DEMAND MORE SUPPLY
A new billboard recently cropped up on the I-80 with a simple message: Home Prices High, Build More Supply. Just to drive their point home, the group which put the ad there displayed their name prominently alongside this message, Demand More Supply. Playing off the econ 101 concept of supply and demand, this appears to be the newest iteration of the YIMBY movement in Utah. Previously found in the pages of Building Salt Lake, in the advocacy of the Rio Grande Plan supporters, and in the halls of power through the developer–oriented policies of the local, regional, and state government, this newest formation further reveals the unity found among the developer capitalists and those aligned towards their interests. Demand More Supply is a sleek propaganda project, using graphic design and massaged language to frame the political goals of profit-seeking developers as simply the facts of the current housing crisis. Real data such as the enormous rise in median home prices in Utah are paired with the forgone conclusion that this rise is because “there are not enough homes.” No justification is given, just a reference to a report made by the developer-affiliated Ken C. Gardener Institute with a broken link. The rest of the website is basic but outlines their political agenda: frame the crisis of housing affordability as a crisis of private production of housing, appeal to the authority of experts (more on this below), and preserve “the American dream” of single family homeownership. A video embedded on the page summarizes their approach nicely, uncritically parroting that new home construction necessarily leads to more affordable homes and simultaneously spurs economic development — something, the creators claim, “we can all agree is something we want for our children.” (economic development being the capitalist class’s preferred term for its own continued accumulation of profit)
The policies given offer nothing new; the five “solutions” they support can be easily summarized as deregulate capitalist developers and subsidize their profits:
|
“Solutions” |
Put Clearly |
|
Zoning Reforms |
Deregulate Capital |
|
Creative Solutions |
Deregulate Capital |
|
Public-Private Partnerships |
Subsidize Profits |
|
Incentives |
Subsidize Profits |
|
Cut Red Tape |
Deregulate Capital |
But none of this is particularly new, capital has long depended on public subsidy and deregulation to facilitate ongoing profits, and the history of moneyed interests astro-turfing faux public support is storied also. What makes this effort a worthwhile case study in Utah’s political economy is the organization behind Demand More Supply, Utah Workforce Housing Advocacy (UWHA).
Despite its name, there are no workers on UWHA’s leadership team. Of the 12 individuals listed on their Executive and Policy Boards, 11 hold leadership roles at private firms (including 2 CEOs) and/or public institutions and the 12th is a lawyer currently in the Utah House of Representatives. One member is a controversial developer, another a mortgage loan company owner, there’s a Utah Transit Authority trustee, two public planning institution directors, two private planning contractors, and another two Zions bank current/ex executives; it’s a who’s-who of real-estate interests and their backers in the planning world, a clear alignment of the local forces of and for Finance-Insurance-Real-Estate (FIRE) capital.
The use of the term “workforce” is yet another indication of their alignment; in outlining their vision, they bemoan that the lack of affordable housing is making it “difficult for local businesses to attract and retain the workforce necessary for sustained economic growth.” Will someone please think of the poor business owners? It is not the households burdened by rent (45% of renting households in Salt Lake County were rent-burdened in 2023, 20% paid over half their income), nor even the quarter of mortgage-holders in Salt Lake County who paid over 30% of their income in housing costs that UWHA is concerned with. No, their interests are clear, support profits in the FIRE industries, and if other capitalists profit too, all the better. Their supposed claim to support “workforce housing” is itself a farce, seeing as even the developer who sits on their Executive Board only allocated a mandated 10% of a recent housing development to “affordable housing,” a clear message that it isn’t affordable housing for existing or future residents that they’re interested in building, but higher profit margins on their investments.
Despite being yet another formation for developer capitalists to further their interests, Utah Workforce Housing Advocacy is also an indictment of urban planning in Utah. Half of the UWHA board members have ties to the planning practice and it’s institutions; 3 have taught at the University of Utah’s City and Metropolitan Planning Department, 2 have been presidents of the American Planning Associations Utah Chapter, and 4 have served in Regional, County, and/or Municipal planning roles. The Argentinian Journal Cuadernos de Negación has asserted that “urban space is developed by the ruling class” and that urban planners, like the police, are “producers of that space.” Through the microcosm of the UWHA leadership, this is borne out for Utah; major figures in the planning practice and institutions they lead have aligned themselves fully with capitalist urbanism, personified in the developers they subsidize and the FIRE executives they scheme with.
For a practice so full of lofty rhetoric but ultimately imbued with such poverty that they would relegate themselves to dutifully supporting society’s exploiters, planning’s engagement with the housing question can only be understood in light of capital’s endless drive to accumulate. Whether through the exploitation of labor by developers in construction, the levying of rents and loans in exchange for housing, or enabling other capitalists to draw from a newly concentrated pool of workers, conveniently situated in housing that demands such high costs that they are compelled to sell their time and ability for wages, such is the reproduction of everyday life. Workforce housing, then, reveals itself to be a twofold term; while its use by capital suggests accessibility for the working class, its true nature is that of creating every more compulsion in the lives of workers to better facilitate their exploitation.
Space has been reduced to a thing by Capital, and like everything in relation to Capital, it encloses and conceals social relations. (Cuadernos de Negación)
What I’ve aimed to explore here, beyond simply the truth behind a billboard, is a representative part of the political economy of Salt Lake, which I hope further clarifies the forces arrayed against the struggle for a society free of class. As with any analysis of the housing question, it remains true that, in the words of geography Phil Neel, “any real solution to this problem requires violating the sanctity of property,” something the working class does not yet have the power to do. Building working class power to take on private property at the root is no trivial act, but insofar as the policies of groups like UWHA further the gentrification of existing working class neighborhoods, the mandate is clear – struggle against the capitalists, gentrifiers, and capital-aligned planners who would seek to take over your neighborhood and turn it over to the highest bidder – struggle against the landlords and banks who today exploit you and demand you pay them for the simple fact that they “own” your home. To fight these forces and win we do not only need the power to confront them in the workplace, in the home, and in the streets, but also an understanding of who and what we are fighting so that our attacks hit hard and that our gains are their losses. Our goal must be to seize the city and act to “appropriate collectively in order to abolish property, not afterwards or immediately, but in the same act.” (Cuadernos de Negación)
Cuadernos de Negación Number 7, Recorrido por el Territorio Capitalista