{"id":846,"date":"2024-08-01T08:08:34","date_gmt":"2024-08-01T15:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-metropolitan-abundance-project.pantheonsite.io\/?post_type=podcast&#038;p=846"},"modified":"2024-12-02T06:07:53","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T14:07:53","slug":"episode-25","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/www.metroabundance.org\/podcasts\/episode-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Anika Singh Lemar on Community Input"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: #25 - Anika Singh Lemar on Community Input\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"624\" height=\"351\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/211RhaLcRD3c0nGgUfLRN8\/video?si=mXk0U560R_STDhF3SSRiEQ&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Welcome back to the Abundance Podcast!<\/strong>&nbsp;In this episode,<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mnolangray\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&nbsp;M. Nolan Gray<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/resnikoff.bsky.social\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ned Resnikoff<\/a>&nbsp;chat with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/anikasinghlemar?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Anika Singh Lemar<\/a>. She is a Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School where she teaches clinics that represent affordable housing developers, tenants, homeowners, small businesses, community development financial institutions, fair housing advocates, and cooperatives. In this episode, they chat about \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3786306\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">overparticipation<\/a>\u201d in US land-use planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stay connected with the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.metroabundance.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&nbsp;\u2060Metropolitan Abundance Project\u2060<\/a>&nbsp;on<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/metroabundance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&nbsp;\u2060Twitter\u2060<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/metroabundance.bsky.social\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&nbsp;\u2060Bluesky\u2060<\/a>, and<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/metroabundance\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&nbsp;\u2060Instagram\u2060<\/a>.Stay connected with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/cayimby.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u2060\u2060California YIMBY\u2060\u2060<\/a>&nbsp;on&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cayimby\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u2060\u2060Twitter\u2060\u2060<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/cayimby.bsky.social\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u2060\u2060Bluesky\u2060\u2060<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/cayimby\/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u2060\u2060Instagram\u2060\u2060<\/a>, and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@cayimby\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u2060\u2060TikTok\u2060\u2060<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"transcript\">\n\t<div class=\"title\">Episode Transcript<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"rows\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Howdy, I\u2019m Nolan Gray, your friendly neighborhood city planner, research director at California YIMBY, and one of the co-leads of the new Metropolitan Abundance Project. Welcome back to the Abundance Podcast. In this episode, we chat with Anika Singh Lemar. Anika is a clinical professor of law at Yale Law School, where she teaches clinics that represent affordable housing developers, tenants, homeowners, small businesses, community development, financial institutions, fair housing advocates, and cooperatives.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Singh Lemar writes about land use, zoning, and housing, and we\u2019re going to dive into all of that, including some of her really exciting work on community input. When do we do it, and how do we do it? Of course, in this episode, we are joined by my colleague, our policy director, Ned Resnikoff. Before I let you go, don\u2019t forget to like, subscribe, leave a review, leave a comment, leave feedback. We do read that, and we really, really appreciate it. With that, onto the show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Ned Resnikoff:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Anika, you wrote in 2021 an article for the Fordham Law Review called Overparticipation: Designing Effective Land Use Public Processes, and this paper has been pretty influential on my work. Brian Hanlon, the CEO of California YIMBY and the Metro Abundance Project, and I cited it in a piece that we wrote for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and I\u2019ve continued to return to it periodically.<\/p>\n<p>So before we talk about some of how you recommend designing community input processes, which is part four of that paper, let\u2019s talk about parts one through three just briefly. So what\u2019s the problem with the way we have community input processes set up right now?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. It\u2019s a big question. It\u2019s a great question. First of all, thank you for having me, and thank you for reading my writing. Nobody who writes a law review article can be 100% sure that anybody else will ever read it, ever. And so, it\u2019s always nice to hear that things have been read. So maybe it helps to just talk about the genesis of the paper a little bit, and the paper is pretty heart-on-the-sleeve in terms of being very open about where it came from.<\/p>\n<p>So in the spring of\u2026 The paper came out in 2021. A couple years before that, I would say. In 2018 I spent a lot of time at land use and zoning hearings in general, but I happened to be spending a lot of time at two different series of planning and zoning hearings around 2017, 2018. One was for a client who I talked about in the article. It was a very small, completely volunteer suburban housing authority doing 67 units of family housing in a fairly tony suburb of New Haven, Connecticut, where I live and work.