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The Evidence Standard March 2019

The Evidence Standard

Speech and Debate provides a meaningful and educational experience to all who are involved. We, as educators in the community, believe that it is our responsibility to provide resources that uphold the foundation of the Speech and Debate activity. Champion Briefs, its employees, managers, and associates take an oath to uphold the following Evidence Standard:

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and vision of this activity.

These seven statements, while simple, represent the complex notion of what it means to advance students’ understanding of the world around them, as is the purpose of educators.

Champion Briefs 4 Letter from the Editor March 2019

Letter from the Editor

The March resolution for Public Forum Debate is “Resolved: The United States should promote the development of market rate housing in urban neighborhoods.” Many debaters may feel a sense of topic fatigue, as this topic is strikingly similar to the pharmaceutical topic that was chosen for debate in November. However, this topic has a number of differences, mainly due to the uniqueness of the American housing market. I personally am excited for this topic because it means my students will further research the economic concepts that they struggled with in November. Furthermore, this topic is incredibly timely given that rents are spiraling out of control in many cities across the continental U.S. Overall, I applaud this topic selection because I think it has a high potential to be an educational experience for both competitors and judges who may not be as familiar with the world of economics. From a strategic standpoint, this topic is very straightforward. There are two groups of stakeholders to consider; the landlords and the renters. Intuitively, most will prioritize the renter seeing as they likely have less leverage and less economic stability. Much of the literature surrounds the effects on the renter, and the potential for quality and price changes under rent control policies. On the other hand, there are plenty of articles that discuss the rights of the landlord, and the change of a property owner’s incentives under a price ceiling. The best way to debate this topic will be finding a way to weigh between the countervailing interests of these two groups while still benefiting all stakeholders in the process. Ultimately, while many of you may have groaned at the sight of another economics topic, I personally think that it’s a great opportunity to learn. Part of the reason so many people dislike these topics is because they’re complex and hard to explain, but as a teacher, that’s largely why I like this topic. Challenging topics make you a better researcher, a better writer, and a better speaker because they force you out of your comfort zone. I urge you to step outside your comfort zone this month, like every month, and if you do I’m sure you’ll excel throughout March. As always, best of luck from the team here at Champion Briefs. We’ll be rooting for you all month!

Michael Norton Editor-in-Chief

Champion Briefs 5 Table of Contents March 2019

Table of Contents

The Evidence Standard ...... 4

Letter from the Editor ...... 5

Table of Contents ...... 6

Topic Analyses ...... 8 Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda ...... 9 Topic Analysis by Belén Mella ...... 17 Topic Analysis by Michael Norton ...... 27

General Information ...... 34

Pro Arguments with Con Responses ...... 46 PRO: Rent Control Creates Shortages ...... 47 A/2: Rent Control Creates Shortages ...... 51 PRO: The Poor Cannot Access Affordable Housing ...... 54 A/2: The Poor Cannot Access Affordable Housing ...... 58 PRO: Rent Control hurts economic growth ...... 61 A/2: Rent Control hurts economic growth ...... 65 PRO: Market rate housing increases school funding ...... 68 A/2: Market rate housing increases school funding ...... 72 PRO: Market rate housing increases inclusive gentrification ...... 76 A/2: Market rate housing increases inclusive gentrification ...... 80 PRO: Market rate housing increases funding for welfare programs ...... 84 A/2: Market rate housing increases funding for welfare programs ...... 88 PRO: Market rate housing encourages property development ...... 92 A/2: Market rate housing encourages property development ...... 96 PRO: Market rate housing reduces crime ...... 100 A/2: Market rate housing protects the poor from illegal eviction ...... 104 PRO: Market rate housing creates a path for social mobility ...... 108 A/2: Market rate housing creates a path for social mobility ...... 113 PRO: Market rate housing is key to solving the housing crisis ...... 117 A/2: Market rate housing is key to solving the housing crisis ...... 122 PRO: Market rate housing alleviates displacement ...... 125 A/2: Market rate housing alleviates displacement ...... 130 PRO: Rent Controls significantly hurt minority groups ...... 134 A/2: Rent Controls significantly hurt minority groups ...... 139 PRO: Rent Control Undermines Property Rights ...... 142

Champion Briefs 6 Table of Contents March 2019

A/2: Rent Control Undermines Property Rights ...... 145 PRO: Rent Control Leads to Property Deterioration ...... 147 A/2: Rent Control Leads to Property Deterioration ...... 150 PRO: Rent Control Unfairly Targets Landlords ...... 152 A/2: Rent Control Unfairly Targets Landlords ...... 155

Con Arguments with Pro Responses ...... 157 CON: Market Rates housing causes segregation ...... 158 A/2: Market Rates housing causes segregation ...... 163 CON: Rent Control decreases housing supply ...... 167 A/2: Rent Control decreases housing supply ...... 171 CON: Rent Control benefits communities ...... 175 A/2: Rent Control benefits communities ...... 179 CON: Rent Control rewards luxury housing development ...... 183 A/2: Rent Control rewards luxury housing development ...... 187 CON: Market rate housing leads to gentrification ...... 191 A/2: Market rate housing leads to gentrification ...... 195 CON: Market rate housing allows landlords to significantly increase rent costs...... 199 A/2: Market rate housing allows landlords to significantly increase rent costs...... 204 CON: Market rate housing leaves room for price discrimination ...... 208 A/2: Market rate housing leaves room for price discrimination ...... 211 CON: Rent control is a step towards a right to housing ...... 214 A/2: Rent control is a step towards a right to housing ...... 217 CON: Rent control is a step toward racial justice...... 219 A/2: Rent control is a step towards racial justice ...... 222 CON: Rent control solves homelessness ...... 224 A/2: Rent control solves homelessness ...... 227 CON: Rent control is a health issue ...... 229 A/2: Rent control is a health issue ...... 232 CON: Rent control is constitutional ...... 234 A/2: Rent control is constitutional ...... 237 CON: Rent control hurts artists ...... 239 A/2: Rent control hurts artists ...... 241 CON: Rent control decreases poverty ...... 243 A/2: Rent control decreases poverty ...... 245

Champion Briefs 7

Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda March 2019

Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda

Resolved: The United States should promote the development of market rate housing in urban neighborhoods.

Introduction

Affordable housing is an important issue for millions of Americans. It intersects issues of poverty, urban development, and social justice. Rent prices in many parts of the country increase by double digits every year, especially in metropoles such as San Francisco and New

York. This has the effect of generating a crisis over the future of poor city dwellers who face the prospect of being evicted from their homes. This topic forces us to consider public policy at its most tangible: What should the goals of a just society be, and what policies should we use to implement those goals?

The March topic is smaller scale than the past few months, mostly pertaining to nationals’ qualifiers. This creates a very different atmosphere than in debates which cater to a national circuit audience. Teams will be rewarded for making intuitive, persuasive arguments.

At the same time, this topic affords debaters to learn about a topic area which will probably intersect their lives at some point in the future— the housing market. Most students will rent or own an apartment at some point in their lives, so the March topic has an unusual amount of real-world applicability. These two factors mean that this topic is especially disposed towards truth-seeking. Debaters should concentrate less time and energy thinking of unique and convoluted approaches to the resolution, and more time considering getting to the heart of the

Champion Briefs 9 Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda March 2019

issue. Learning about housing will confer benefits beyond the purview of the resolution, it may inform many decisions we make in our futures.

Tournament Considerations

March is a less intense month of PF competition. Most of the tournaments held in march are smaller tournaments with more local draws. Typically, these are either state qualifier, national qualifier, or state championship tournaments. These tournaments have much smaller fields and host a far more local cadre of judges than the national invitational tournaments which precede March.

The key to doing well at local tournaments is judge adaptation. This means understanding the types of people who are judging, what their political leanings are, and what their debate experience is. Often times this will mean subordinating the desire to make complex, difficult to understand arguments in favor of simplicity. It is easy to predict the judge pool in most local tournaments because the amount of schools coming is so low. Most of the time inexperienced parent judges will be overrepresented. This might initially be aggravating to debaters used to competing on the national circuit, but in reality, it is cause for celebration.

Consistent judging, of one form or another, means predictability. Debaters should use this as an opportunity to practice intensely with the goal of persuading the types of judges which are represented in their local district and hone their communication skills.

Because most tournaments are local, March is an excellent month to trade evidence with schools outside of the immediate area. Most teams are willing to swap prep because there is no chance of the information being used against them. Many schools will trade with more

Champion Briefs 10 Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda March 2019

partners than usual, even teams that they do not have extensive prior relationships with. March is a great month to reach out to friends and schools across the country which you might have met earlier in the year and ask for a little help. Trading also helps offset the burden of preparing for Harvard in late February, all the March Tournaments, and TOC in April. By dividing the labor needed, schools can focus on the tournaments which they really want to do well at, while not sacrificing too much of the rest.

Strategy Considerations

The resolution fundamentally asks two questions to the debaters: (1) What goals should our society aspire to, in terms of housing, and (2) what are tactically effective measures which we can take to achieve those goals. These two questions are at the heart of any public policy.

The job of policymakers is to take a moral stance on behalf of their constituents, and then use policy to effectively achieve those stances. If either part of the equation is missing, the policymaker fails. If the goals articulated by the policymaker are bad (“We should increase poverty”), their policies will be undesirable. If their tactics are bad (“We should decrease poverty by waging foreign wars”), their policies will be useless. Good policymakers have good goals, and good tactics to match them. In the March topic debaters need to ask themselves what the moral goals of affordable housing are, and then whether or not likely affordable housing schemes will deliver upon those promises.

What are the goals of affordable housing? On a surface level, this seems like a softball question. The goal of affordable housing is to increase the access of housing to low income

Americans. But this question is deceptively simple. Debaters should think about whether or not

Champion Briefs 11 Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda March 2019

housing policy should protect the right of a status quo group to remain in their home- neighborhood, for instance. Many argue that the unique character of a community is worth preserving, while others argue that doing so comes at the cost of economic efficiency. What is the relationship between the provision of low-cost housing and economic growth? Is the goal of affordable housing merely the provision of shelter, or is it something larger (like poverty reduction, reducing racism, etc.). Debaters need to consider what the ultimate objectives of housing policy are in order to set up and defend a hierarchy of impacts which their case supports. This is important because both sides may not have the same conception of moral justice: one side might argue that the goal of public policy is to provide the needy with shelter, and the other might argue that the goal is general economic prosperity. Being able to rationalize and sort through these competing moral arguments is critical for winning debates which cover public policy issues.

Is affordable housing (or market rate housing, by inverse) in urban neighborhoods a tactically effective solution to the problems at hand? This question is also deceptively simple.

First, teams need to decide upon what would happen in an affirmative world. What would be the specific political changes from the status quo? There are many non-market rate housing policies in place, would they all be instantly repealed? Rent control is the most clear example of a policy which prevents housing prices from meeting market equilibriums, but it is by no means the only example. Everything from zoning laws which restrict the types of development in certain neighborhoods, to property taxes, to housing vouchers can have some type of distorting effect upon the housing market. It seems extreme to say that every single policy would be repealed upon affirming the resolution (a world which rolls-back all property taxes is nearly

Champion Briefs 12 Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda March 2019

inconceivable). Debaters much decide what types of implementations are realistic and feasible.

This is crucial because a case built upon addressing a set of policies which are unlikely to be implicated by the resolution verges on useless. Winning the battle over which types of policies will be enacted or redacted is almost as important as winning the link-level debate itself.

Finally, debaters need to examine whether or not those policies effectively achieve the just moral aims which were discussed earlier. This step is ironically what many think of as the first step of preparing for the topic, but it is the last. Debaters need to use statistics and examples to make the case that their goals are effectively achieved by the policies which are likely to be implemented on the affirmation or negation of the resolution. Remember that the effectiveness of any public policy only exists within its context of goals and political realities.

Affirmative Argumentation

Most of the affirmative arguments will contend that affordable housing policies are a poor alternative to market rate housing because they provide bad public policy outcomes for low income Americans. In practice, this most likely means decreasing the supply of housing to low income areas and increasing the number of low-quality units which poor Americans are forced to live in.

The first argument is one of the most common endorsements of market rate housing.

The idea is that affordable housing policies are well intentioned but counterproductive. The argument is most often made in response to rent control policies, which place caps on the amount of rent which landlords can charge, and limits the yearly amount which rent can increase by. These policies are intended on keeping the level of rent affordable for low income

Champion Briefs 13 Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda March 2019

Americans who are in danger of being priced out of urban areas due to gentrification. Cities like

New York have had rent control for many years, and recently, debate has begun in places like

Chicago about the expansion of such policies to more areas in order to combat a fresh wave of gentrification.

Many economists (over 90 percent) argue that rent control is not an efficient way of reducing housing prices. This is because of the basic laws of supply and demand. As the price of housing goes down, the amount demanded goes up and the supply of housing goes down. This makes intuitive sense. People are more willing to buy or rent houses at lower prices, and landlords are less willing to make the costly investments associated with developing properties when they stand to see less payoffs. As such, the net result is far fewer housing units built in rent-controlled areas, and an increase in prices for areas just outside of rent controlled areas to compensate for the lost money.

Detractors also argue that capping rent prices creates low quality housing and stymies economic growth. This is because in order to cut costs to make up for lost rent revenue, landlords cut services and maintenance to their buildings. This leads to persistent lack of renovations, unsafe conditions, and negligence for those in affordable housing units. As housing deteriorates, the neighborhood also suffers. Lower housing prices mean less property taxes for the government to fund public schools and social services. It also means fewer new businesses, to serve middle class patrons. Many argue that economic growth is the best way to reduce overall poverty and provide low income Americans with high paying jobs. If so, then the government should focus less of providing more units of affordable housing and more on the social services and private sector investment needed to stimulate the economy. By contrast,

Champion Briefs 14 Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda March 2019

market rate housing allows for a sufficient supply of new housing units to be created and maintained to meet existing demand. There are problems with access, to be sure, but on the whole expanding the amount of housing units created will lower long-term prices by putting more landlords in competition with each other. No solution is perfect, but the affirmative is at least not counterproductive.

Negative Argumentation

The Negative side has the benefit of being able to make the intuitive argument that the market price of housing is simply too high for many Americans to afford. In order to stop massive displacement from rocking American cities, the negative will argue that affordable housing is a necessary step for the government to take.

The last twenty years have seen a revitalization of American cities. During the mid to late 20th century, many cities declined in wealth and population as middle-class American moved to the suburbs. This had the effect of concentrating poverty in dense urban cores, where property and commuting prices were far lower than outside of the cities. However, recently this trend has been reversing. Many Americans are moving back to major cities and bringing high property prices with them. This puts an incredible strain on the lower income

Americans, who need to choose between paying increased rent prices or leaving their homes.

Even leaving does not alleviate the financial stress because as poor Americans move out of their homes, commuting prices to access city-jobs increase dramatically. The overall effect has been to create a crisis in the housing situation of many lower income Americans.

