The Henry George Program

Colin Drumm (author of a fascinating dissertation on the history and theory of money and legitimacy) is here to talk about inflation indices and housing, and what it means for largely issues of equality, governance, and far more.

Andrew Crockett is the challenger to SCC assessor (and hgp bête noire) Larry Stone, and is promising to focus on housing, competence, and honesty as part of a modernization campaign. He's previously worked in the office, and talks both about what sorts of changes he can bring to the office within the constraints of Prop 13, etc, as well as some nuts-and-bolts explanation of the office's work.

Lars Doucet authored three exciting papers on the empirics of the land value tax and is here to talk about what he's learned, some of the controversies that have cropped up over some of the studies, and the future of using data to implement LVT in as rigorous a way as possible.

Alan Joyce is back on to talk about the San Diego Padres, how Joan Kroc was not allowed to donate the team to the city; how Petco Park was part of an ambitious city-directed real estate scheme, and the future of Major League Baseball, municipal finance, and land hustles.

Derek Sagehorn is the author of East Bay for Everyone's 2021 paper California Housing Corporation: The Case for a Public Developer, and is here to take about the overall case for a public houser as a way to create a more robust, equitable, and efficient housing industry, as well as new legislation taking up the issue: Alex Lee's AB2053 (californiasocialhousing.org). We also get into some talk about UC Berkeley's CEQA woes: how can we make environmental law work better?

California nearly toppled minimum parking laws last year, and will likely try again (bless the name of Shoup); some weird discourse arose around why this is a bad thing... because of value capture?!!? (???) Enter Michael Manville of UCLA Luskin who spoke out against this analysis; he's here to talking about the nuts and bolts of value capture paradigms and parking policy, what happens when we create planning that we don't really intend to use, and much more; how can we undo the knots of our parking nightmare?

"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946, Frank Capra) is a Christmas classic, but also offers a great deal of insight into 20th century urban issues, the ideology of self-improvement through homeownership, lines of credit, and ex-urban sprawl. Do we live in George Bailey's world today, and what does this mean for us?

Josh Albrektson of South Pasadena talks about his work fighting against illegality in his city's housing element, and how PlaceWorks is a contractor at the heart of a massive scheme to underbuild housing and make many rich. We also dig into the nuts-and-bolts of HCD's process, legislation to keep it on rails, and how people can keep our Housing Elements honest.

Gene Slater's new book is the secret history of Realtors, their role in create modern housing markets and politics, and importantly, their role for incubating racial segregation in our cities.How did Realtors manage to create a backlash against Fair Housing built around "freedom", establishing a California constitutional amendment, and laying the future of the modern right-wing?

Paul Williams has new article on public housing out, talking about the various potential space we have to explore the benefits of public ownership, with an emphasis on the bureaucratic apparatus we wield to achieve it; we talk about what this means for the future of economic justice in cities, and effective governance.