<\/p>\n<p>And then the other was a series of planning and zoning hearings that were actually around a rezoning in my own neighborhood in New Haven. And so, they were very, very different both in terms of demographics, in terms of the types of issues people were raising, the types of concerns that people had or purported to have. But the thing that they shared in common was that they were very heated.<\/p>\n<p>There was a lot of anger and vitriol in the room. And then the thing that you could not help but notice if you were a land use and zoning lawyer or an affordable housing lawyer, as I am, was that people just said things that were wrong all the time. And it went completely uncommented on by the planning and zoning commissioners that there were, quote, unquote, \u201cfacts\u201d being entered into the record that were just not facts and not true.<\/p>\n<p>And I recall being in one of them in New Haven, actually, which I don\u2019t talk about as much in the article, but being in one of them in New Haven, and it was, again, about a rezoning in my neighborhood. I was not there in my professional capacity. I had my baby with me. I was on parental leave at the time, my youngest of three. And I turned to the person next to me, and I said, \u201cWhat was just said was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And the person turned to me and said, \u201cOh, you should tell them.\u201d And I just remember thinking, \u201cHow? In what capacity? There\u2019s actually no place for me to correct the record.\u201d So this is a long-winded way of saying the kind of light bulb that went off in my head was: we\u2019ve built this entire apparatus and structure for people to participate and provide comments and put things into the record.<\/p>\n<p>And unlike when you\u2019re in a court of law and there are rules of evidence, and that include rules of relevance, and ways to get expert testimony in, there\u2019s actually nothing correct that checks for relevance, expertise, whether something is true in the first place. There\u2019s no hearsay rules in a planning and zoning hearing. It\u2019s just a lot of stuff being thrown at the wall.<\/p>\n<p>And around the same time, Katherine Levine Einstein\u2019s book, Neighborhood Defenders, came out. And I remember reading an advanced copy in the summertime at the community pool, and thinking like, \u201cOkay. So now you\u2019ve taken this problem of having no checks on anything,\u201d and then layered on top of it is something that I think a lot of us kind of knew anecdotally and atmospherically, that people who showed up to these hearings were not at all representative of our neighborhoods in general, and now had the data to support that.<\/p>\n<p>And when you layer those two facts on top of each other, you end up in this very strange world where a very small slice of the population kind of gets to say whatever they want and dictate answers in predictable ways, as Katie and her coauthors point out, in predictable ways, because people are acting out of self-interest, and the self-interest is fairly predictable.<\/p>\n<p>So I came at it from the lawyer\u2019s perspective, which is, \u201cWell, how do you at least correct for the information in the record?\u201d as opposed to the ethnographers\u2019 or political scientists\u2019 or sociologists\u2019 question of, \u201cWhat can you say about the makeup of people in the room?\u201d I\u2019m interested in the question of, \u201cCould you build a better process in the first place?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Ned Resnikoff:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>So what does that better process end up looking like?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. Yeah, and I still struggle with this a lot. Right? So it\u2019s a lot easier to point out the ways in which the current process is bad than it is to build a new process from scratch, or build a new process at all. That would be better. But I do think it helps to first look at what\u2019s bad about the current process. So one thing that\u2019s bad about it is that it\u2019s very passive in the sense that we hold a meeting, in a place we don\u2019t think very hard about whether the meeting time is convenient, we don\u2019t try to educate people as they walk in the door about the underlying facts and context that might inform their opinion about a thing. <\/p>\n<p>We let people talk basically in three-minute snippets, one after the other. There\u2019s no dialogue involved in that process. So the incentive, really, is to come and be as passionate and angry as you can to use up your three minutes in a way that\u2019s memorable, and that people are kind of forced to hear you.<\/p>\n<p>We don\u2019t tell a whole lot of people about the meetings that happen in the planning and zoning context. So if you are a property owner within a certain radius, you\u2019re probably required by statute to get some kind of notice. But otherwise, we don\u2019t try that hard to let people know that these things are happening. And because of the substance, really, of our zoning codes, the underlying zoning, whether you\u2019re an American suburb or an American city, it\u2019s likely extremely restrictive.<\/p>\n<p>And if you\u2019re doing any kind of multifamily housing anyway, you probably need to come in for some kind of approval. The bulk of these hearings are happening about individual projects rather than about the planning citywide, and the incentive to show up to a meeting that\u2019s about citywide planning is actually quite small, because the citywide plans don\u2019t have any import. They don\u2019t matter. They don\u2019t have an effect.<\/p>\n<p>So that\u2019s certainly the case here in Connecticut, where every town has to do a 10-year comprehensive plan, but the comprehensive plan doesn\u2019t have any\u2026 It doesn\u2019t have the force of law. It\u2019s just a document with some words. The thing that matters is the zoning. And because the zoning is so hard to change, the thing that matters is the variances and the conditional use permits.<\/p>\n<p>So rather than have a conversation about what you want your city to look like citywide, people really only come in and have these conversations when they\u2019re looking at a particular development where the harm is very particularized. And obviously, you all know this, and lots of people have written about this. But when you\u2019re talking about process, the question is, \u201cWell then, how do you solve for those things in terms of process?