The negative should think of nuanced arguments which anticipate the affirmative stance that rent control is counterproductive. For instance, negative teams should consider the

Champion Briefs 15 Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda March 2019

difference between rent control and rent freezes. Rent control sets specific prices which landlords cannot exceed, while rent freezes slow the pace at which landlords can raise prices.

Many argue that rent freezes are much less economically harmful than rent control and give lower income Americans time and breathing room needed to adjust to higher prices. Housing vouchers are another alternative to the status quo which might not trigger the same harmful impacts as rent control. Housing vouchers are government subsidies to low income Americans which can be used towards paying one’s rent. Because they operated differently than traditional rent control, many argue that they sidestep the worst market distorting effects. The negative has the advantage of being the status quo. This means being able to rely on data for existing affordable housing programs, and being able to point to examples where such programs support thousands of Americans. Try to use this information to argue that affordable housing is more complex than what the affirmative would have the judge believe, and that many of these programs are worth protecting.

Good luck!

About Jakob Urda

Jakob grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He attends the University of Chicago where he hopes to receive a BA in Political Science in 2019, and is interested in security studies and political economy. Jakob debate for Stuyvesant High School where he won Blake, GMU, Ridge,

Scarsdale, Columbia, the NCFL national championship, and amassed 11 bids. He coached the winners of the NCFL national tournament, Harvard, and Blake.

Champion Briefs 16 Topic Analysis by Belén Mella March 2019

Topic Analysis by Belén Mella

Resolved: The United States should promote the development of market rate housing in urban neighborhoods.

Introduction

I grew up in Miami, Florida, a city known for its beaches, its cultural diversity, and its nightlife.

For the people who live there, it's also a city known for its exorbitant rents. Indeed, Miami ranks among the worst ten metro areas in the country for affordable housing, offering only 22 units for every 100 required to accommodate "extremely low-income renter households.1” A lack of affordable housing is a problem that plagues cities all across the nation, and this month, debaters will get into the weeds of the problem with Resolved: "The United States should promote the development of market-rate housing in urban neighborhoods." Though this debate topic doesn't seem as exciting as some others —and indeed, will require getting into the complex economics of local housing markets— it gets to the heart of incredibly important national issues. Rental prices are a determinant factor for homelessness, social mobility, and even economic growth. In a political system so often plagued by ideological polarization, this topic should be an exciting opportunity to look at proposed solutions with a fine-tooth comb to yield fruitful debates about what works.

1 Robertson, Linda. "Need a Basic 1 BR Apartment on Minimum Wage? You'll Have to Work - and Work - to Afford It." Miamiherald. March 15, 2018. Accessed February 12, 2019. https://www.miamiherald.com/real- estate/article205240999.html.

Champion Briefs 17 Topic Analysis by Belén Mella March 2019

Background

We can begin by parsing the resolution before delving into some big picture strategic considerations. The actor in the resolution —that is, the entity tasked with taking some sort of action— is the United States. The resolution doesn’t specify “the United States federal government” (as some others have in the past), but it also doesn’t say city governments. It may be worth looking into the specific powers and past actions of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the relevant Cabinet department at the federal level. That said, specific housing policies usually fall on local governments, so it’s possible that listing the United

States as the actor in the resolution just means that debaters should be considering what’s best for local governments across the nation.

Another term that requires some defining is "urban neighborhoods." The term "urban" gets thrown around a lot, so it's imperative that teams have a definition (in their backfiles if not in their cases) to make sure they're debating on the same page. Urban can also have a racialized meaning, so be cautious when using the term. According to the Census Bureau, urban areas

"represent densely developed territory, and encompass residential, commercial, and other non- residential urban land uses.2” Furthermore, “the Census Bureau delineates urban areas after each decennial census by applying specified criteria to decennial census and other data.” In short, whether a place is urban or not depends on how densely populated it is, with urban areas being those that have lots of people packed into a smaller space. Debaters are more than welcome to find their own definitions, but they should be prepared to defend why the judge

2 "Urban and Rural." Census Bureau QuickFacts. September 01, 2012. Accessed February 08, 2019. https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/urban-rural.html.

Champion Briefs 18 Topic Analysis by Belén Mella March 2019

should prefer their definition. For example, I think the Census Bureau definition is solid because it comes from a government source, and housing regulations stem from the government.

This brings me to the key concept in the resolution: "the development of market rate housing."

Some basic economics should clear up what this entails. Goods and services are sold in markets.

The price at which they're sold depends on the supply and the demand. In the market for housing, the supply is managed by landlords and comes from existing housing units and new constructions. The demand comes from anyone trying to buy or rent a house. Market rate housing is housing for which the market determines the price; in other words, it's housing for which the price is set by supply and demand, absent any interventions. Though this seems standard, there is actually a myriad of interventions that apply to the price of housing, many of which have been put in place to promote affordable housing in increasingly pricey areas. For example, in New York City, there are about twenty-two thousand apartments that are “rent controlled,” meaning there are regulations as to how much the landlords charge for rent.3

Though these were originally intended for apartments occupied by an “older, lower income population,” it also applies to the successors of these tenants since 1971.

Affordable housing is an increasingly serious problem in the United States. The literature on affordable housing usually sets the threshold somewhere around 30%: if a renter has to spend more than 30% of their income on rent, they are considered “rent-burdened4." Being

"rent-burdened" carries serious potential consequences. According to researchers from the

3 "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)." NYC. Accessed February 10, 2019. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/rentguidelinesboard/resources/rent-control.page. 4 Valle, Gaby Del. "How Rising Rents Contribute to Homelessness." Vox.com. December 14, 2018. Accessed February 12, 2019. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/14/18131047/homelessness-rent-burden-study.

Champion Briefs 19 Topic Analysis by Belén Mella March 2019

University of New Hampshire, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania, "cities, where a lot of people spend more than one-third of their income on rent, are more likely to experience homelessness crises." According to the Department of Housing and Urban

Development, there are over half a million homeless Americans, with some counts putting the figure even higher.

Even looking beyond the problem of homelessness, housing unaffordability stunts economic development. As Richard Florida explains for CityLab, in “today’s knowledge economy,” “innovation and growth stimulate the clustering of knowledge, talent, and ideas.5"

In other words, the very nature of our economic system necessitates the growth of cities. As the literature on this topic points out, though, living in cities gets expensive. Florida continues that "the economic consequences often mean unskilled workers are unable to access good jobs in these cities, which costs the economy a huge amount in lost productivity." In sum, whether it's to stem the homelessness problem, drive economic development, or any number of other aims, affordable housing is a key goal for the United States. This debate is about how to achieve it. Pro teams will argue in favor of market-rate housing, resting on the premise that the free market is the best way to provide plentiful homes, which will, in turn, keep prices low. Con teams will argue against market rate housing (and thus will indirectly --or directly-- be defending some sort of regulatory system), with their key premise being that while the free

5 Florida, Richard. "Housing Is Key to Improving the American Economy." CityLab. February 05, 2019. Accessed February 08, 2019. https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/02/affordable-housing-economy-city-zoning-home- prices/582022/.

Champion Briefs 20 Topic Analysis by Belén Mella March 2019

market might lead to the creation of homes, it won't make these units affordable enough for the people that need them most. Having set up the divide, we can dive into the arguments.

Pro Arguments

The basic Pro argument rests on the principles of supply and demand. When supply increases, prices go down. Therefore, if you want to build more affordable housing, you need to build more housing -- period. This entails lifting regulations that make construction unappealing or impossible, such as rent controls or zoning laws. Scott Wiener explains this perspective, writing that though some “describe all new market-rate housing as ‘luxury housing’ because it’s expensive,” the reason it’s expensive is that “for decades we haven’t built enough of it.6" He uses the example of California (an oft-cited state in this topic, as affordable housing is a major issue in the state): though the state would need to produce "about 180,000 units of housing a year to keep up with growth," in practice it is producing less than half of that number. As a result, tenants are forced to compete for this housing, which in turn drives prices up. Though some housing might be rent controlled or regulated, it isn't enough to accommodate everyone, so even low-income individuals are forced to compete in the free market, leading them to spend exorbitant amounts of money on rent or move out of the city altogether.

This is the main argument for Pro teams. How they deploy this argument depends on strategy.

It's worth noting that a key term in the resolution is "promote," which the Oxford English

6 Wiener, Scott. "Market-Rate Housing Isn't a Bad Word, and We Won't Solve the Housing Crisis Without It." ART Marketing. April 16, 2017. Accessed February 08, 2019. https://artplusmarketing.com/market-rate-housing-isnt-a- bad-word-and-we-won-t-solve-the-housing-crisis-without-it-ce67c06aff4d.

Champion Briefs 21 Topic Analysis by Belén Mella March 2019

Dictionary defines as "to further the progress of (something, especially a cause, venture, or aim)." In my view, this is a pretty easy bar for the Pro team to clear. That's because "promoting" market rate housing doesn't necessarily come at the expense of affordable housing plans

(though Con teams can certainly make the argument that it does). Indeed, the resolution doesn't even go so far as setting up a comparative, the way a resolution with the term

"prioritize" might. Thus, as long as Pro teams can combat the harms of market-rate housing, they have a pretty good case by arguing that any benefits are enough to affirm.

There’s a fair amount of literature on this topic, split across a handful of solid journalistic articles and many scholarly articles. One such article was written by Been, Gould, and O’regan, and it attempts to address the concerns of market-rate skeptics through empirical data. For starters, it established that the “preponderance of the evidence shows that restricting supply increases housing prices and that adding supply would help to make housing more affordable.7"

Debaters should make a clear case that affirming would lead to more supply; there's nothing inherent to market-rate housing that makes it synonymous with adding supply, but there is plenty of evidence that they go hand in hand. Having made this argument, debaters have a clean link into more supply decreasing prices.

A frequent critique of this reasoning is that the market for housing is not heterogeneous; there's a high-end luxury market, a middle range market, and a more low-cost market, to name some divisions. As a result, building in the high-end sector won't necessarily solve the problem of the low-cost sector. Furthermore, since homes depreciate in value slowly,

7 Been, Vicki, Ingrid Gould Ellen, and Katherine O’regan. "Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability." Housing Policy Debate 29, no. 1 (2019): 25-40.

Champion Briefs 22 Topic Analysis by Belén Mella March 2019

critics argue that it will take too long for lower-income citizens to see the benefits of high-end construction. In response to these arguments, Been, Gould, and O'regan make a few points. For one, policymakers should not overlook the long term benefits once the depreciation happens.

Moreover, they empirically find that "additions to the housing stock in one submarket can fairly quickly affect prices and rents in other submarkets by alleviating competition that would otherwise be diverted to those other submarkets." Indeed, some cities have rents to high that even individuals with higher-than-average income levels are "competing for a small number of affordable apartments," which would support the argument that more supply would solve the problem.

Con Arguments

Con teams will argue that the best way to provide affordable housing is to, well, provide explicitly affordable housing. A common Con argument is waiting around for the market will only benefit high-end renters, as landlords have no incentive to provide affordable housing, and are often times downright discriminatory in whom they will choose to rent to. Indeed, a lot of the Con rests of challenging the assumptions of supply and demand put forth by the Pro. For example, while the Pro argues that increasing the supply will obviously bring down prices, the

Con might point out that increasing supply will just bring more high-end tenants, bringing demand right back up so prices don’t budge.

Champion Briefs 23 Topic Analysis by Belén Mella March 2019

According to Amee Chew for Shelter Force, “for-profit new construction is overwhelmingly geared toward the luxury market.8” Furthermore, “numerous studies show that market-rate housing development has price ripple effects on surrounding neighborhoods, driving up rents and increasing the burden on lower-income households,” because market rate housing often goes hand in hand with gentrification.9 Gentrification occurs when lower-income areas are rebuilt in such a way that attracts middle and high-income residents.10 This has mixed effects for the individuals that live there, providing some with better job opportunities while others get kicked out. According to Davison and Lee, market-rate housing development has real effects on the displacement of low-income residents. This is in part direct displacement, as some market-rate housing is built on land that would've otherwise gone to affordable housing

(or literally involves demolishing affordable housing), and in part indirect part, as the related neighborhood gentrification raises the prices of everything.11

While the Public Forum debate doesn't allow for the use of plans, Con teams should have a sense of what the alternatives to market-rate housing. Otherwise, they will have no answers for how to provide affordable housing short on building more homes. One option is rent control, which limits "the amount and frequency at which rent increases to some fraction

8 Chew, Amee. "What We Know About Market-Rate Housing Construction and Displacement." Shelterforce. November 5, 2018. Accessed February 08, 2019. https://shelterforce.org/2018/11/05/heres-what-we-actually-know- about-market-rate-housing-development-and-displacement/. 9 Chew, Amee. "What We Know About Market-Rate Housing Construction and Displacement." Shelterforce. November 5, 2018. Accessed February 08, 2019. https://shelterforce.org/2018/11/05/heres-what-we-actually-know- about-market-rate-housing-development-and-displacement/. 10 Florida, Richard. "This Is What Happens After a Neighborhood Gets Gentrified." The Atlantic. September 16, 2015. Accessed February 13, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/this-is-what-happens- after-a-neighborhood-gets-gentrified/432813/. 11 Davidson, Mark, Loretta Lees, Piguet, Etienne, Söderström, Ola, and Rérat, Patrick. "New‐build Gentrification: Its Histories, Trajectories, and Critical Geographies." Population, Space, and Place 16, no. 5 (2010): 395-411.

Champion Briefs 24 Topic Analysis by Belén Mella March 2019

of inflation to protect vulnerable populations.12" Another approach is mixed-income buildings,

"where a certain number of units are set aside for people making no more than 30-60 percent of the area median income, and who pay less than market rent." Debaters should parse among these options while being careful of ensuring that the solutions stay firmly on Con ground and don't play into the opposing team's strategy. For example, a common affordable housing plan involves vouchers and subsidies, but opponents point out that these only raise demand for housing while failing to address the root cause problems.

Conclusion

Unless you’re willing to look far outside the box, most of the arguments on this topic are fairly straightforward. The Pro relies on the principles of supply and demand, while the Con argues that some of these principles don’t apply to the nuanced case of housing. After all, the housing market is heterogeneous, slow depreciation means it takes a while for benefits of new housing to trickle down, and new constructions might transform the economic landscape of an urban area (for instance, gentrifying it) rather than driving down prices. Success in this topic is going to come down to research and warranting. There is also a degree of framing and strategy to keep in mind. For instance, Been, Gould, and O’regan point out that “programs like mandatory affordable housing can ensure that developments using land for market-rate housing also include some affordable housing,” but it’s not immediately obvious whether this is

12 Elkin, Maria. "What Everyone Gets Wrong About Affordable Housing." New America. August 24, 2017. Accessed February 13, 2019. https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/edition-174/what-everyone-gets-wrong-about- affordable-housing/.

Champion Briefs 25 Topic Analysis by Belén Mella March 2019

Pro or Con ground.13 Pro teams will make the point that the market rate housing is what’s creating the units for some housing to be affordable, but Con teams might point out that the

“affordable units” aren’t being rented at market rate. Thus, it’s going to require clear explanations and top notch warranting to maximize the ground of the side your debating and drive the arguments home.

