—shifting housing intervention under the same umbrella of federal overreach as the Trumpian rationale for bombing fishing boats and its incursion into Venezuela. So, for example, the proposed National Housing Emergency Act would extend the DPA’s “materials and services” coverage to include not just lumber and steel but also manufactured housing.

But the act goes further. It also introduces a “pro-growth requirement” for state and local governments to receive federal block grant funding. And, significantly, it pushes states and localities to change their laws to allow commercial properties to be turned into housing, eliminate single-family zoning and allow for accessory dwelling units, sometimes referred to as “in-law suites” or “granny flats.” It also bars states and localities from passing laws, rules or regulations that would impair the build-out or rehab of housing during the emergency—arguably all desirable provisions, but at the cost of severely slashing local autonomy in an area long regarded as outside of state and federal control.

It’s too early to tell whether Slotkin’s bill will make any headway, although its lack of bipartisan support suggests not. But think of it as a canary in the coal mine, a warning signal of a growing sense of helplessness and frustration at the national level over a crisis that historically has been beyond federal purview. It also attests to the willingness of at least some Democrats to have the federal government throw its weight around at a grassroots level, in which case we’ll have only ourselves to blame. Zoning, building codes, land-use patterns—these are all local responsibilities, or have been until now, but failure to meet those responsibilities adequately invites intervention.

Fast. Cheap. Quality work. There are always trade-offs. We can act on an understanding that everyone needs a place where they can live within their means; or we can continue to view our homes as wealth generators that must be protected as investments. If we don’t mediate that conflict at a local level, and soon, we run the risk of having someone else do it for us.

Who has the Death Star plans?

“What if the democracy we thought we were serving no longer exists, and the Republic has become the very evil we have been fighting to destroy?”—Padmé, in Revenge of the Sith

Lest anyone remain skeptical that life imitates art, the past week’s events should dispel all doubts. In the space of just a few days our very own Emperor Palpatine unleashed his storm troopers with deadly effect, both at home and abroad, killing more than 80 in an unprovoked attack on Venezuela while also shooting a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman in the head. Two more people—Venezuelans, as chance would have it—were likewise shot in their car, in Portland, Oregon, albeit with less fatal consequences.

Palpatine, a/k/a Darth Sidious, was beside himself with glee at the mayhem he had unleashed, marveling at how much the aerial assault on Caracas and its swarthy inhabitants, which he watched live on multiple TV screens, looked just like a real movie. The summary execution of a very non-swarthy woman as she sat behind the steering wheel of a Honda Pilot was a little more difficult to spin as some kind of triumph, so Darth Sidious instead fell back on the time-honored ploy of blaming the victim. Renee Nicole Good had “weaponized” her car, he claimed, supposedly propelling it— at walking speed—toward a Storm Trooper whose automatic response was to put a bullet in her face before stepping aside.

Neither of these incidents were one-offs, nor was the official response merely the exuberance of a single unhinged mind. This is in fact the new normal for a government that views itself as entitled to take whatever it wants and to trample anyone who stands in its way. As our emperor’s in-house thug, Stephen Miller, explained to a bewildered Jake Tapper on CNN: “We live in a world, in the real world . . . that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Cue Darth Vader’s “Imperial March.”

Renee Good was shot just 24 hours after the fifth anniversary of another woman getting shot to death by a law enforcement officer. That would be Ashli Babbitt, of course, who was among the hundreds of rioters who invaded and ransacked the U.S. Capitol in an ultimately futile effort to overthrow the 2020 presidential election results. Babbitt was shot as she attempted to climb through the shattered window of a barricaded door well inside the building, and has since been elevated to martyrdom by a mob that Darth Sidious insists was just a peaceful, loving assemblage. Indeed, widely disseminated video coverage notwithstanding, a lawsuit filed by Babbitt’s family claims she was “ambushed,” as though she had been taken out by a sniper while walking down a city street.

The parallels between the shooting deaths of both women are many, even as the actual circumstances were markedly different: Renee Good was alone in her car, surrounded by several ICE agents, whereas Ashli Babbitt was part of a surging mob that quite literally was attacking an overwhelmed police contingent. But that only underscores the hypocrisy of the Empire’s response, with Darth Sidious-wannabe JD Vance contending that while Good’s death was “tragic, sure,” it was “also a consequence of her choices. Don’t interfere with federal operations and don’t try to run over officers.” In one instance, a heroine cut down as she battled for democracy; in the other, a domestic terrorist who had only herself to blame for her violent death.

Violence and the threat of violence are of course the animating force behind imperial expansion, creating both uncertainty and fear in the subjugated population, whether foreign or domestic. It also knows no restraints. Our very own Emperor Palpatine, asked on Wednesday if there are any limits on his power, replied, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” This from a man who is a convicted tax cheat, sexual predator and serial liar, a man who is the very embodiment of unbridled id.

Most people find that repellant, but there are those who are enthralled by such unleashed depravity and give it sustenance. Just look at the craven Lindsey Graham, for example. But the craven ones also get a huge boost from the ineffectual ditherers in Congress, the courts and our corporate executive suites who don’t recognize, or won’t accept, that we’ve been thrust into the throes of a foundational battle. This isn’t about political differences or policy disputes. It’s not a matter of right vs. left, populist vs. elitist, conservative vs. liberal. It’s all about power: who has it, and who submits to it. Just like Miller said.

Violence is an effective tool, insofar as it creates fear that mutes opposition, but it also is an addictive drug whose doses must be increased over time to generate the desired effect. And fear, as Yoda observed, “is the path to the dark side,” a downward spiral into an ever deeper void. Just when you think things can’t get worse, a fresh new horror will be perpetrated. The Emperor will not be denied his every impulse or libidinal craving.

Bleak? Yes. But as Yoda also counseled, “In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights the way.” The knowledge, in this instance, has to be the understanding that we are being ruled not by an extremist or an ideologue, but by a vile and completely self-absorbed reptilian brain. Once that realization sinks in more broadly, the Resistance can be fully activated.

“Plant hope now; harvest courage later.”—Luke Skywalker