\u201d So how do you build a better process? You sort of start with the small things, and then maybe we can talk about the administrative law, structural question.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Ned Resnikoff:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. I\u2019d also like to just interject with a small point about what you\u2019re saying, because I think this is relevant for some of the solutions you\u2019re proposing. I mean, Bill Fulton writes about this in the context of the California Environmental Quality Act, but I think it applies to site-specific public input processes in general.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re trying to get permission to build a structure and you\u2019re choosing between infill and a sprawl, greenfield development, any infill, just by the nature of the fact that it is closer to existing residents, is just more likely to antagonize some individual with a strong stake in that neighborhood. And so, I think part of what you\u2019re getting at here is that when you have this sort of site-specific input instead of plan-based input, you\u2019re actually structurally creating higher barriers to environmentally friendly infill development than to sprawl, car-dependent, greenfield development.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah, 100%. And I do talk about that in the article a little bit in the context of farmland development. The other piece that I think is important is that infill changes that de-densify don\u2019t require approval. So that\u2019s where the public participation bit meets the way that zoning works bit. Right? So if you want to turn your\u2026 This just happened down the block from me, so it\u2019s relevant.<\/p>\n<p>A four-unit townhouse, and you want to turn it back to single-family, there\u2019s no public process involved whatsoever. But if you want to take the single-family and turn it to four units, you do. So not every infill choice is subject to public participation, but the ones that would add to the housing supply are. But yeah, no, I think that\u2019s absolutely right. Right? Like, farmland doesn\u2019t show up to testify at a public hearing, but your neighbors in an existing neighborhood will.<\/p>\n<p>So some of the things that I think that could be required by code or by the zoning enabling out, or that an industrious planner could do on their own, and many do, have to do simply with outreach. Right? So you could solicit public feedback outside of the hearing room. Right? You can show up at\u2026 The way I talk to clients about this, when I have clients that are looking to get public input on a project that they\u2019re working on, whether or not they have to do it.<\/p>\n<p>My client might be an affordable housing developer, like a community development financial institution, or somebody who\u2019s trying to work on some kind of planning enterprise to get public input. They\u2019re not required to do it by statute, but they\u2019re just trying to do a good job of doing it. Everybody\u2019s instinct is to have a public meeting, like reserve the library branch or whatever, and put up some flyers and have a meeting.<\/p>\n<p>And my reaction is always to say, \u201cYou can do that.\u201d And you should do that, because honestly, your funders and what all are going to ask whether you did that. So it\u2019s good to be able to say yes. But if you really want to hear from people, you need to go where they already are. So there\u2019s a public school across the street where the PTO has a monthly meeting, or you can get flyers sent home with kids in their backpacks. That\u2019s a place where people already are.<\/p>\n<p>When the Minneapolis 2040 Plan was adopted, the city plan members who worked on that described just advising city planners to go out to festivals, go out to neighborhood festivals, find out where people are, go talk to them where they\u2019re at. I talk to my clients about using local churches. Anything that you can imagine as a place where people go, whether or not they have a vested interest or some irrational attachment to the built environment. Those are the people you want to talk to.<\/p>\n<p>I think it\u2019s also really important to think really carefully about what it is you\u2019re asking people. So in the article, I describe a couple of other planners and thinkers who\u2019ve been pretty clear that it\u2019s really hard to ask people what they want a plan to say, because it requires folks engaging in some kind of counterfactual thinking that isn\u2019t really intuitive to most people.<\/p>\n<p>So we are all generally pretty good at describing problems on the fly. On the fly, I can tell you whether my commute to work was pleasant today, but I cannot, on the fly, at a table, at a public festival, or even in a three-minute slot at a public hearing, tell you how to fix it. I can\u2019t necessarily tell you what the solutions are. And if I did, because I\u2019m not a transportation engineer, I\u2019d probably be wrong. Right?<\/p>\n<p>So being really careful and particular about what it is you\u2019re asking people, making sure you\u2019re asking people to describe the things that are in their experience. If we\u2019re going to rely on lived experience, let\u2019s think about what those experiences actually are and what they actually can tell us about people\u2019s lives. So one thing I think is simply to go to where people are and meet them there, and then to ask the questions that are within their experience.<\/p>\n<p>Second thing that I think is really important, that could be really important, that, again, is on that smaller scale, is simply providing regular notice to the kinds of think tanks and advocacy groups that might not be property owners in the neighborhood. So they may not receive the statutory notice, but their perspective would be sort of helpful and informed. It\u2019s- one thing that\u2019s really hard about local public participation processes, is that those regular kinds of interest groups can\u2019t possibly show up to every single one of these hearings in every single town all the time.