13 Been, Vicki, Ingrid Gould Ellen, and Katherine O’regan. "Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability." Housing Policy Debate 29, no. 1 (2019): 25-40.

Champion Briefs 26 Topic Analysis by Michael Norton March 2019

Topic Analysis by Michael Norton

Resolved: The United States should promote the development of market rate housing in urban neighborhoods.

Introduction

In the aftermath of the Great Recession in 2008, housing prices have steadily risen to new heights. Property values plummeted when the real estate bubble burst, but as urbanization increases in the United States and cities continue to rapidly increase in size, urban neighborhoods are becoming more and more expensive. The result is displacement for poor communities who already live there and other harms like homelessness and gentrification.

While there are many different variables that influence the current state of the housing market, many point to a relatively low supply of affordable housing. New projects typically favor profitability over accessibility, which usually means building luxury units or condos.

This topic presents an excellent opportunity to delve back into the world of economics.

Many will see this topic as a repeat of the pharmaceutical topic from earlier in the year, but in reality, they're very different. The uniqueness of the housing market and the recency of the real estate crisis means that there will be a lot of literature that goes far beyond that of the

November pharmaceutical topic.

Policy Solutions

Policymakers recognize these problems and have attempted to craft different sets of laws to target this issue. Rent control, the setting of a price ceiling on rent within a certain neighborhood, has been instituted within numerous different cities across the United States.

Champion Briefs 27 Topic Analysis by Michael Norton March 2019

These policies are designed to help citizens afford to live where they’d like to live by ensuring that landlords can’t jack up rents in accordance with market pressures. The issue is that many are concerned that housing supply must increase to truly solve this problem. Unfortunately, housing supply increases primarily because of an incentive to develop additional housing, which decreases under rent control. Given this tension, rent control has become a very heated debate on the national level, hence this month’s topic selection for Public Forum Debate.

Alternative policy solutions have been proposed, like incentives for affordable housing development, but rent control has taken the national spotlight. Cities like New York, San

Francisco, and many others have had many hotly contested debates on the issue. This issue has even made it all the way to the Supreme Court on numerous occasions, most recently in 2012 when the court refused to hear a case brought by a New York landlord. As of today, the policy is commonplace nationwide, but it’s still extremely contentious on the local level.

Competitive Considerations

Competing in March is a unique opportunity that I was never afforded due to a lack of tournaments in my local district. For many of you, March is merely a holdover until ToC, NCFL, and NSDA nationals. For others, March is the month that determines whether or not you’re actually qualified and able to attend these tournaments. ToC bid tournaments are over by the time March rolls around, meaning that the majority of tournaments this upcoming month will be at the local level. This means that the average debate this month will likely be tailored to laypeople and parent judges rather than technical, circuit-focused judges. Keep this in mind when preparing your advocacy.

Champion Briefs 28 Topic Analysis by Michael Norton March 2019

Given that this topic can be a bit arcane and technical, it’s crucial to explain yourself in full when debating this month. Economics is loaded with jargon and other confusing elements that make it inherently hard to understand for laypeople. The best debaters will put their arguments in simple terms and explain things clearly and concisely, rather than attempting to be overly technical. In order to succeed at nationals and NCFLs, it’s crucial to hone these skills given that their judge pool contains judges of all skill levels.

Strategic Considerations

Strategically, this topic is not particularly interesting. There are a few arguments on each side that are central to the topic, but little room for diversification beyond those few. Granted, there are a number of different impacts that you can pursue, but the debate will boil down to who can best solve the housing crisis in the overwhelming majority of debates. Framework wise, there are some ways that the lens of the debate can be changed. The short term vs long term angle may be effective given that rent control has notable benefits to affordability in the short term, but detractors argue that the long term becomes problematic if construction doesn’t continue.

Many debaters, myself included, prefer to find a unique angle on a given topic in order to distinguish oneself from the pack. With a topic like this one, that may come in the form of a framework like the one previously mentioned given that most impacts revolve around the rights and livelihood of renters. Weighing the different concerns of renters, like the cost of rent, housing quality, and ease of moving can make it easier to find a unique strategy in any given debate round.

Champion Briefs 29 Topic Analysis by Michael Norton March 2019

Affirmative Arguments

Advocating for market-rate housing can be done from two primary angles. The first of which is the rights and interests of the renter, and the second of which is the rights and interests of the landlord. The negative is mostly limited to arguments about the renter, meaning that almost all impacts pertaining to the landlord are purely affirmative ground. As a result of this, smart affirmatives might argue that the rights of the landlord are just as important if not more than the rights of the tenant. This would give a unique path to victory for the affirmative while still leaving room for them to win the tenants’ rights argument.

The core argument that I would emphasize on the affirmative is the increased supply of housing. The incentive to develop new property is intrinsically tied to the profits a landlord can accrue through renting it out. Unfortunately, with rent control in place, there’s a far smaller profit motive for developers, meaning that fewer new projects actually end up being constructed. This decreases the supply of housing relative to the demand, which means prices actually go up overall.

Another argument that many may not have considered is the incentive to repair and maintain properties. The reason that landlords decide to improve their properties is the potential for increased value generated from a renovation. With rent control in place, however, this potential disappears, meaning that there's little if any need to fix things that are broken or in need of improvement. The result is lower quality housing for the tenants that end up in rent- controlled apartments, which decreases the quality of life for the low-income tenants stuck there.

Champion Briefs 30 Topic Analysis by Michael Norton March 2019

Negative Arguments

Many debaters may see the negative side as more intuitive. In the midst of a housing crisis, it would make sense that many would want lower rents so that they can afford to live wherever they’d like. However, good negative strategies are tougher to come by than it may seem. It’s crucial for debaters to be prepared to counter the argument that housing supply is more important for tenants than rental cost. If the affirmative can prove that supply is the key, it’ll be far easier for them to win the debate.

One of my personal favorite arguments on the negative side surrounds the racial justice element at play. Communities of color are being priced out of neighborhoods that they have built, lived in, developed, maintained, and cherished. The motivation for the destruction of these communities is not just profit, but also racism. Historically, the land has been owned and controlled by wealthy white Americans while communities of color have been beholden to the rents that they choose to charge. Rent control is a form of racial justice in that it requires white landowners to make their properties accessible to racial minorities.

Another negative argument that strikes my fancy is the notion that rent control decreases homelessness. By ensuring that rates are affordable for the least well off, there is more housing available to those who are at risk of homelessness. Short-circuiting the homelessness crisis requires a carefully crafted approach that ensures at-risk Americans have some way to find affordable housing. Were cities to pursue market-rate development, homelessness rates would likely rise, which is backed up by recent data. Homelessness is also correlated with other negative impacts like lower education, higher rates of crime, higher rates

Champion Briefs 31 Topic Analysis by Michael Norton March 2019

of disease and death, and many other issues that are worsened by a market-rate housing development.

Conclusion

The rent control vs market rate housing debate is one that has been raging for over three decades at this point. Most urban areas by now have already implemented rent control policies of some sort, but they have frequently been met by political and legal challenges. The crux of the debate ultimately boils down to whether the tenant is truly better off, and whether that outweighs the various rights and interests of property owners. This is not an issue of liberal vs conservative, and thus should be an open and accessible debate free from existing biases in the average judge. Ultimately these debates will come down to your ability to explain clearly and concisely how rent control changes the incentives of landlords. Most Americans admit to being intimidated by complex discussions of economics, so it’ll be your job to make sure that your arguments are phrased as simply as possible. I imagine many of you aren’t excited to debate about economics again, but many of your judges feel the same way, and it’s your job as a competitor to make the debate interesting, engaging, and understandable for your audience.

For many of you, March is the most important month of the year, determining whether your career continues through May or June, or whether you get to travel across the country.

For others, this month will decide the state championship. Every month is important in Public

Forum, but for many of you, this topic will require an immense amount of research. The most important advice that I give to my students every month certainly applies for this topic; the best way to improve and perform well will be learning as much as possible about rent control and

Champion Briefs 32 Topic Analysis by Michael Norton March 2019

market rate housing. Any debater can cut a large number of cards, but the best debaters will have a mastery of the topic at hand, which will be immensely useful in a crossfire and later speeches. Dig below the surface while researching, because most of the best evidence is buried within PDFs and academic studies rather than articles by mainstream reporters. This month should be a great one for Public Forum debaters; I wish you the best in all of your endeavors on this topic.

About Michael Norton

Michael Norton is the Director of Forensics at Coral Springs High School in Broward

County Florida. He is also the Editor in Chief of the Public Forum Brief at Champion Briefs. He has been involved with Public Forum since 2009, making this his 10th year in the activity. He has worked with thousands of students across many sessions of summer camp and many semesters of class. As a competitor, Michael won the Sunvitational, Manchester Essex Invitational, Blake

Invitational, Harvard Invitational, and the Harvard Round Robin. He also had a successful collegiate debate career, finishing among the top four teams at the American Parliamentary

Debate Association’s national tournament and semifinaling at the North American Universities

Debating Championship. While Michael places a premium on success, he has stayed in the debate community because he knows that debate can change anybody’s life if they give it a real shot.

Champion Briefs 33

General Information March 2019

General Information

Resolved: The United States should promote the development of market rate housing in urban neighborhoods.

Foreword: We, at Champion Briefs, feel that having deep knowledge about a topic is just as valuable as formulating the right arguments. Having general background knowledge about the topic area helps debaters form more coherent arguments from their breadth of knowledge. As such, we have compiled general information on the key concepts and general areas that we feel will best suit you for in- and out-of-round use. Any strong strategy or argument must be built from a strong foundation of information; we hope that you will utilize this section to help build that foundation.

Champion Briefs 35 General Information March 2019

Definitions

Market-rate housing is promoting rental apartments with no rent restrictions, meaning that the owner of the apartment is allowed to charge however much they want at any given time. This usually results in landlords charging whatever price is approximately at equilibrium on the local supply and demand market for housing.14 This has been controversial because rental prices are highly volatile, thus without any sort of cap, many low income individuals are kicked out of their homes.15 In contrast, affordable housing is housing that is deemed affordable to those who income is below the median household income.16 Usually supplying affordable housing has become the role of the government, with rent-controlled homes or public housing that seek to meet the increased demand for cheaper homes. Studies have shown that market-rate housing development is linked the gentrification of low-income neighborhoods, thereby causing mass displacement of low-income residents residing in the area, who can no longer afford the higher rent prices.

Factors that Affect Rent Prices

While landlords are free to charge whatever price they want, they obviously can’t overcharge by too much, or no one would be willing to buy their homes. We see that there has been about

14 Leshnower, Ron. “What Exactly Is Market-Rate Housing?” The Spruce, TheSpruce, 9 July 2018, www.thespruce.com/market-rate-apartment-155986. 15 Chew, Amee. “What We Know About Market-Rate Housing Construction and Displacement.” Shelterforce, 19 Dec. 2018, shelterforce.org/2018/11/05/heres-what-we-actually-know-about-market-rate-housing-development-and- displacement/. 16 “Affordable Housing - What Is Affordable Housing ? Affordable Housing Meaning, Affordable Housing Definition.” The Economic Times, Economic Times, economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/affordable-housing.

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a 6-8% growth rate in rental prices in the past few years, drastically higher than the historical growth average of about 2%.17 Thus, there are a few factors that are driving up prices in the housing market right now.

● High demand. Millennials are having more trouble buying homes homes due to more

student debt, lower income, and higher rent prices, which saps their savings.18 As a

result, homeownership has gone down drastically compared to past generations, while

renters have gone up in large metropolitan cities.19 With the increase demand in cities,

rent prices are expected to go up.

17 Kunes, Nathaniel. “Four Trends That Will Impact Rental Markets In 2018.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 10 Jan. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/forbesrealestatecouncil/2018/01/10/four-trends-that-will-impact-rental-markets-in- 2018/#4e86aee14e23. 18 Nova, Annie. “These Are the Reasons Why Millions of Millennials Can't Buy Houses .” CNBC, CNBC, 11 July 2018, www.cnbc.com/2018/07/09/these-are-the-reasons-why-millions-of-millennials-cant-buy-houses.html. 19 Leshnower, Ron. “What Exactly Is Market-Rate Housing?” The Spruce, TheSpruce, 9 July 2018, www.thespruce.com/market-rate-apartment-155986.

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● Recently, because of the housing crisis, banks began enforcing stricter mortgage rules,

thus restricting many individuals from gaining access to a mortgage, which in turn leads

to less people being able to afford a house in more expensive areas, leading them to

rent.20

● While wages have become stagnant for the majority of working families, rent and home

prices are going up.21 Currently, one has to make at least 32 dollars an hour just to

afford the market rent in Los Angeles, which is significantly above the minimum wage.

20 Leshnower, Ron. “What Exactly Is Market-Rate Housing?” The Spruce, TheSpruce, 9 July 2018, www.thespruce.com/market-rate-apartment-155986. 21 Siegler, Kirk. “Is Rent Control An Answer To California's Housing Crisis?” NPR, NPR, 27 Sept. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/09/27/650533981/is-rent-control-an-answer-to-californias-housing-crisis.

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● Despite the apparent shortage of housing, the market is unable to keep up the supply to

meet the demand due to the shortage of construction workers. Building firms have

200,000 job openings that haven’t been filling. This can be attributed to the fact that

construction worker wages are rising slower than the rest of the private sector, making

it an unlucrative labor market to enter into.22 Because of this, developers have found

that building high-end apartments and mansions are significantly more profitable. In

Seattle, developers would struggle to break even on rents that are less than $1,900 per

month for just a one bedroom unit, and in New York or Boston, the figure can reach as

high as $3000.23 This leads to a decrease in apartment housing, and an increase in high-

end apartments that low income individuals can’t afford.

22 Hobbes, Michael. “America's Housing Crisis Is A Ticking Time Bomb.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 19 June 2018, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-inequality-harvard-report_us_5b27c1f1e4b056b2263c621e. 23 Hobbes, Michael. “America's Housing Crisis Is A Ticking Time Bomb.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 19 June 2018, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-inequality-harvard-report_us_5b27c1f1e4b056b2263c621e.

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Champion Briefs 40 General Information March 2019

The Current Crisis

Indeed, when looking towards housing crises in the major cities around the United states, it is clear that the cities are in trouble. Despite the fact that the housing bubble and crash was merely a decade ago, another housing crisis appears to be on the horizon for some major cities.24

As rent has become higher, more and more people are being kicked out of their homes because they’re unable to keep up with the mortgages. “Underwater” is a term used to explain when the amount owed on the mortgage loan is higher than the market value of the house. In

Chicago alone, close to 70,000 homes are underwater. California has the highest poverty rate of the nation because of the affordable housing crisis, housing nearly a quarter of the country’s entire homeless population.25 Since 1960, renter’s median earning has only gone up 5 percent, compared to the 51 percent spike in rent. To make the matter worse, the fastest rise in prices is not the “luxury” homes, but rather the homes at the low end of the market. It is reported that these homes are appreciating at twice the rate of the high-end homes, meaning the cost of living in general is increasing significantly faster for the poor, compared to the rich.26 The reason that this is happening is because low-cost housing is being replaced on the market. Since

1990, more than 2.5 million apartments renting for 800 dollars or less per month have been

24 DePietro, Andrew. “These 10 Cities Are On The Brink Of A Serious Housing Crisis.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 1 Nov. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/andrewdepietro/2018/08/26/cities-negative-equity-housing-crisis/#47aafdae226f. 25 Siegler, Kirk. “Is Rent Control An Answer To California's Housing Crisis?” NPR, NPR, 27 Sept. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/09/27/650533981/is-rent-control-an-answer-to-californias-housing-crisis. 26 Hobbes, Michael. “America's Housing Crisis Is A Ticking Time Bomb.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 19 June 2018, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-inequality-harvard-report_us_5b27c1f1e4b056b2263c621e.

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demolished to be replaced with hotels, office, or luxury condos.27 In fact, between 2010 and

2017 alone, the prices for homes in poorer urban neighborhoods rose 50 percent faster than the rich neighborhoods. It is clear that the big cities in the United States are crowding out their low income citizens, the question is how to fix it.

27 Hobbes, Michael. “America's Housing Crisis Is A Ticking Time Bomb.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 19 June 2018, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-inequality-harvard-report_us_5b27c1f1e4b056b2263c621e. 28 Riquier, Andrea. “Housing Is the Least Affordable in 10 Years - Here's What's to Blame.” MarketWatch, MarketWatch, 30 June 2018, www.marketwatch.com/story/housing-is-the-least-affordable-in-10-years-heres-whats-to-blame-2018-06-21.

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29 Sisson, Patrick. “Why the Rent Is Too Damn High: The Affordable Housing Crisis.” Curbed, Curbed, 19 May 2016, www.curbed.com/2016/5/19/11713134/affordable-housing-policy-rent-apartments.

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What We are Shifting Towards

As affordability becomes a more apparent issue in the US, with debts and difficulties to attain loans, governments on both the local and federal level are stepping in with more affordability programs. In San Francisco, it was found that most teachers in the public school system were unable to live in the neighborhood that their school was in, thus has a long commute to work every day. The city passed a 44 million dollar teacher housing initiative, enabling teachers to live and work closer to their jobs.30 What cities are preferring is rather than set a rent cap- a price where landlords are not allowed to rent above- they are instead turning to housing choice voucher programs, which allocates a certain amount of money to an individual in need to subsidize their housing of choice.31

In California, Proposition 10, a bill that proposes a local rent control initiative, went before voters in November and was rejected,32 with individuals claiming that the rent control would actually displace even more individuals. Instead, it has been suggested that California simply does not have enough housing to host all the people. It is estimated that by 2025,

California will need to build 1.8 million more units of homes in order to accommodate each individual.33 97% of California’s major cities have fallen short of the housing goals This begs the

30 Kunes, Nathaniel. “Four Trends That Will Impact Rental Markets In 2018.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 10 Jan. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/forbesrealestatecouncil/2018/01/10/four-trends-that-will-impact-rental-markets-in- 2018/#4e86aee14e23. 31 Kunes, Nathaniel. “Four Trends That Will Impact Rental Markets In 2018.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 10 Jan. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/forbesrealestatecouncil/2018/01/10/four-trends-that-will-impact-rental-markets-in- 2018/#4e86aee14e23. 32 Chandler, Jenna, and Elijah Chiland. “Proposition 10, Proposal to Strengthen Rent Control in California, Is Defeated.” Curbed LA, Curbed LA, 7 Nov. 2018, la.curbed.com/2018/11/6/18070782/proposition-10-california-results-defeat.

33 Siegler, Kirk. “Is Rent Control An Answer To California's Housing Crisis?” NPR, NPR, 27 Sept. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/09/27/650533981/is-rent-control-an-answer-to-californias-housing-crisis.

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question of whether rent-controlled and affordable housing is more necessary, or simply just more houses.

Instead, many individuals have suggested a mix of both affordable housing and market- rate housing as a solution. The truth is that the government will never produce enough housing to support every individual that needs a home. While keeping prices low so that low-income residents are able to rent an apartment, the resources required for a project of that size is simply not available. Thus, individuals propose that in order to subsidize project like this, market-rate housing is necessary in order to produce the funding necessary for subsidized housing.

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Champion Briefs 45

Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Rent Control Creates Shortages

Argument: By forcing landlords to sell their units at artificially low prices, rent control decreases the supply of housing units on the market. This hurts the poorest among us.

Warrant: Rent control decreases the supply of affordable housing.

Miller, Nathan “Rent Control: What It Means For The Real Estate Marketplace” Forbes. May 31, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesrealestatecouncil/2018/05/31/rent- control-what-it-means-for-the-real-estate-marketplace/#be293cb76706

“On the flip side, tenants who remain in their apartments longer reduce the number of available apartments at any given time. This can also drive up the price of other available rental units that are not under rent control policies. Lower prices mean higher demand. With more rent-controlled apartments at an affordable price, more renters are going to be trying to rent than there are rent-controlled apartments available.”

Warrant: Rent Control creates long term structural shortages

Champion Briefs 47 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

not be worth the risk for them. The same goes for developers, as it becomes difficult to profit from residential buildings.”

Warrant: The overall effect of rent control is to make affordable housing scarce

Rebecca Diamond, Timothy James McQuade, Franklin Qian. “The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco” Stanford. January 2018. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty- research/working-papers/effects-rent-control-expansion-tenants-landlords- inequality-evidence

“We exploit quasi-experimental variation in assignment of rent control to study its impacts on tenants, landlords, and the overall rental market. Leveraging new data tracking individuals’ migration, we find rent control increased renters’ probabilities of staying at their addresses by nearly 20%. Landlords treated by rent control reduced rental housing supply by 15%, causing a 5.1% city-wide rent increase. Using a dynamic, neighborhood choice model, we find rent control offered large benefits to covered tenants. Welfare losses from decreased housing supply could be mitigated if insurance against rent increases were provided as government social insurance, instead of a regulated landlord mandate.”

Warrant: Lack of supply leads to evictions by landlords

Champion Briefs 48 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

“This result suggests that landlords are likely actively trying to remove tenants in those areas where rent control is affording the most benefits, i.e. high rent appreciation areas. There are a few ways a landlord could accomplish this. First, landlords could try to legally evict their tenants by, for example, moving into the properties themselves, known as owner move-in eviction. Alternatively, landlords could evict tenants according to the provisions of the Ellis Act, which allows evictions when an owner wants to remove units from the rental market - for instance, in order to convert the units into condos or a tenancy in common. Finally, landlords are legally allowed to negotiate with tenants over a monetary transfer convincing them to leave. Such transfers are, in fact, quite prevalent in San Francisco.”

Impact: Lower supply of housing leads to higher rents in the long run

Diamond, Rebecca. “What Does Economic Evidence Tell Us about the Effects of Rent Control?” Brookings (blog), October 18, 2018. https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us- about-the-effects-of-rent-control/.

“This 15 percentage point reduction in the rental supply of small multi-family housing likely led to rent increases in the long-run, consistent with standard economic theory. In this sense, rent control operated as a transfer between the future renters of San Francisco (who would pay these higher rents due to lower supply) to the renters living in San Francisco in 1994 (who benefited directly from lower rents). Furthermore, since many of the existing rental properties were converted to higher-end, owner-occupied condominium housing and new construction rentals, the passage of rent control ultimately led to a housing stock that caters to higher income individuals.”

Champion Briefs 49 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Analysis: This argument is good because it grapples with the same impact of many neg cases. By making the debate less about esoteric and more about which side actually helps or hurts the poor, this arguments evens the playing field. Make the analysis that at the end of the day, what matters is not good intentions but good results.

Champion Briefs 50 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent Control Creates Shortages

Response: Rent Control does not create shortages

Warrant: Price controls can increase supply in distorted markets

Painter, Gary. “No, Rent Control Doesn’t Always Reduce the Supply of Housing.” latimes.com. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op- ed/la-oe-painter-rent-control-economist-20181031-story.html.

“But here’s a simplified Econ 101 lesson that comes shortly thereafter: Price controls can actually spur an increase in supply. When housing developers have too much power in the market, they can maximize profits by raising rents on the apartments they already own. But if rent control limits that option, developers have to go to Plan B if they want to make more money: Build more units. So is that the situation we have in the California housing market? Research suggests it is. Two factors — the burdensome process of getting projects approved and the housing market crash of 2008 — substantially reduced the number of firms developing new housing. A recent paper shows that, compared to the composition of the home building industry in 2006, there are 24% fewer firms accounting for 90% of the building nationwide. The study further suggests that about half of the increase in housing prices over the last decade can be attributed to industry consolidation among home builders.”

Warrant: The real harms of rent control are exaggerated

Champion Briefs 51 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

The fact that real estate developers have funded an anti-Proposition 10 campaign to the tune of $45 million suggests that they are eager to defend their market power. If California were a truly competitive housing market where home builders operated with slim margins, they’d load up their cranes and build in some other state. But it’s clear these developers benefit from the status quo and are fighting hard to keep it. Looking at how previous rent control ordinances affected housing markets can help us see how cities might respond to the freedoms afforded by Proposition 10. A recent USC report on rent-stabilization ordinances found that their impact on the supply of housing supply is small (mostly through condo conversions), but that the benefits to the low- income population can be substantial. These findings echo what we’ve seen after minimum wage increases: A few low-wage jobs are lost, but the benefits to those paid the minimum wage are larger than the costs of lost jobs.

Analysis: Use this argument to turn the claim that rent control decreases housing supply. This allows you to generate offense off of your opponents link by arguing that affordable units may actually increase.

Response: Rent control has non-supply benefits

Warrant: Rent control provides tenants stability

Bruton, Brinley. “The U.S. Wants the Saudis to End War in Yemen. And It Has Leverage.” NBC News, 5 Nov. 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-wants- yemen-war-end-will-it-stop-selling-n929921.

The Stanford paper fully supports the conclusion that rent control works to keep people in their homes: “We find that rent control increased the probability a renter stayed at their address by close to 20 percent.” Stanford Paper, page 1. The stabilizing effects are “significantly stronger among older households and among households

Champion Briefs 52 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

that have already spent a number of years at their treated address.” In other words, seniors and long-term tenants find longer term stability because of rent control. Equally importantly, the study confirms how rent control prevents displacement from the city. “We can see that tenants who receive rent control protections are persistently more likely to remain at their 1993 address relative to the control group. Not only that, but they are also more likely to be living in San Francisco.” Effects of Rent Control Expansion, page 12.

Warrant: The fiscal benefits of rent control are large

The paper also acknowledges the substantial financial benefit conferred on tenants because of the expansion of rent control in San Francisco in 1994. “Across the entire population, the aggregate benefit was $7.085 billion dollars, reflecting an annual average of $394 million dollars. Note also that these welfare numbers are only for the 1994 population impacted by the rent control expansion. It does not take into account the welfare benefits for renters who moved into the impacted properties in later years, which presumably were also quite large.” Effects of Rent Control Expansion, Page 40. The $7 billion savings for tenants is the tip of the iceberg, relating only to the studied group — tenants in small buildings who lived in their homes in 1994 when they became rent controlled. As the authors note, it does not measure the benefit for all of the tenants that moved into the studied properties after they gained rent control.”

Analysis: Use this response to argue that even if your opponents win a small drop in housing- supply, the over impact of rent control is to benefit the working class.

Champion Briefs 53 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: The Poor Cannot Access Affordable Housing

Argument: Affordable housing sounds good in theory, but there are practical barriers and asymmetries which allow wealthier families to capitalize on affordable housing programs.

Warrant: The vast majority of economists believe rent control will not help the poor

“In 2012 the IGM Forum polled some economists about rent control. Each economist was asked to agree or disagree that rent control promotes affordable housing, and to state the degree of confidence, on a scale of 1 to 10, he invested in his response. Weighted for confidence, 95 percent of the economists disagreed, four percent felt unsure, and one percent agreed. Support for rent control received one vote, with a confidence of 3. Nobel laureate Angus Deaton, a dedicated analyst of the causes of poverty, voted “strongly disagree,” confidence 9. Richard Thaler, another Nobel Prize winner, likened rent control to geocentrism..”

Warrant: Landlords will sell apartments as condos to rich tenants

Barthold, Corbin “Wake Up, California Millennials: Rent Control Is A Generational Con Game” Forbes. August 20, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wlf/2018/08/20/wake-up-california-millennials- rent-control-is-a-generational-con-game/#1c6089a2397b

Champion Briefs 54 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

“Like any price control, a rent cap crops supply. Investors aren’t stupid. They will not build rent-controlled housing if they can obtain a higher return doing something else. Landlords aren’t stupid either. If renting becomes less profitable, some of them will sell their units, as condominiums, to the well-heeled. Other landlords will offset their loss of revenue by spending less on maintenance. The quality of housing will deteriorate, and a bureaucracy will be needed to police the increasingly bitter relationship between landlords and tenants.”

Warrant: Wealthy buyers are better positioned to take advantage of rent control

Valdez, Rodger. “Rent Control Doesn't Help Renters: Some In Washington State Want To Try It Anyway” Forbes. January 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogervaldez/2017/12/18/rent-control-doesnt- work-washington-state-wants-to-debate-it-anyway/#769544ef9318

“Rent control is a disincentive for housing production. If we try to control all rents, we’ll see less housing built – fewer units mean higher prices. Rent control doesn’t lower overall prices; if some units are locked in, the difference is made up in other parts of the market with even higher prices. (Jenkins, page 98) When rent cannot fluctuate, there is no incentive or cash flow to maintain buildings, especially since costs are not controlled. Rent control concentrates poverty and reduces mobility; once a person is in a rent- controlled unit they end up staying there. The beneficiaries of rent control are a mixed bag, often wealthier households end up getting rent controlled apartments, while truly poor families don’t (Jenkins, page 101 and 102).”

Warrant: New York illustrates how rent control goes to the wealthy

Champion Briefs 55 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Peter D. Salins, Gerard Mildner. “Does Rent Control Help the Poor?” City Journal. Winter 1991. https://www.city-journal.org/html/does-rent-control-help-poor- 12772.html

“Manhattan, outside of its remaining slums, is largely the redoubt of the well-to-do. The average household income of the “Manhattan core” in 1987 was $35,000, while that for the rest of the city was under $20,000. Only 13 percent of Manhattan-core families were in poverty, compared to 23 percent for the rest of the city, and most of Manhattan’s poor were living in pockets of inferior housing without large rent-control discounts. Why do wealthy Manhattanites reap most of the benefits of rent regulation? To begin with, to earn the maximum benefits from New York’s rent regulations, it helps to occupy an apartment for a long time (because landlords are permitted to raise rents more than usual when an apartment becomes vacant). Affluent professionals have greater job stability and can, in any case, manage to fake their continued occupancy if they move. Also, influence or good connections are helpful in the search for a desirable rent-regulated apartment. The result, as New York City developer Seymour Durst puts it, is that, “We’ve got plenty of low-income housing in New York. We’ve just got upper-income people living in it.””