<\/p>\n<p>So at least making the notices available so folks know that it\u2019s happening could potentially bring some of those voices to the table, where otherwise you wouldn\u2019t have them any other way. So I do think there\u2019s a couple of these small things that local governments could do, but obviously, I don\u2019t think they\u2019d solve the whole problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Well, just, I mean, a quick question on this. I think there are a lot of cities that do this type of really robust public outreach, where they actually do go out and try to find normal people and get them to share their views in a constructive way, and host focus groups and charrettes and things like that. I mean, my hometown of Lexington, they did that, and they produced a really nice plan, and then I think they could take that plan and say, \u201cHey, we actually have kind of a mandate here around some of this stuff. We actually did real public process.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I suspect a lot of jurisdictions just do the hearing with a three-minute turn, partly, I guess, because I think that\u2019s typically the minimum legal requirement for a lot of these decisions pursuant to the state enabling legislation, but also probably because it\u2019s cheap and easy to do. And I\u2019m wondering for smaller jurisdictions with less capacity, I\u2019m wondering how you would suggest they think about that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. I don\u2019t actually think this stuff is all that expensive. I mean, I think the critique is more that the places that are going to be willing to do the work that is a little bit more than what the enabling act requires are exactly the places that might be most likely to engage in inclusive planning, but also relatively permissive zoning in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>So there\u2019s probably complete overlap, to some degree, between places where the town planner is thinking, like, \u201cHow do I get this room to look more inclusive? How do I do a focus group of renters?\u201d Because everybody who showed up to the public hearing was a homeowner. That town or city is probably also engaged in thinking about how they ought to liberalize some of their zoning and make things easier to build in general.<\/p>\n<p>Public participation, like everything else, if you rely on local opt-in, you\u2019re just going to solve a small slice of the problem. I think that\u2019s just a given, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s because all this stuff is super expensive. The smaller the town, the more homogenous the town, the actually easier it is to do public participation anyway. Right? Just easier to find people.<\/p>\n<p>And I don\u2019t know of any town, even my fairly inclusive, fairly well-meaning little college town of New Haven, that\u2019s made an effort to get people from other towns to come show up to public hearings. Right? I think there are some things that you can do and some things that an industrious, well-meaning planner can do. I just don\u2019t actually think you can solve this problem at the local level, but I don\u2019t think the hurdle is financial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Ned Resnikoff:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. Part of what I like about what you\u2019re describing, and I had this light-bulb moment when I was reading the initial paper, was it\u2019s also\u2026 I mean, really, what you\u2019re describing is actual planning. How do we make the, quote, unquote, \u201cplanning process\u201d in the United States more focused on developing a citywide plan where you\u2019re actually seriously balancing trade-offs and the interests of different groups? Because what we do now, and I know this is a hobbyhorse of Nolan\u2019s as well, is really not planning. It\u2019s sort of the opposite of planning. It\u2019s, you\u2019re sitting back and letting the most powerful and often the crankiest and just kind of nastiest incumbent interests decide things on an ad hoc, project-by-project basis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Right. And I, in the piece, acknowledge that partly what I\u2019m doing is arguing in favor of robust planning, and other folks who may have accidentally ended up arguing for that too. David Schleicher and Rick Hills have a piece where they almost sort of accidentally end up\u2026 Not accidentally, but it probably wasn\u2019t what they thought they were going to start out arguing for. I don\u2019t want to speak for them, but also end up arguing for robust planning, which is coming up with a citywide vision of what is necessary rather than doing seriatim, ad hoc, one-at-a-time kind of decision-making that ends up moving in a predictable kind of way.<\/p>\n<p>So from an administrative law kind of viewpoint, the way that land use law administration happens is actually really weird. It\u2019s not just really weird, because it ends up in this massive- for all the reasons that we talk about, you have these angry meetings, and people end up making it really hard to build housing, and it\u2019s bad. But it\u2019s actually weird in that it\u2019s sort of an outlier in terms of how we do administrative law more generally, so in part the initial Standard State Zoning Enabling Act in the 1920s, but partly as a result of just how the law has developed over the last 100 years.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve built in this expectation that there ought to be an opportunity for public participation every time a development is proposed. It\u2019s an accident of the way the administrative law has progressed, as described in the paper, and it\u2019s also a result of hyper-regulated zoning of the last 50 to 60 years. But generally speaking, in administrative law, when somebody is applying for a permit to do something, there isn\u2019t typically a public hearing. Right?<\/p>\n<p>So if I am a child care provider and I want a license to run a licensed child care center, and I apply for that license, there\u2019s no public hearing on my license application. There will be a public hearing when the generally applicable rules that apply to all child care providers, and set out the general standards that apply to a child care provider. When those rules get adopted, there will be an opportunity. There will be notice and an opportunity for public comment, and potentially a public hearing.<\/p>\n<p>But nobody is going to schedule a hearing about Anika Singh Lemar\u2019s child care license permit. And that\u2019s true, generally speaking, whether it\u2019s liquor permits for your restaurant or licenses to do a variety of activities. The public input happens when the generally applicable rule gets adopted. Because our plans, for the most part, kind of sit on shelves, there isn\u2019t a lot of incentive to show up at the public hearings where plans are adopted, because we do have public hearings when plans are adopted, but they are not super well attended, and they don\u2019t always result in actionable zoning ordinances and statutes and laws. Right? So there isn\u2019t a lot of incentive to show up at those meetings.