Impact: Rent control punishes the poor and newcomers

Peter D. Salins, Gerard Mildner. “Does Rent Control Help the Poor?” City Journal. Winter 1991. https://www.city-journal.org/html/does-rent-control-help-poor- 12772.html

“That rent control helps the rich rather than the poor is the greatest perversity of the system, but not necessarily the one most damaging to the city’s economy or its future. The vitality of New York has always depended very substantially on newcomers, not only immigrants from overseas, but talented people from around the country who are

Champion Briefs 56 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

attracted to New York by its great professional opportunities. As the nation shifts to an information economy, and human capital becomes the key factor in production, it becomes ever more important to keep New York a mecca for new talent. Rent regulation, however, is almost perfectly designed to punish newcomers..”

Analysis: This argument turns the impact of most con cases. If rent control actually away from the poor, it is likely a counterproductive policy. Stress to the judge that it is important to look to the actual effects of a policy rather than its intended outcomes.

Champion Briefs 57 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: The Poor Cannot Access Affordable Housing

Response: Rent Control has benefits other than increasing housing access to the poor

Warrant: Rent control has social benefits

“Rent control has good intentions. The purpose of these policies is to try and ensure that a city has a certain amount of affordable housing options for lower- and middle- class renters. Rent control policies allow larger cities to maintain economic and social diversity, rather than forcing all lower- or middle-class individuals to live in specific low-cost areas. Tenants are able to have some stability and security with rent control. Besides paying an affordable rent, they are able to budget for the future without the fear of large or unexpected rent increases.”

Warrant: Tenants see many positive externalities

Tenants save money on other things, too. By allowing lower- and middle-class workers to live in areas well-served by public transportation and other amenities, rent control

Champion Briefs 58 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

can help tenants save money on things aside from rent. Rent control tends to keep tenants motivated to stay, which makes things easier on landlords. In a perfect world, rent control could keep your building full of tenants who pay their rent on time, turning your investment into a relatively secure cash flow.

Analysis: This argument is a ‘disadvantage’ to the claim that rent control does not go to the poor. It makes the claim that there are separate independent benefits offered by a rent control regime which give the government reason to implement such policies.

Response: Rent control is not the only option for affordable housing

Warrant: Anti Gouging measures would help the poor while

Dougherty, Connor “Why Rent Control is a Lightning Rod”. The New York Times, 12. October 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/business/economy/rent- control-explained.html

Expanding vouchers and tax credits would require spending billions of dollars a year, a prospect that is not realistic any time soon. Recognizing this, the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, has suggested that California adopt an anti-gouging measure that would cap rent increases at 10 percent a year and apply to all homes in the state, not just those covered by local rent control laws. “A middle-ground solution is critical because we cannot have a situation where we disinvest in rental housing at a time when we absolutely know we need it, and yet we have people who are being displaced and suffering, and that is not acceptable, either,” said Carol Galante, faculty director of the Terner Center.

Warrant: More housing subsidies could help the problem

Champion Briefs 59 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Dougherty, Connor “Why Rent Control is a Lightning Rod”. The New York Times, 12. October 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/business/economy/rent- control-explained.html

Of course, this won’t do much for renters who are struggling now. To that end, a number of economists have suggested subsidies or tax credits as an alternative to rent control, because they can shield renters from big price increases while being tailored to people who need the most help. “When people need health care, we give them Medicaid, and when they need food, we give them food stamps,” said Christopher Palmer, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But for housing, another basic human need, we tell people to get on a list and maybe in 10 years they’ll get a voucher for an apartment. That doesn’t match up with the immediacy of the need.” Mr. Palmer’s studies have suggested that rent control distorts the housing market. But like many other economists, he is not opposed to greater government efforts to help renters. The debate is about how to do it..”

Analysis: This response is good because it sidesteps the question of rent control. The con does not need to show a specific type of non-market housing policies, so this argument strategically delinks rent control- specific arguments.

Champion Briefs 60 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Rent Control hurts economic growth

Argument: Rent control decreases economic growth by creating market distortions and inefficiencies

Warrant: Rent Control stops new businesses from moving into a neighborhood

“The incentive to invest and develop decreases. Property investors take risks with years’ worth of savings to have a (hopefully) profitable investment in the future. If rent control causes a landlord to take a loss or break even on their investment, it might not be worth the risk for them. The same goes for developers, as it becomes difficult to profit from residential buildings. In many cases, jobs in rent-controlled areas tend to remain low- paying. Higher rents means higher-paying jobs, which means nicer, well-maintained communities. If you have an area that suppresses rents, then higher paying companies have a harder time finding employees, leaving lower-paying companies to thrive in those areas. So, is rent control good or bad? Simple question, complicated answer..”

Warrant: Rent Control reduces government spending on a given neighborhood by reducing property tax revenues

“The High Cost of Rent Control.” National Multifamily Housing Council. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://www.nmhc.org/news/articles/the-high-cost-of-rent- control/.

Champion Briefs 61 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

“Rent control also reduces the market value of controlled rental property, both in absolute terms and relative to the increase in property values in unregulated markets. The tax implications of this reduction can be significant, as taxable assessed rental property values decline relative to unregulated property. A study of rent control in New York City calculated the loss in taxable assessed property values attributable to rent control at approximately $4 billion in the late 1980s.(7) These distorted assessments cost the city an estimated $370 million annually in property tax revenues. The city of Berkeley, California, also estimates a significant loss in its tax revenue because of rent control.”

Warrant: Rent control creates inefficient consumer immobility

“The High Cost of Rent Control.” National Multifamily Housing Council. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://www.nmhc.org/news/articles/the-high-cost-of-rent- control/.

“The primary beneficiaries of rent control are those consumers lucky enough to find themselves in a rent-controlled unit. But even these consumers pay a price. Consumer "mobility" is substantially reduced by the reluctance of many consumers to part with the rent control subsidy. A recent study in New York City found that rent control tripled the expected duration of residence.(10) Consumers who would otherwise move to smaller or larger homes or closer to their jobs do not do so because they do not want to lose the subsidy. This loss of mobility can be particularly costly to families whose job opportunities are geographically or otherwise limited and who may have to travel long distances to reach those jobs available to them. And for the community at large -- including nearby communities that have not themselves imposed rent control -- reduced consumer mobility can mean increased traffic congestion and demand for city services, among other costs. Because of these spillover effects, rent control is an issue for state and regional policy as well as for local governance.”

Champion Briefs 62 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Warrant: Rent Control depresses the construction sector

Robert P. Murphy. “The Case Against Rent Control.” The Foundation For Economic Education. November 12, 2014https://fee.org/articles/the-case-against-rent- control/

Rent control reduces the supply of rental units through two different mechanisms. In the short run, where the physical number of apartment units is fixed, the imposition of rent control will reduce the quantity of units offered on the market. The owners will hold back some of the potential units, using them for storage or keeping them available for (say) out of town guests or kids returning from college for the summer. (If this sounds implausible, consider just how many people in a major city consider renting out spare bedrooms in their homes, as long as the price is right.) In the long run, a permanent policy of rent control restricts the construction of new apartment buildings, because potential investors realize that their revenues on such projects will be artificially capped. Building a movie theater or shopping center is more attractive on the margin.

Impact: Hurting the economy hurts the overall housing sector

Robert P. Murphy. “The Case Against Rent Control.” The Foundation For Economic Education. November 12, 2014https://fee.org/articles/the-case-against-rent- control/

“In summary, if the goal is to provide affordable housing to lower-income tenants, rent control is a horrible policy. Rent control makes apartments cheaper for some tenants while making them infinitely expensive for others, because some people can no longer find a unit, period, even though they would have been able to at the higher, free-

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market rate. Furthermore, the people who remain in apartments — enjoying the lower rent —receive a much lower-quality product. Especially when left in place for decades, rent control leads to abusive landlords and can quite literally destroy large portions of a city’s housing.”

Analysis: This argument is strong because it is holistic and long term. Even if the con wins some short term increases in affordability and access, in the long run the pro’s links into overall economic activity and the vitality of the housing sector will outweigh.

Champion Briefs 64 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent Control hurts economic growth

Response: Rent Control has noneconomic benefits

Warrant: Rent control promotes community stability

Blumgart, Jake. “In Defense of Rent Control.” Pacific Standard. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://psmag.com/economics/in-defense-of-rent-control.

“The argument for rent control should be distinguished from the argument for affordability per-se,” says Joshua Mason, an economics professor at Roosevelt University. “The real goal of rent control is protecting the moral rights of occupancy. Long-term tenants who contributed to this being a desirable place to live have a legitimate interest in staying in their apartments. If we think that income diverse, stable neighborhoods, where people are not forced to move every few years, [are worth preserving] then we collectively have an interest in stabilizing the neighborhood.” Renters are often maligned for not investing in their neighborhoods or houses. Mason argues that rent regulations give tenants a greater stake in their community and incentivize them to put time, energy, and even money into their homes. Without that kind of security in their occupancy, there is little return for contributing to the neighborhood and building relationships in the surrounding blocks.”

Warrant: Without rent control, neighborhoods can be volitile

Blumgart, Jake. “In Defense of Rent Control.” Pacific Standard. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://psmag.com/economics/in-defense-of-rent-control.

An Economist article on the end of rent control in Cambridge reported that 40 percent of covered tenants moved out of their apartments after the end of rent regulations in

Champion Briefs 65 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

the city—rents had increased by 50 percent—and reports of evictions rose by a third. A 2012 study seems to show that the removal of rent regulations did nothing to lower housing prices and ended Cambridge’s tenure as a mixed-income neighborhood. Simply building more units to bring down overall prices might work in some settings. But in tight housing markets that are already heavily developed, as most major Northeastern or West Coast cities are, it’s unclear whether rents are primarily driven by supply.

Analysis: By stressing noneconomic benefits, a con team can argue that rent control still contributes valuable functions to society. As your opponents what the virtues of economic growth are, if not to help the communities they are a part of.

Response: Rent Control does not actually distort the economy

Warrant: Rent control has little impact on construction

Together, Tenants. “Making the Case for Rent Control.” Medium, January 22, 2018. https://medium.com/@tenantstogether/making-the-case-for-rent-control- c598740f5ce8.

Rent control does not affect quality & quantity of housing. A study by urban planner John Gilderbloom showed that modern rent control laws in 100 U.S. cities have not negatively impacted the quality and quantity of rental units and actually motivated landlords to increase maintenance of rental housing. By law, landlords must comply with code requirements for rental housing and the extent of enforcement is the primary determinant of the quality of the housing stock.

Warrant: Empirically, rent control has not hurt the housing market

Champion Briefs 66 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Together, Tenants. “Making the Case for Rent Control.” Medium. January 22, 2018. https://medium.com/@tenantstogether/making-the-case-for-rent-control- c598740f5ce8.

“When modern rent control laws were first passed in California, they were passed in response to landlords raising prices in response to inflation in 1970s and not lowering them even after the state passed a law giving tax relief to property owners through Prop 13. Modern rent control does not impact new housing. In 2011, a study of Winnipeg rent controls found that more housing was built after rent control was enacted. Accordingly, the boom and bust cycles of local housing construction are driven by the overall health of the economy, not rent control.”

Analysis: This response is a de-link. Use it to straightforwardly argue that rent control does not indeed change essential economic market dynamics.

Champion Briefs 67 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Market rate housing increases school funding

Argument: Because property taxes fund schools, market rate housing increases the values of property and thus provides more money to schools.

Warrant: School funding comes from property taxes

Tilsey, Alexandra. How Do School Funding Formulas Work? 29 Nov. 2017, http://urbn.is/fundingformulas.

School funding is a blend of federal, state, and local dollars. Local funding largely comes from property taxes. Federal money, which accounts for just 10 percent of all education funding, tends to target low-income students or other distinct groups. State funding is where things get complicated. In all but five states, statewide formulas control most school funding. State education funding formulas have been the subject of controversy, confusion, and even lawsuits. Designed to ensure adequate funding across schools—and occasionally to promote equity—funding formulas distribute revenue to districts based on a variety of factors. These formulas often attempt to account for state and district revenue and anticipated differences among districts. What they cannot always account for, however, is how districts might respond to different incentives. In these often complex funding models, states aim to strike a balance between giving localities some control while maintaining enough control at the state level to ensure all students can access a quality education.

Warrant: US housing prices are skyrocketing

Reuters Staff. “US House Prices Are Going to Rise at Twice the Speed of Inflation and Pay: Reuters Poll.” CNBC, 6 June 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/06/us-

Champion Briefs 68 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

house-prices-are-going-to-rise-at-twice-the-speed-of-inflation-and-pay-reuters- poll.html.

An acute shortage of affordable homes in the United States will continue over the coming year, according to a majority of property market analysts polled by Reuters, driving prices up faster than inflation and wage growth. After losing over a third of their value a decade ago, which led to the financial crisis and a deep recession, U.S. house prices have regained those losses — led by a robust labor market that has fueled a pickup in economic activity and housing demand. But supply has not been able to keep up with rising demand, making homeownership less affordable.The latest poll of nearly 45 analysts taken May 16-June 5 showed the S&P/Case Shiller composite index of home prices in 20 cities is expected to gain a further 5.7 percent this year. That compared to predictions for average earnings growth of 2.8 percent and inflation of 2.5 percent 2018, according to a separate Reuters poll of economists.

Warrant: Affordable housing decreases property values

CED Program Interns & Students. “Does Affordable Housing Negatively Impact Nearby Property Values?” Community and Economic Development in North Carolina and Beyond, 26 Jan. 2017, https://ced.sog.unc.edu/does-affordable-housing- negatively-impact-nearby-property-values/.

Affordable housing is not as significant as other variables influencing property values The build quality of affordable housing in comparison to surrounding housing can impact property values nearby. When affordable housing is clustered there is a greater potential for decreased property values nearby The picture that has been painted thus far indicates that affordable housing at worst has a minimal negative impact on nearby property values. In another study, focusing on low income housing tax credit developments, the authors noted significant spillover effects of LIHTC

Champion Briefs 69 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

developments in Charlotte and Cleveland. In Charlotte, there was a high turnover rate in areas after the completion of a LIHTC development particularly in higher-income areas and a decrease in property values of nearby housing. In Cleveland, higher turnover rates were seen but since many were located in already depressed neighborhood housing, increased turnover did not negatively impact property values.

Impact: School funding is important to prevent kids from dropping out

Chen, Grace. “Decreasing Budgets Mean Increasing Dropouts in Public Schools | PublicSchoolReview.Com.” Public School Review, 1 Dec. 2017, https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/decreasing-budgets-mean- increasing-dropouts-in-public-schools.

Tightening budgets have increased class sizes, reduced extracurricular offerings, and cut staff numbers. Now it appears that smaller budgets have translated into more public school dropouts as well. School districts across the country have fallen victim to the current economic slowdown, which has resulted in significant budget cuts and tough decisions for many schools this year. Unfortunately, the budget cuts have come at a time when dropout rates are rising. Is there a connection? We will take a closer look at the issue to answer the question. No state has felt the brunt of school district budget cuts more acutely than California. With many districts forced to lay off counselors, end intervention services and reduce or eliminate arts and other extracurricular activities, there are fewer resources to keep kids interested in school than there once was. Recently released data seems to support this idea; according to a report at San Jose Mercury News, the dropout rate for California schools during the 2008-09 school year went up nearly three percent from the previous year. During the 2008-09 academic year, the dropout rate was 21.7%. The previous year, that rate was just 18.9%. African Americans saw the most dropouts at 36.9%, and Hispanics followed with 26.9%. Both of these demographics saw a three-percent increase in dropouts in just one year. At the

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same time, California saw an increase in graduation rates, with a nearly two-percent increase in graduations across the board and a five-percent jump in Hispanic graduations.

Analysis: This is a very good argument because the weighing is very good for the long term. It is easy to argue that protecting the children of underdeveloped neighborhoods and promising them a better future is the best method of providing a better future to the neighborhood overall. This means that any short term impacts about homelessness or displacement are outweighed by longer term development.

Champion Briefs 71 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Market rate housing increases school funding

Response: Property taxes no longer fund schools as much

Warrant: Municipalities are moving away from property taxes to fund schools

Thatcher, Daniel. The Role of the Property Tax in Public Education Funding. 2018, http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/funding-approaches-the-property-tax- and-public-ed.aspx.

No state has completely abandoned the use of the property tax as a source of revenue for public schools. States have shifted from a reliance on local property tax revenues as a substantial source of funding. In these cases (e.g., Indiana and Michigan) the state took on a larger role in the administration of the property tax revenues, in essence shifting from local property tax reliance to state property tax oversight. By oversight, I mean that the state sets the tax rates or tax ceilings or floors for local school districts (or parent governments). For instance, when Indiana, made this transition, the state eliminated a number of special local property tax levies and replaced the lost revenue with an increase in state sales and use tax rates (from six percent to seven percent). More on Indiana House Bill 1001 (2008) is available here. Instead of eliminating the local property tax, many states have placed limits on local property tax growth, California’s Proposition 13 being the most well-known. The Significant Features of Property Tax database housed on the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy website contains an entire section on property tax limits.

Warrant: Property taxes represent a drop in the bucket of school funding

Champion Briefs 72 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Zaretsky, Renu. “School Days, School Funding Haze.” Tax Policy Center, 5 Sept. 2018, https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/school-days-school-funding-haze.

For starters, funding schools includes far more than just property taxes. I took an informal poll of my friends a while back, asking how they thought public schools were funded. Out of a dozen people, most guessed “property taxes.” One parent at our middle school commented recently, “I can’t believe we pay so much in property taxes but we have to get volunteers to weed.” True enough, local property taxes provide a substantial amount, about one-third, of the money used to finance public education. It has remained a significant source of funding for public schools. But its role has changed over the years in many states, including my home state of Michigan. Property taxes fell at the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s as local governments faced “property tax revolts”. During the Great Recession of 2007 as property values fell, property tax growth slowed. For a while, in 2010-2011, property tax revenues actually fell. At the same time, judges, who worried about unequal educational opportunities across school districts, pushed many states to shift away from local property taxes as a main source of funding. Some states have taken primary responsibility for school funding, favoring state-imposed taxes over local property taxes.

Analysis: This is a good response because it severely mitigates your opponent’s argument. It does so in the short term by showing that even now, property taxes only represent a small amount of school funding and in the long term as they are phased out.

Response: Affordable housing does not reduce property values

Warrant: There is minimal correlation between affordable housing and property values

CED Program Interns & Students. “Does Affordable Housing Negatively Impact Nearby Property Values?” Community and Economic Development in North Carolina and

Champion Briefs 73 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Beyond, 26 Jan. 2017, https://ced.sog.unc.edu/does-affordable-housing- negatively-impact-nearby-property-values/.

Despite public perceptions of affordable housing negatively impacting nearby property values, there is evidence to suggest that the impact is minimal if at all. Trulia, an online residential real estate site, recently conducted a study indicating that low- income housing tax credit (read more on LIHTC here) projects have no impact on the value of nearby properties. According to Trulia’s study, there was no significant effect from 1996 to 2006 on home values located near a LIHTC project. Trulia studied 20 markets across the country and of the 20, there was a negative impact in only 2 cities, Boston and Cambridge. There was drop of near $20 per square foot in housing prices; however, this was explained by quick bursts in the construction of affordable housing. In Denver, there was actually an $7 per square foot increase in value. Based on available literature, negative perceptions of affordable housing potentially outweigh research suggesting that affordable housing does not negatively impact property values. This blog post will dive into some of these academic studies to better understand the monetary and social facets of affordable housing and its impact.

Warrant: Affordable housing can increase surrounding property values

Jan, Tracy. “A Surprising Way to Increase Property Values: Build Affordable Housing.” Washington Post, 6 July 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/06/a-surprising- way-to-increase-property-values/.

Despite the lawsuits, media spotlight and conventional wisdom, affordable housing developments built in poor, heavily black communities can lead to greater racial and income integration, according to new research by Stanford economists. Such housing, funded by federal tax credits, also raises property values and lowers crime in

Champion Briefs 74 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

surrounding neighborhoods as higher-income white residents move in, the researchers found. “When a corporate developer comes in and builds nicer, new housing, it makes the neighborhood more desirable as a potential place to live,” said Rebecca Diamond, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business who authored the study with her colleague Tim McQuade. The surprising findings, to be published in the Journal of Political Economy, are being widely circulated this week among academics following a New York Times story asserting that federal tax credits for affordable housing promotes racial segregation despite the program’s intent. While it’s true that such housing is disproportionately located in minority communities, the federal program actually results in more racially desegregated neighborhoods over time, said the researchers who analyzed a decade's worth of relevant data around more than 7,000 developments built with federal tax credits in 15 states.

Analysis: This is a good response because it at worst takes out the link of your opponent’s argument by showing that property values will be unaffected by the promotion of market rate housing or the alternative. At best, this is a turn by showing that affordable housing actually increases property values.

Champion Briefs 75 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Market rate housing increases inclusive gentrification

Argument: Market rate housing encourages richer people to move into neighborhoods, which increases job opportunities and raises the overall quality of life of people in the neighborhood through gentrification.

Warrant: We are on a trend of good gentrification that shouldn’t be stopped

Millsap, Adam. “We Shouldn’t Stop Gentrification, But We Can Make It Less Painful.” Forbes, 29 Mar. 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2018/03/29/we-shouldnt-stop- gentrification-but-we-can-make-it-less-painful/.

Many cities, especially their downtown neighborhoods, are experiencing an urban revival. Young, college educated workers—many of them single—are moving to dense, walkable neighborhoods, drawn in by the variety of restaurants, shops, bars, and other places where they can socialize with friends. The urban revival is contributing to higher real estate prices, which is making it difficult for many lower-income residents who currently live in these downtown neighborhoods to remain in their homes. Cities are trying to slow the transition with affordable housing mandates, rent control, and similar polices, and their intentions are laudable. Change, however, is a natural part of economic growth, and too much interference will stifle growth and make us all worse off. On the one hand, an urban renaissance should be welcome news for cities that were hollowed out during the late 20th century’s mass migration to the suburbs. The higher prices for space are incentivizing developers to invest in downtown neighborhoods, which boosts cities’ coffers. But the shiny new apartment buildings, retail/commercial space, and infrastructure also come with higher prices, which makes the area unaffordable for some current residents and business owners.

Champion Briefs 76 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Warrant: Limiting housing prices stops gentrification Price, David. “7 Policies That Could Prevent Gentrification.” Shelterforce, 23 May 2014, https://shelterforce.org/2014/05/23/7_policies_that_could_prevent_gentrificati on/.

The following are seven policy initiatives drawn from recent studies and articles that could be part of a community stabilization agenda using smart growth and equitable investments in order to prevent or mitigate gentrification in Roxbury and other at-risk neighborhoods in Boston. Policy 1: Aggressively build middle-income housing. Thousands of middle-income households today cannot afford to rent or buy in Roxbury. New construction home prices are at $550,000, requiring an income of $150,000 to buy. The city is selling its stock of small vacant lots to developers to build middle-income housing, but that’s not nearly enough to prevent displacement. We need a much more aggressive middle-income housing production program including investment of city subsidies. The city should resist calls to devote all of the city’s housing resources in low-income housing production.

Warrant: Gentrification helps poor neighborhoods

Gillespie, Patrick. “How Gentrification May Benefit the Poor.” CNNMoney, 12 Nov. 2015, https://money.cnn.com/2015/11/12/news/economy/gentrification-may-help- poor-people/index.html.

Champion Briefs 77 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

be some benefits. A study by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve recently concluded that poor people are no more likely to move out of a gentrifying neighborhood than from a non-gentrifying one. That doesn't mean low income people are not pushed out of their neighborhoods. They are just not more likely to be displaced than a person of similar income in a neighborhood that's not gentrifying. Experts say there are may even be some benefits for the low-income residents that decide to stay in gentrifying neighborhoods. -- New job opportunities emerge as more stores open and construction picks up. -- Longtime homeowners benefit from rising property values. -- There's often a decline in crime. -- On average, credit scores of the poor residents improve in gentrifying neighborhoods. "It appears that when a neighborhood gentrifies, it doesn't necessarily lead to widespread displacement," says Lance Freeman, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University.

Impact: Gentrification increases business growth

Small, Andrew. “Tracking the Incredible Gentrification of New York City.” CityLab, 28 Apr. 2017, https://www.citylab.com/work/2017/04/the-gentrification-of- gotham/524694/.

Comptroller Scott Stringer reveals just how profoundly the city has been transforming in the 21st century by comparing business and neighborhood details in 2000 and 2015. Dig around in the data and you’ll find detailed portraits of the city before and after gentrification, for better or worse. The report leads with the good news: The number of businesses has increased and business establishment growth picked up more in the 22 lower-income communities of the city (an increase of 41 percent) than the 33 higher- income districts (an increase of 12 percent). The report touts the growth of high-income industries in these neighborhoods. But business growth was even more pronounced in gentrifying neighborhoods. The 15 gentrifying neighborhoods as identified by the Furman Center saw a 45 percent jump in the number of businesses (a 45 percent

Champion Briefs 78 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

increase from 28,132 to 42,261). As the report notes, all but one of the neighborhoods with the fastest business growth were gentrifying, with the biggest increases in Central Harlem and Crown Heights. Greenpoint and Williamsburg weren’t far behind.

Analysis: This is a good argument because many con teams will likely be arguing that affordable housing prevents gentrification, which is good. This will allow you to easily preempt this argument and in fact turn it into a major reason to vote pro. The impact is also very weighable because you can argue that business growth solves back for problems of homelessness and high rents by giving residents more money.

Champion Briefs 79 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Market rate housing increases inclusive gentrification

Response: Gentrification increases homelessness

Warrant: Gentrification is a cause of the current homelessness crisis

Foster, Dawn. “Gentrification Isn’t a Benign Process: It Forces People from Their Homes | Dawn Foster.” The Guardian, 24 Mar. 2017. www.theguardian.com, https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2017/mar/24/gentrification- kings-cross-forces-people-from-housing-crisis.

This week’s report from Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the 2017 Homelessness Monitor: England, threw this into sharp relief. So-called “out-of-area placements”, where homeless people and families are housed in other boroughs and sometimes halfway across the country, account for 28% of all homelessness placements, up from 11% since 2010. The number of families in bed and breakfast accommodation has risen by 250% since 2009; and nearly 58,000 people were accepted as homeless by their council in 2015/16 – 18,000 higher than 2009/10. This is a crisis, and anyone arguing it is not has no grasp of statistics never mind a moral compass. It is a crisis that is due, in part, to gentrification – but also to the attitude that excuses or erases the violence of gentrification. It’s more comfortable to argue that gentrification is little more than a slight sprucing up of a place and the growth of independent shops offering to relieve you of your cash, whose perks you can enjoy if you’re flush with cash and don’t feel your job or housing is precarious.

Warrant: Gentrification creates a vicious cycle for the poor, ending in homelessness

Champion Briefs 80 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Shrooen, Michael. What Causes Homelessness. 2017, http://web.pdx.edu/~shrooen/Webpage/critical%20thinking%20link%202.htm.

How do gentrification and the reduction of jobs affect the homeless population? A family living in a gentrifying neighborhood will see a rise in the cost of living and while this is happening so is the reduction for chances to get a better job. It is a vicious cycle that Is affecting many people and in my eyes the main reason for the overpopulated homeless. There are many ways in which our growing homeless population could be controlled and cut down immensely. Three ways that author Robert Hayes believes controlling the homeless are he wants to see the housing market balance out, the income of dependent people needs to be increased and publicly funded initiatives like schools and day care must be found. (67) According to a report by Andrew Macleod, Canada has started to address the problem of homelessness and the minister of British Columbia is starting to give money to help build and run shelters for the homeless. (Macleod) Homelessness is a problem not only in our country but around the world and needs to be controlled. It’s not often you see a person who is financially doing well in line with hundreds of others trying to get one meal during the day. However, it is likely to see someone well off voting that our government’s money be spent somewhere else rather than to helping those people. Gentrifications benefits don’t do anything for the people who can’t afford any taxes on a home, or can’t afford paying the garbage bill, the only way it affects the poor or lower income society is negatively.

Analysis: This is a good response because it provides a significant counterweight to the pro’s impact and in fact offers a reason to vote con on this issue. It doesn’t matter if businesses are helped if many people are forced into utter destitution as a result and are forced to live on the streets.

Response: Gentrification displaces the poor

Champion Briefs 81 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Warrant: Gentrification can increase rents and evictions

Florida, Richard. “The Complex Connection Between Gentrification and Displacement.” CityLab, 8 Sept. 2015, http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/09/the- complicated-link-between-gentrification-and-displacement/404161/.

The earliest studies of displacement conducted in the 1980s generated widely varying estimates of how many people are displaced by gentrification. A 1982 study found that roughly 1 percent of all Americans, 5 percent of families, and 8.5 percent of urban families were displaced from their homes between 1970 and 1977 by either eviction, public action, sale or reoccupation, or the changing state of their neighborhood. A 1983 study of five cities (Boston, Cincinnati, Richmond, Seattle, and Denver) found that nearly a quarter (23 percent) of residents in these urban neighborhoods were displaced due to eviction, increased rent, or the fact that the house they were renting was sold between 1978-1980. Similarly, a 2001 study of gentrifying areas of Boston by Jacob Vigdor found evidence of heightened housing turnover in gentrifying neighborhoods.