<\/p>\n<p>But if those meetings were the meetings where the action happened, then perhaps there\u2019d be more incentive to show up. Plus, you could make more robust decision-making that would look like planning, which is not what these things look like right now. So in the article, I end up suggesting what would be a fairly significant change to current planning and zoning law, which is not a particularly significant change to administrative law, which is to say that you have robust public participation processes when you\u2019re adopting the rules.<\/p>\n<p>But you do not have any public participation necessarily when you\u2019re granting site-specific relief for a particular development. At that stage in the process, you ought to be able to apply the generally applicable rules to that development. That\u2019s sort of said in admin law-speak, but in zoning-speak, people know it as as-of-right development.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Ned Resnikoff:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Just one more observation about, I guess, the sort of metapolitics of what you\u2019re describing here, which is that you\u2019re also, I think in this article, in kind of an interesting way, arguing against your own class interests as a lawyer. I mean, one of the things that it seems like this sort of project-by-project review\u2026 And, I mean, especially in a place where you have also really intensive environmental review and then litigation over the environmental impact reports and everything, is it- it\u2019s creating a ton of business for lawyers on both sides of an individual project.<\/p>\n<p>And I\u2019m kind of curious what your discussions with other land use attorneys about some of these ideas look like, because obviously\u2026 Not all lawyers. There are a lot of lawyers who are YIMBYs and who want these things to be more planned and rationalized, but I think there\u2019s also sometimes a professional inclination to think that the solution is always more process and more adversarial contestation to resolve a particular point of disagreement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>I mean, this is a fun question. I thought you were going to say my own class interests as a homeowner, but there\u2019s that too, also as a lawyer. So as you all know, it\u2019s kind of hard. I mean, we have better tools today than we used to, but it\u2019s kind of hard to measure zoning restrictiveness across jurisdictions for a variety of reasons, like definitional and otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>And there was a Brookings paper, I want to say like 2012, by Jonathan Rothwell that I cite all the time, that I really enjoy, that I think is really interesting, that talks about school test-score gaps and zoning. But for our instant purposes, I\u2019ll just mention it, because the way he measures zoning restrictiveness is by looking at land use lawyers per capita, and Connecticut comes out number one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Ned Resnikoff:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>That\u2019s amazing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. Connecticut comes out number one on zoning restrictiveness and also on school test-score gaps, and look at Jonathan\u2019s paper to learn more. So yeah, here in Connecticut, yes, there\u2019s a lot of people making good money off of this crazy process, which I, uh, you know- not infrequently describe as a full employment program for lawyers and planners.<\/p>\n<p>The land use lawyers who I tend to spend a lot of my time with, including members of the private Connecticut bar, nevertheless think the process is crazy. And I think, for us anyways, there\u2019s just lots of other things we could do. There\u2019s a lot of lawyering to be done for decent lawyers. So I\u2019m not concerned about the possibility of putting myself out of business. I think it\u2019s really hard, unless you\u2019re super self-interested and really enjoy driving to far-flung suburbs of Connecticut at 1:00 AM, which is part of how I made a living before I became a full-time teacher.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s really hard to look at this and say, \u201cYeah, this is how it should be.\u201d Right? So I suppose it\u2019s possible to be selfish enough to be sitting through a five-hour-long public hearing on 67 units of affordable housing and knowing that there are four more meetings to come, and think like, \u201cThis is great, because I get to bill for every minute.\u201d But it\u2019s not in my nature and, frankly, just not in the nature of\u2026 Most of the people I\u2019ll talk to will say, \u201cThis doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense,\u201d even though their self-interest, even more than mine, is in having these meetings happen.<\/p>\n<p>And I don\u2019t think a better process necessarily means that there would be less stuff for lawyers and planners to do. I think it would just happen at a more sensible point in the process. But you might be right that this is against my self-interest, and that\u2019s entirely possible, but nevertheless\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. I mean, obviously, there\u2019s a little bit of self-selection, but I feel like most of the land use attorneys that I\u2019ve worked with have been eagerly, like, \u201cYes, these institutions are insane. These rules are nuts. We need to reform this.\u201d I know it would mean fewer billable hours on one margin of my work, but I don\u2019t know. Most people, I don\u2019t think, are quite so cynically sort of positioned with their work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. I mean, I will also say that before I started teaching full-time, I did land use, but I was mostly a dirt lawyer. I mean, I was just like an all-purpose real estate lawyer, and I would have been thrilled to spend less time on the land use and more time on deals. Right? That would have been good too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>This is a big-picture question that I\u2019ve been wanting to ask, and you touch on it a little bit in the paper, but the culture within planning still very much seems to be, participation, always good. The more, the better, as much as possible. We\u2019ll think about the form that that takes, and, \u201cOh, yeah. We know that certain crazy people show up, but that\u2019s okay. We just need to do as much of it as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of the things I think that might guide, I think, a lot of your recommendations is, what is the point of public participation? Why do it? You have a lot of great recommendations on when we do it, how should we do it. But one of the things I think about that I\u2019m sure you have thoughts on as well is, what is the purpose? What are we trying to do? Presumably, we\u2019re not trying to get the crazies to come out and yell at our local civil servants and planning commissioners. What information are we trying to get? What are we trying to do? Are we trying to get buy-in for a project? Are we trying to learn something? How do you think about that?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. So I talk a lot about this in the paper, and I think it might be section two, which\u2026 I don\u2019t remember what it is. But I don\u2019t actually think that we\u2019re trying to serve a function of the type that you\u2019re describing. I think we\u2019re trying to correct historical ills that we trace back to a failure to listen to communities and people in the past.<\/p>\n<p>I think what we are doing, frankly, is being very conservative. I think that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing with public participation, as we\u2019re saying, \u201cLet\u2019s do no harm. Let\u2019s do no harm. So let\u2019s go talk to as many people as we can and make sure that we\u2019re not doing any harm.\u201d And I, as a lawyer even, am very sympathetic to that. Just had a conversation with somebody yesterday, where they said, \u201cWhy are you calling that person?\u201d And I said, \u201cOh, I\u2019m going to call that person to make sure I didn\u2019t screw up. I want to make sure that I didn\u2019t miss something.\u201d And they\u2019re like, \u201cDo you think you missed something?\u201d I was like, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think I missed anything, but if I did, this person will know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And I think that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing. I think we\u2019re trying to minimize harm, and we\u2019re just making sure we checked with everybody. I think that\u2019s part of why we do public participation, because we have a lot of scars, physical, visible scars in the built environment and in our communities, where we wonder all the time, like, \u201cHow did we get that so wrong? What did we fail to do? How did we mess that one up?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So part of what we\u2019re trying to do with public participation is just check with folks. I think the other reason, and this is sort of cynical, but I think the other thing we\u2019re trying to do is avoid some kind of hard questions, because some of the questions are really hard. They require some knowledge of science and engineering and environmental questions that most of us are not well-trained or well-equipped to think through.<\/p>\n<p>They require, again, anticipating and trying to imagine certain counterfactuals that we really don\u2019t know the answer to, \u201cWhat would happen if we built this road this way versus building it that way?\u201d And there aren\u2019t enough people who are smart enough about some of those things to really think them through. It is easier to say, \u201cHey, you know what? The people who live there already know the best. Let\u2019s just ask them,\u201d without then interrogating whether that\u2019s even true.<\/p>\n<p>So I guess part of the motivating worry is that we\u2019re not doing public participation for the right reasons, or doing them for some of these reasons that are not coming out of bad intentions, but are not necessarily the right reasons to do it this way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Ned Resnikoff:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>I know we wanted to talk a little bit about Connecticut, and you referenced the craziness of the Connecticut land use process. So I want to dig into that in a second. But first, I have a very important non-land use Connecticut question for you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Okay.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Ned Resnikoff:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>As a born and raised Connecticutian who\u2019s now in exile in California, we all know that New Haven, Connecticut, has the best pizza in the country. What\u2019s your New Haven pizza spot?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>This is a good question, not a simple answer. So I am a Modern person. That said, my family moved from East Rock neighborhood of New Haven \u2013 this is really minutia \u2013 to Wooster Square, which is the heart of Connecticut\u2019s pizza-ness, about 10 years ago. And we are creatures of walkability and proximity, and we go to Pepe\u2019s more often than anywhere else. It\u2019s too close not to. But probably, I\u2019m a Modern, Sally\u2019s, Pepe\u2019s person, if I\u2019m honest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Ned Resnikoff:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, there\u2019s no wrong answer here. I think I\u2019m more of a Pepe\u2019s person, but Modern is obviously totally respectable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>When my best friend in high school moved from New Haven to Lexington, he visited me in New York, and we had to make a trip up to New Haven, and we went to Modern. Yeah. As a nobody with no dog in this fight either way, yeah, it actually probably was some of the best pizza I\u2019ve ever had.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>I\u2019m glad to hear it. You\u2019re not allowed to say differently in current company, I think.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>So let\u2019s talk about Connecticut a little bit. Connecticut, famously affordable, famously equitable, no zoning restriction issues there. Is that a good assessment, Anika, of the situation?