Warrant: Gentrification can displace over a quarter of households

That said, displacement can be and is a big issue in places where gentrification is occurring at a feverish pace. In her coverage of related research by the UC Berkeley Urban Displacement Project, my CityLab colleague Tanvi Misra points to the strong link between gentrification and displacement in a high-gentrification city like San Francisco. Over a quarter of San Francisco’s neighborhoods (422 of the nearly 1,600 surveyed) are at risk of displacement. The study’s lead author, Karen Chapple, writes

Champion Briefs 82 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

that by 2030, San Francisco, Oakland, “and many other Bay Area communities may realize that their neighborhood has turned the corner from displacement risk to reality.” Indeed, displacement is becoming a larger issue in knowledge hubs and superstar cities, where the pressure for urban living is accelerating. These particular cities attract new businesses, highly skilled workers, major developers, and large corporations, all of which drive up both the demand for and cost of housing. As a result, local residents—and neighborhood renters in particular—may feel pressured to move to more affordable locations

Analysis: This is a good response because even if it is true that gentrification leaves a neighborhood better off, the people who originally lived in that neighborhood are now gone, which means that the impact is not felt by the people who need it the most.

Champion Briefs 83 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Market rate housing increases funding for welfare programs

Argument: Market rate housing increases housing prices, which increases property taxes. These taxes are then used to fund local programs that are important to help the poor.

Warrant: Housing prices are rising

Sharf, Samantha. “Housing Outlook 2018: 6 Predictions From The Experts.” Forbes, 3 Jan. 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2018/01/03/housing- outlook-2018-six-predictions-from-the-experts/.

In 2017 Americans learned to expect the unexpected, whether it be politics, weather or housing. Driven by record low inventory, little about the housing market went as forecast last year. “We thought there would be some things to take the pressure off,” reflects Skylar Olsen, senior economist at home search site Zillow. Interest rates would rise. Construction would pick up. Price growth would moderate. “That did not happen at any impactful level.” Instead the market got hotter: inventory tightened, prices rose, mortgage rates barely budged and, though new home construction picked up at the end of the year, it was not at the starter price points where new inventory is needed most. Like the soaring stock market, the housing market often seemed disconnected from the tumult in Washington and natural disasters elsewhere. Observes Javier Vivas, director of economic research for Realtor.com: “We saw the economic growth and the economic momentum function as an override for a lot of external forces.”

Warrant: Property taxes fund local governments

Champion Briefs 84 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Harris, Benjamin. “Property Taxes.” Urban Institute, 23 Mar. 2015, https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-local- finance-initiative/projects/state-and-local-backgrounders/property-taxes.

Property taxes are a very small source of revenue for states, in part because states typically tax personal property but not real property. State governments collected $15 billion in revenue from property taxes in 2015 or 1 percent of state general revenue. In contrast, property taxes were one of the largest sources of revenue for local governments. Local governments collected $473 billion in property taxes or 30 percent of local government general revenue, surpassed only by government transfers, which were 36 percent of general revenue. School districts, counties, municipalities, and townships all collect property tax revenue. Property tax revenues typically account for a significant portion of general revenues in those jurisdictions, particularly for school districts. The remaining local government property tax revenue was collected by “special districts,” which are specific-purpose units such as water and sewer authorities.

Warrant: Local taxes fund welfare programs

Gordon, Tracy. “State and Local Expenditures.” Urban Institute, 5 Mar. 2015, https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-local- finance-initiative/projects/state-and-local-backgrounders/state-and-local- expenditures.

State and local governments spend most of their resources on education, health, and social service programs. In 2015, about one-third of state and local spending went toward elementary and secondary education (22 percent) and higher education (10 percent).3 States finance higher education not only through public revenues but also through student tuition and fees: 30 percent of higher education dollars come from tuition and other charges. Research has shown that in recent years, declining state

Champion Briefs 85 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

financing for public universities has driven tuition increases. Just under another one- third of expenditures went toward public welfare (21 percent) and health and hospitals (9 percent). Public welfare includes spending on means-tested programs, such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Security Income, and others. Medicaid constitutes a large, and growing, portion of state spending. The National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) estimates that in 2015, Medicaid alone accounted for over one-fourth of total state spending.5 If considering general funds only, K–12 education still constitutes the largest portion of state spending.

Impact: Welfare programs reduce poverty

Kasperkevic, Jana. “Welfare Programs Shown to Reduce Poverty in America.” The Guardian, 12 Nov. 2014. www.theguardian.com, https://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/nov/12/social- welfare-programs-food-stamps-reduce-poverty-america.

Safety nets like food stamps prevent millions more people from struggling to put food on the table, says Jake Grovum, who analyzed the data for the Pew Charitable Trusts. Consider Grovum’s findings: For people of all ages, the official poverty rate in the US was 14.5%. That’s equivalent to 45.3 million people Without food stamps, the poverty rate would be 17.10% – a other 8 million Americans would be living in poverty. Without social security, the poverty rate for Americans 65 and older would be 52.67% instead of the current 14.6%. Without tax credits like the federal earned income tax credit, poverty for children under 18 would be 22.8% instead of the official poverty rate of 19.9%. These numbers are important. US lawmakers have long struggled to show exactly how and where certain types of government assistance are helping Americans stay out of poverty.

Champion Briefs 86 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Analysis: The weighing on this argument is very simple because even if the con can prove that people will be pushed out of their housing in the short run because of rising property values, having a good safety net can make sure that in the long run people stay out of poverty.

Champion Briefs 87 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Market rate housing increases funding for welfare programs

Response: Welfare increases poverty

Warrant: Welfare creates dependency

Spalding, Matthew. “Why the U.S. Has a Culture of Dependency.” CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/opinion/spalding-welfare-state- dependency/index.html. Accessed 8 Feb. 2019.

These people aren't necessarily dependent on government; many could live (even live well) without their Social Security check, Pell grant or crop subsidy. That's not the point. The problem is that Washington is building a culture of dependency, with ever-more people relying on an ever-growing federal government to give them cash or benefits.This is a growing and dangerous trend. The United States thrives because of a culture of opportunity that encourages work and disdains relying on handouts. The growth of the welfare state, a confusing alphabet soup of programs that are supposed to help low-income Americans make ends meet and do not include entitlements such as Social Security or Medicare, is turning us into a land where many expect, and see no stigma attached to, drawing regular financial support from the federal government. Consider means-tested social welfare programs. The federal government operates at least 69 programs that provide assistance deliberately and exclusively to poor and lower-income people. The benefits include cash, food, housing, medical care and social services

Warrant: Welfare has pushed millions into poverty

Champion Briefs 88 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Rector, Robert. “Did Welfare Reform Increase Extreme Poverty in the United States?” The Heritage Foundation, 21 Aug. 2016, /welfare/report/did-welfare-reform- increase-extreme-poverty-the-united-states.

Remarkably, two decades after the enactment of reform, the left has revived Moynihan’s original claims about “children sleeping on grates.” In their recent book $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer argue that welfare reform has caused a surge in “extreme poverty” in the U.S.[9] Edin and Shaefer claim that welfare reform has led 3.55 million children (or 4 percent of all families with children) to subsist on less than $2.00 per person per day, which they identify as “one of the World Bank’s measures of global poverty.”[10] According to Edin and Shaefer these families live in “extreme destitution,” regularly selling their blood and collecting aluminum cans to survive.[11]

Analysis: This is a good response because this makes the argument a reason to vote for the con. You can agree with every link in the case, but simply argue that in fact it is bad that there is an increase in funding for local redistribution programs because it creates dependency and traps people in poverty.

Response: Affordable housing is good for property values

Warrant: Affordable housing raises property values by 6.5 percent

Champion Briefs 89 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

While it’s true that such housing is disproportionately located in minority communities, the federal program actually results in more racially desegregated neighborhoods over time, said the researchers who analyzed a decade's worth of relevant data around more than 7,000 developments built with federal tax credits in 15 states. Building affordable housing in low-income, high-minority neighborhoods lowers the share of black residents in the surrounding community by about 3 percentage points, Diamond and McQuade found. It also improves racial integration in wealthier, high-minority communities. “That’s a pretty big effect just by developing one building,” Diamond said. Most of the impact occurs within half a mile of the housing development. The most intense effect is felt within less than a quarter mile, she said. In neighborhoods where median incomes fell below $26,000 a year, the researchers saw home values appreciate 6.5 percent within a tenth of a mile of the housing development.

Warrant: Affordable housing makes a neighborhood more desirable, raising property values

March, Mary. “How Affordable Housing Can Boost Property Values.” Construction Dive, 10 July 2017, https://www.constructiondive.com/news/how-affordable-housing- can-boost-property-values/446646/.

Building affordable housing with federal tax credits in low-income, high-minority communities can raise property values, lower crime rates and lead to greater racial and income integration, according to research from Stanford University. Developers who build high-quality new housing can make an area more attractive to prospective residents who, in turn, could bring greater wealth to the community, according to The Washington Post. In neighborhoods with a median annual income of less than $26,000, home values rose 6.5% within a tenth of a mile of a new affordable housing complex. Neighborhoods with median incomes of $54,000 or more, however, saw home values depreciate by 2.5% within the same distance.

Champion Briefs 90 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Analysis: This is a good argument because it also makes it a reason to vote con. If affordable housing raises property values, then there is no reason to promote market rate housing. Affordable housing will also increase property taxes and fund local programs.

Champion Briefs 91 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Market rate housing encourages property development

Argument: Because market rate housing offers higher returns for property developers, they will be more likely to invest in poorer neighborhoods, which will eventually reduce taxes in the long term.

Warrant: We have a housing shortage

Flemming, Mark. “America Is Facing a Housing Shortage — Here’s Why More People Aren’t Selling Their Homes.” Business Insider, 22 Apr. 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/theres-a-housing-shortage-in-america-but- people-arent-selling-homes-2018-4.

In March, the housing market continued to underperform its potential. Actual existing home sales are 4.5 percent below the market potential for home sales, according to our Potential Home Sales model. The lack of supply is the primary culprit. The inventory of homes for sale in most markets remains historically tight, yet demand continues to rise as millennials further age into homeownership. Limited supply and rising demand means house prices are surging, so why aren't more existing homeowners selling their homes? Two market dynamics are at play. Many existing homeowners are 'rate-locked.' The majority of existing homeowners have mortgages with historically low rates and, now that rates are rising, they are hesitant to sell their homes. They recognize that once they sell and purchase a new home, they will have a higher mortgage rate. There is limited incentive to sell when, due to higher mortgage rates, it will cost you more each month just to borrow the same amount from the bank. As mortgage rates rise further, more existing homeowners may become rate locked into their existing homes.

Champion Briefs 92 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Warrant: Promoting market rate housing increases the supply of housing

Wiener, Scott. “Market-Rate Housing Isn’t a Bad Word, and We Won’t Solve the Housing Crisis Without It.” ART + Marketing, 16 Apr. 2017, https://artplusmarketing.com/market-rate-housing-isnt-a-bad-word-and-we- won-t-solve-the-housing-crisis-without-it-ce67c06aff4d.

But, absent a housing Marshall Plan by the federal government (not gonna happen in our lifetime), we simply do not and will not have the massive resources we would need to shift to a dominant public-subsidy-based housing approach. Which means: In addition to expanding the supply of subsidized income-based affordable units, we must increase the overall supply of housing, and that means — you guessed it — market-rate housing. Some describe all new market-rate housing as “luxury housing,” because it’s expensive. Well, of course it’s expensive, since for decades we haven’t built enough of it. According to California’s Legislative Analyst, the state needs to produce about 180,000 units of housing a year to keep up with growth. In practice, we produce less than half that number. And, let’s be real. While the new apartment or condo project down the street is expensive, so is the 75-year-old house or apartment you’re trying to buy or rent. It’s *all* expensive, and that’s not because it’s “luxury.” It’s because it’s scarce.

Warrant: Rent control decreases housing supply

Jackson, Kerry. Pacific Research Institute | Latest Evidence Shows Rent Control Increases Costs, Reduces Housing Supply. 22 Jan. 2018, https://www.pacificresearch.org/latest-evidence-shows-rent-control-increases- costs-reduces-housing-supply/.

Champion Briefs 93 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Now another important volume has been added to that extensive canon. A group of Stanford researchers has determined that while current San Francisco renters benefit enormously from laws that keep their housing costs artificially low, they also found “losses to all renters of $2.9 billion due to rent control’s effect on decreasing the rental housing and raising market rents.” “Landlords treated by rent control reduced rental housing supply by 15 percent, causing a 5.1 percent city-wide rent increase,” Rebecca Diamond, Timothy McQuade, and Franklin Qian write in the abstract of their National Bureau of Economic Research working paper “The Effects Of Rent Control Expansion On Tenants, Landlords, And Inequality: Evidence From San Francisco.” Here’s more: “A substantial body of economic research has warned about potential negative efficiency consequences to limiting rent increases below market rates, including over- consumption of housing by tenants of rent controlled apartments.”

Impact: Higher housing supply reduces homelessness

Editorial Board. “Editorial: To Help Homeless, More Housing Is the Answer.” San Francisco Chronicle, 28 June 2018, https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-More-housing- is-the-answer-13031646.php.

Homelessness arises from a lack of homes. That conclusion of a recent UCLA study would seem intuitive, given that lacking a home and being homeless are one and the same. But the connection between the state’s gaping housing shortage and its spreading homelessness still strikes too many Californians as a great controversy requiring endless debate. Lest neighborhoods and politicians accept the pressing need to build a lot more housing of every kind in the state’s cities and suburbs, the housing shortage and homelessness are often treated as separate subjects. Take San Francisco’s recent mayoral race, in which every major candidate addressed the pervasive ravages of homelessness but only one consistently professed support for

Champion Briefs 94 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

measures to increase the overall housing supply. Local officials across the state are forever lobbying Sacramento to spend more on homelessness while simultaneously doing their best to kill any measure that would force them to approve more homes.

Analysis: This is a good argument because most of the cons arguments are going to be centered around the idea that affordable housing helps the poor afford housing. However, this argument achieves this end even better by creating a more sustainable solution by offering housing on the market itself which is affordable.

Champion Briefs 95 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Market rate housing encourages property development

Response: Affordable housing prevents displacement

Warrant: Affordable housing is a universally accepted method of reducing displacement

USDHUD. Displacement of Lower-Income Families in Urban Areas Report. May 2018, p. 26. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/50796/411295- Keeping-the-Neighborhood-Affordable.PDF

This report is in response to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations’ request for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to examine the effects of rapidly rising rents in urban areas across the nation and avoid displacement. This report reviews the recent research on the causes and consequences of gentrification and identifies key steps policymakers can take to foster neighborhood change that is both inclusive and equitable. Best practices on the ground have varied, but they all include a focus on the preservation and production of affordable housing and are strengthened by collaboration and partnership with other local agencies. This report suggests four key strategies that could address displacement of lower-income families and long-time residents in urban areas and alleviate the pressures on housing affordability and community resistance to change

Warrant: Affordable housing reduces displacement but market rate housing increases it

BondGraham, Darwin. “UC Berkeley Report: Affordable Housing Is Best Way to Combat Gentrifcation.” East Bay Express, 27 May 2016, https://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2016/05/27/uc-berkeley- report-lao-wrong-about-market-rate-housing-panacea.