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Somebody once described Connecticut to me as like a walking, living, breathing Fair Housing Act violation. I think that\u2019s probably about right. It\u2019s an interesting spot. I think that Connecticut has a lot to recommend it, but we are set up in such a way as to create extremely hyperlocal decision-making around land use, around transportation, and around schools.<\/p>\n<p>And as a result, sort of predictably, we are hypersegregated, and we do it in ways that your average Connecticut resident will valorize as small-town living. But we\u2019re not really a small-town state for the most part. We are a largely suburban state of New York and Boston and, to some degree, the smaller cities in Connecticut, and we really epitomize the ways in which suburban exclusion has developed in this country, unfortunately.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>But it does seem like it\u2019s working from a pretty low baseline, which, in California, we sympathize with. But it does seem like there\u2019s a lot of discourse in Connecticut, and there\u2019s a lot of reform energy in a way that there isn\u2019t in many states. Do you want to talk about some of the stuff that\u2019s happening?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>I mean, as I understand, there is already a 40B-style mechanism in Connecticut.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>There is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>I don\u2019t know if you want to explain how that works.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. So 40B is a reference to a Massachusetts law that\u2026 40B has been around since 1969. So it\u2019s sort of Mount Laurel era. And the idea is that if an insufficient percentage of your town\u2019s housing is considered affordable as defined in statute, there is an easier mechanism by which an affordable housing developer can get approvals.<\/p>\n<p>So I\u2019ll speak to the Connecticut version of it, just because Connecticut is a little bit simpler than the Massachusetts version, and also because I know it a lot better because I actually do it. So the Connecticut statute, which passed in 1989, says that if your town has fewer than 10% of its units are affordable, again, as defined in the statute, then a developer, any developer, nonprofit, for-profit, governmental, that\u2019s looking to build something that is at least 30% affordable, again, as defined in the statute. So you\u2019ve got to deed restrict 30% of your units for 40 years. There\u2019s a mix in the statute between 60% and 80% of AMI, then you are entitled to whatever zoning approvals you might need.<\/p>\n<p>So variances, conditional use permits, site plan, whatever, so long as your proposal doesn\u2019t create a hazard for health and safety. The statute\u2019s way longer than that, but that\u2019s essentially the short of it. 8-30g has been around in Connecticut, with some minor revisions at various points in time, for 35 years. And to the extent that there\u2019s multifamily housing in some of the tonier suburbs in Connecticut that have been built in that time, it\u2019s probably because of 8-30g.<\/p>\n<p>Either somebody filed an 8-30g lawsuit, or somebody threatened to, or a town was trying to avoid the implications of 8-30g and built something itself. There are some suburban housing authorities that basically that\u2019s why they exist, is to do that. And so, it\u2019s been a useful tool. Obviously not a solution, not a complete solution, but it\u2019s resulted in thousands of units in towns that never would have permitted them otherwise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Ned Resnikoff:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. Something that I think is important to this conversation that people outside of Connecticut often don\u2019t know is, I think people tend to\u2026 If they have any thoughts about Connecticut at all, which, on the West Coast, people often do not, people in New York or other areas, for example, might think of Connecticut as consisting more or less exclusively of Yale University and Greenwich County, like very wealthy suburbs of New York.<\/p>\n<p>But, I mean, for a small state, there\u2019s a lot more to it. Right? So you also have these often very impoverished postindustrial towns, I mean, including the state capital, Hartford, where I think the median income is something like $35,000 a year. I mean, you\u2019ve talked a little bit about some of the exclusionary jurisdictions, but, I mean, what does land use politics look like in your Hartford or your Bridgeport or Willimantic?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>That\u2019s a great question. Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of Connecticut, those urban centers, are exactly what you said. They\u2019re postindustrial, basically old factory towns that had their own kind of\u2026 Some of them made hats and others made carriages. And in New Haven, we made guns. So did Hartford, actually. They\u2019ve got this rich kind of history, were all, through the Great Migration, really important hubs for Black families leaving the South to come up north. Those were the kind of welcoming spots that ballooned in population during that time, and then those were the spots that largely white Connecticut residents just fled from in the postwar period.<\/p>\n<p>I know New Haven best. So New Haven today is about 30% white, 30% Black, 30% Latin, and about 10% either Asian American and whatnot. So these are quite diverse places that are a lot more than wealthy exclusion plus the Ivy League. There\u2019s more to them than that. There\u2019s 10 or so of these smaller cities in the state. The Hartfords and the Bridgeports and the New Havens of the world have been quite happy to permit the construction of this not insignificant amount of multifamily housing over the last 10 years, where anybody has wanted to build that.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody wanted to before. I mean, I can tell the story of the first apartment building that got permitted in New Haven in recent memory, in downtown New Haven, and that then kind of demonstrated there was a market for this thing. So at least over the period of time where there\u2019s been private market interest in building things here, the city has been pretty open to having people build things here. That has not necessarily extended to the kind of toniest, single-family neighborhoods in town.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, we\u2019re no different than any other city in the country where those fairly well-off, single-family neighborhoods\u2026 I mean, much of Connecticut, a ridiculous amount of Connecticut is known for minimum two-acre lots. That doesn\u2019t exist in the city of New Haven or the city of Hartford. But you do have neighborhoods where the existing built environment is largely a single-family house on a quarter acre, and people are pretty resistant to changing that fabric inside of those neighborhoods.<\/p>\n<p>It has not been completely smooth sailing to even do an ADU ordinance in the city of New Haven. The first version of it had an owner-occupancy requirement and some other requirements that resulted in basically zero units being built in the first couple years of its existence. So I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a very different story from a lot of other places in the country.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019ll sound familiar to pretty much anybody who\u2019s tried to do land use reform inside of an urban environment, which is to say that, \u201cYeah. Do you want to build an apartment building on what\u2019s currently a parking lot, or do you want to convert an old existing factory? You\u2019re probably going to do pretty well in city hall, and people are going to be pretty welcoming. But those neighborhoods over there, they\u2019re not sure or ready to go there yet.\u201d It hasn\u2019t necessarily happened just yet, and I think that\u2019s probably true across all those places.<\/p>\n<p>And I don\u2019t know how to put it in a politics sort of way, but some of those neighborhoods in those cities, they have a chip on their shoulder about the Greenwiches of the world. They don\u2019t really feel like this is their problem to solve. They\u2019re like, \u201cGo get those people to do something before you come to me.\u201d I think that probably is some of the reigning ethos as well, and may be understandable, maybe, but definitely not helpful.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Well, to that first point, I mean, about many of the Connecticut cities being pretty welcoming to growth, I mean, Buffalo gets all the credit, but I think Hartford, basically, was the other city that eliminated parking requirements first at the same time. And so, a little bit of love for Hartford.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah. Absolutely. That\u2019s right. And New Haven\u2019s basically done it at this point. If you do, I think, 3% inclusionary anywhere in the city, you don\u2019t have to have any parking. I don\u2019t want to be misquoted on that, but I think that\u2019s basically where we\u2019re at right now. Not misquoted. People should look that up before they go on that, but I believe that that\u2019s where we\u2019re at.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah. Absolutely. No. I think that the Connecticut cities, for the most part, have been welcoming to growth. I don\u2019t know what the curve is. There is a place on the curve where people start to get resistant, right? And I think part of it is that desire by the private market to build in some of these places is still a relatively recent phenomenon. And I do think you do get to a point where people start to say, \u201cMaybe it\u2019s a little too much.\u201d And I can see a little bit of that happening here in New Haven.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>But I think to your point, I mean, even in the best of circumstances, many of those more exclusionary suburbs, there\u2019s got to be more state action or state oversight, I would assume. Right? And I\u2019m wondering what-<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>There\u2019s no way to do it otherwise. Yeah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Nolan Gray:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Yeah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>There\u2019s no solution to the problem here in Connecticut that does not involve significant state action. And to date, the things that the state legislature has been willing to do have all included local opt-in provisions. We don\u2019t need to pass statutes with local opt-in provisions, because the whole, entire, stinking Zoning Enabling Act is one big local opt-in provision. Right?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not sure what it\u2019s going to take for us to get over that hump. People ask me all the time, like, \u201cDo you think we\u2019re going to solve this problem? Do you think this is going to pass?\u201d And I think, \u201cYeah, we\u2019re going to do some stuff.\u201d I think the question is, how bad do things have to get before a majority of our state legislature feels motivated to act? And we can point to California as to like, \u201cDon\u2019t let it get quite that bad before you all feel motivated to act.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When 8-30g passed in 1989, it came out of a blue-ribbon commission study that was sparked by the housing affordability crisis of the late \u201980s, and 8-30g was one of 10 or 12 recommendations in that report. It was the only one that really came into being in a way that then had impact. And I do worry about that. Real estate is cyclical. Our understanding of these problems oftentimes comes up once in a generation. We get an opportunity to do something, and what is it that we\u2019re going to be willing to stomach and willing to do?<\/p>\n<p>Today, in Connecticut, we\u2019ve got a governor from Greenwich, a largely suburban legislature, and they are a housing committee of the legislature that\u2019s largely made up of landlords. We\u2019re not well-situated to take really serious action of the sort that\u2019s really required here in the state with what is oftentimes the lowest vacancy rate in the country, and which was recently cited as being the worst state in the country for renters based on various sorts of census data. We have to do something, but we have a really gnarly political environment, again, very suburban, very homeowner- and very landlord-led, that we need to tease through.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Ned Resnikoff:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Well, that might be a good place to end. So, Anika, thank you so much for joining us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"name\">Anika Singh Lemar:<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"answer\"><p>Thank you again for having me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this episode, M. 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