Champion Briefs 96 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

According to a new report by UC Berkeley researchers, the best way to prevent gentrification and displacement is to build affordable housing in cities and neighborhoods where rents and home prices are rising fastest. The Berkeley report is a rebuttal to an earlier, widely circulated report by the state Legislative Analyst Office that claimed the best way to prevent displacement of low-income households is to simply build more market rate housing as fast as possible. According to UC Berkeley researchers Miriam Zuk and Karen Chapple, the LAO report was not a "nuanced" study capable of determining how the construction of new market-rate housing affects different groups at the neighborhood-level. Zuk and Chapple cite prior research that found "market-rate construction can simultaneously alleviate housing pressures across the region while also exacerbating them at the neighborhood level."

Analysis: This is a good response because preventing displacement directly is better than waiting for the building of more housing, which may never happen. The probability of this working is much higher, which thus outweighs the pro argument.

Response: Affordable housing prevents homelessness

Warrant: Affordable housing is necessary to solve the homelessness crisis

Anzilotti, Eillie. “America’s Affordable Housing Crisis Is Driving Its Homelessness Crisis.” Fast Company, 7 Dec. 2017, https://www.fastcompany.com/40504605/americas-affordable-housing-crisis-is- driving-its-homelessness-crisis.

Wages have fallen so far behind housing costs (in New York, for instance, you’d need at least an hourly wage of $27.29 to comfortably rent a one-bedroom, but the median is just over $20) that many Americans are now forced to spend nearly half their

Champion Briefs 97 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

income on rent–far over the 30% deemed reasonable. The solution is clear: Cities need to build affordable–truly affordable, not just below-market-rate–housing, and they need to do so quickly. As noble as the efforts of mayors like de Blasio, Garcetti, and Lee are to funnel more money into shelters and homeless-services programs, they won’t be real solutions until they also make investments in building and preserving more affordable units. San Francisco, for instance, is facing an affordable-housing shortfall of at least 40,000 units. Cities should be turning to alternative funding streams–like Seattle’s proposal to introduce an extra tax on corporations that will go toward homeless housing–and investing in permanently affordable housing options like community land trusts.

Warrant: Slashing affordable housing funding would push many more into homelessness

National Low Income Housing Coalition. Cutting Housing Benefits Would Increase Homelessness and Housing Poverty. 2017, p. 3. https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/Benefit-Cuts_0218.pdf

One of the biggest barriers to economic prosperity for America’s lowest income families is the lack of decent, accessible, and affordable homes. Research shows that when people have a stable, decent, and accessible home that they can afford, they are better able to find employment, achieve economic mobility, age in place, perform better in school, and maintain improved health.1 Proposals to slash federal housing benefits would leave even more low income people without a stable home, making it harder for them to climb the economic ladder and live with dignity. Congress should reject proposals to take away housing benefits and instead enact proven solutions to help struggling families earn more and get ahead. This starts with expanding—not slashing—investments in affordable homes, job training, education, childcare, and other policies to help families thrive.

Champion Briefs 98 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Analysis: This is a good response because it easily outweighs the pro’s argument and makes it a reason to vote con. Even if it’s true that building more housing will lower prices in the long term, before we can even get to that point, people will be pushed into homelessness and have their lives ruined before too late.

Champion Briefs 99 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Market rate housing reduces crime

Argument: Market rate housing provides more housing to the poor, which allows them to find an alternative to a life of crime.

Warrant: We have a housing shortage

Woellert, Lorraine. “Why Washington Can’t Fix the New Housing Crisis.” The Agenda, 7 July 2017, https://politi.co/2OWaQoh.

The crisis is a shortage of houses. Nationally, the inventory of homes for sale has been shrinking for 24 straight months, stoking bidding wars for even the lowliest fixer- uppers. In January, a measure of supply hit its lowest in history, according to the National Association of Realtors. That scarcity has helped push the homeownership rate to a near 50-year low. As 83 million millennials approach homebuying age, the shortage is expected to get only worse. The president claims to have the problem well in hand. “Homebuilders are starting to build again,” he told a cheering crowd in Iowa last month. But that’s wrong: Construction is at an eight-month low and builder optimism is waning. There were so few houses for sale in May that buyers pushed prices to a new record high. The scarcity has helped push homeownership among young adults to its lowest in at least a generation, according to Bank of America. Today’s millennials are less likely to be homeowners than their parents or grandparents were at their age.

Warrant: Market rate housing increases the supply of housing

Cortright, Joe. “City Observatory - The End of the Housing Supply Debate (Maybe).” City Observatory, 8 Nov. 2017, http://cityobservatory.org/the-end-of-the-housing- supply-debate-maybe/.

Champion Briefs 100 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

The battle cry of the low income housing advocates is “you can’t build your way to affordability.” As Bloomberg’s Noah Smith put it, among these advocates: . . it has become an article of faith that building market-rate housing raises rents, rather than lowers them. The logic of Econ 101 — that an increase in supply lowers price — is alien to many progressives, both in the Bay Area and around the country. Sightline Institute has tackled that notion directly. Not only can you build your way to affordable housing, in fact, building more supply may be the only effective way to reduce the pressure that is driving up rents and producing displacement. There’s ample evidence for this position, but there’s still the strong sense that addressing our housing problem by building more high end housing is a cynical and ineffective kind of “trickle down” economics.” Building more market rate housing isn’t so much about “trickle down” as it is building enough new housing to keep higher income households from moving down-market and bidding up the price of older housing that would otherwise be affordable to moderate and lower income households.

Warrant: Affordable housing is not enough to reduce the shortage

On a pretty regular basis, someone makes the following statement to me: “We have a housing crisis and we definitely need more housing. But it has to be affordable housing.” Some people will also add on something about how letting developers build housing is a “giveaway” to them, as if no one will live in those housing units.These attitudes breed skepticism — and even hostility — in political leaders and advocacy organizations toward market-rate housing, and drive support for housing policy that

Champion Briefs 101 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

focuses either exclusively or largely on publicly subsidized, income-based affordable housing. The problem is that as much as I and others support and work to expand subsidized, income-based affordable housing, we will never — and I truly mean never — produce enough of that housing to satisfy all, or even most, of our housing needs. These subsidized units clearly play a critical role, particularly for our lowest income residents, and we need many more of them. But, absent a housing Marshall Plan by the federal government (not gonna happen in our lifetime), we simply do not and will not have the massive resources we would need to shift to a dominant public- subsidy-based housing approach.

Impact: Displacement creates poverty and crime

Valoy, Patricia. “7 Reasons Why Gentrification Hurts Communities of Color.” Everyday Feminism, 12 Sept. 2014, https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/09/gentrification-communities-of-color/.

While not having poor people live on your streets might be a priority for wealthier residents, the response should be to help them, not arrest them.If people of color are getting arrested for everything from drug use to being poor, I don’t think it’s safe to say that gentrification is improving our neighborhoods and making them safer. The reality is that the incarceration of Black and Brown men create the illusion of safety for white residents, but it’s a sense of security based on stereotypes of Black and Brown men being thugs, criminals, and dangerous. The need to feel safe, which is an absolute human right, is a necessity, but the way we achieve that in gentrified neighborhoods is missing the mark. Crime happens because former residents of gentrified neighborhoods live in poverty and suffer from lack of resources and poor educational and health services.

Impact: Crime creates poverty traps

Champion Briefs 102 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Mehlum, Halvor, et al. “Crime Induced Poverty Traps.” Journal of Development Economics, vol. 77, no. 2, Aug. 2005, pp. 325–40. ScienceDirect, doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2004.05.002.

Poverty makes thieves and thieves hamper economic growth. We study these linkages in a model of modern sector job creation. Job creation has two effects. Higher labor demand tends to lower crime while higher output gives more to steal, tending to increase crime. At low levels of modernization the second effect dominates and, as a consequence, the model has decreasing returns to scale. At higher levels of modernization there is increasing returns to scale due to declining crime. The economy may end up in a poverty trap with high crime and low production or obtain full modernization with low crime rates. The danger of ending up in a poverty trap has implications for economic policies. We show, for instance, that a reform, intended to improve efficiency, may throw the economy into a vicious circle of increasing crime and stagnation if implemented too fast.

Analysis: This is a good argument because crime has the potential to ravage poor neighborhoods and make it much harder to escape poverty. This means that if the pro can prove that market rate housing reduces crime, this should be sufficient to win the round because it can outweigh in the long term by linking into structural poverty for generations to come.

Champion Briefs 103 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Market rate housing protects the poor from illegal eviction

Response: Market rate housing does not alleviate displacement

Warrant: Market rate housing does not reduce displacement on a neighborhood level

Willis, Renee. “Subsidized Housing Production Prevents Regional Displacement Better than Market-Rate Production.” National Low Income Housing Coalition, 18 July 2016, https://nlihc.org/article/subsidized-housing-production-prevents-regional- displacement-better-market-rate-production.

IGS also examined the impact of subsidized and market-rate housing production during the 1990s on low income household displacement from 2000 to 2013. This analysis provides a better timeframe to ensure housing production preceded the potential displacement the researchers studied. Subsidized housing production was much more effective than market-rate production at preventing displacement of low income households in the subsequent decade. IGS did a third analysis of housing production and displacement to test a hypothesis put forward by Rick Jacobus in a Shelterforce article titled “Why We Must Build.” Jacobus suggested that housing markets work differently at different geographic scales, that market-rate housing production may reduce low income household displacement at a regional scale but increase or have no impact on displacement in a given neighborhood. IGS compared their regional results with an analysis of production and displacement in census block groups in San Francisco. The results support the hypothesis. Neither subsidized nor market-rate production appear to impact neighborhood-scale displacement of low income households, either positively or negatively. The study’s authors did not, however, examine the displacement impact of preexisting subsidized housing built prior to the 1990s.

Champion Briefs 104 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Warrant: Market rate housing is unaffordable for the poor, and often built in richer areas

Pop, Oana. “Curbing Displacement in Gentrifying Cities: Small Answers to a Booming Crisis - RENTCafé.” RENTCafé Rental Blog, 3 July 2018, https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/market-snapshots/curbing- displacement-in-gentrifying-cities/.

The question remains as to who will channel enough resources towards building affordable housing in a real estate climate that overwhelmingly favors luxury over necessity. More urgently, as a recent Wall Street Journal article discusses, what is being done to stem the displacement of families in areas where costs have already spiked untenably high? As new population and capital shift towards urban cores, affordable apartments convert to market-rate prices and end up ostensibly out of reach for low- income residents. Rising construction costs and the growing demand for rental housing at all price levels means that tax cuts and subsidies no longer act as sufficient financial incentives for developers to venture into affordable projects.New apartment supply is conspicuously concentrated in the high-end spectrum. According to Yardi Matrix data, only 10% of all buildings with more than 50 units completed in 2017 was subsidized affordable housing. In a core market like Manhattan, luxury units (class A+ to B+ in Yardi Matrix rating system) made up as much as 92% of last year’s supply, and the trend is ongoing.

Analysis: This is a good response because it takes out the link of the argument by saying that market rate housing has no effect on displacement. This means that there should be no effect on crime either, since the link into crime is through reducing displacement.

Response: Affordable housing reduces displacement

Warrant: Subsidized housing is better at protecting against displacement

Champion Briefs 105 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Kinney, Jen. Determining How Subsidized Housing Factors Into a More Affordable S.F. 26 May 2016, https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/subsidized-housing-development- reducing-displacement-san-francisco.

Their report also notes that a new appreciation for older, architecturally significant housing disrupts the filtering process, since some housing becomes more desirable as it ages. A higher share of housing stock built before 1950, a college-educated population in 2000 and a low-income population in 2000 all predict a higher likelihood of a census tract experiencing displacement. Consistent with the LAO report, Chapple and Zuk did find that new market-rate units built from 2000 to 2013 predicted a reduction in displacement over that same time period. But they also found that the production of subsidized housing units, built with low-income housing tax credits and other state and federal subsidies, had a greater protective effect than market-rate units. They were about twice as effective in preventing displacement: For every one subsidized unit, two or more market-rate units would need to be built to achieve the same effect, they say.

Warrant: Affordable housing reduces displacement twice as much as market rate housing

Schwartz, Matt. “UC Berkeley Study Finds New Affordable Housing Twice As Effective at Combatting Displacement of Lower-Income Families.” California Housing Partnership Corporation, 24 May 2016, https://chpc.net/uc-berkeley-study- finds-new-affordable-housing-twice-effective-combatting-displacement-lower- income-families/.

As tens of thousands of lower-income Californian renters have been displaced from California’s growing job centers over the past five years, a debate has been raging about whether governments should do more to promote investment in affordable housing or

Champion Briefs 106 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

instead focus on unshackling the private housing market. The latter theory, promoted by institutions ranging from the Legislative Analysts Office to capital market providers and even a conservative renters’ organization, has been that if governments only removed enough regulation, private developers would produce enough new market- rate apartments such that rents would decline and become affordable again. A new study by two researchers at UC Berkeley finds that while production of market-rate homes can have a helpful effect on lowering median rents at a regional level, investing in the production of new affordable rent-restricted homes is twice as effective at reducing displacement. In so doing, the study criticizes the LAO’s flawed methodology, which excluded data on subsidized housing, as well as some of its conclusions.

Analysis: This response also turns the link of the argument. If affordable housing is better at reducing displacement then it will be better at reducing crime than the promotion of market rate housing. This makes the argument a compelling reason to actually vote con.

Champion Briefs 107 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Market rate housing creates a path for social mobility

Argument: Housing policy is too often overlooked as a critical factor in enhancing upward mobility. Market rate housing presents an avenue for better education, access to employment, and inevitably social mobility.

Warrant: Current housing patterns prevent upwards mobility and threatens child development

Turner, Margery. “Housing and Economic Mobility.” Urban Institute, The Urban Institute, 29 Sept. 2015, www.urban.org/debates/housing-and-economic- mobility.

“But in fact, current housing patterns exacerbate inequality and block access to opportunities for upward mobility. In particular, neighborhood segregation – along lines of race and ethnicity as well as income – constrain many lower income families – especially families of color – to communities that lack key opportunities and exclude them from communities where opportunities are much more abundant. A growing body of evidence argues that growing up in a disinvested community, where crime and violence are commonplace and public schools are ineffective, undermines a child’s long- term life-chances, other things being equal. In contrast, higher cost communities with safe places to play, high-performing schools, and an abundance of enrichment opportunities boost a child’s prospects for future success. Other aspects of housing matter to inequality as well. When rent consumes an inordinate share of a family’s budget, food, healthcare, and educational expenditures suffer. When families have to move unexpectedly because of eviction or foreclosure, the instability threatens their children’s health and development. When households can’t qualify for mortgage financing, their prospects for building wealth are diminished.”

Champion Briefs 108 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Warrant: Research links affordable housing to children's test scores

Podmolik, Mary Ellen. “Research Links Affordable Housing to Children's Test Scores.” Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 7 Apr. 2015,

“Nationwide, from 2012 to 2013, wages increased 1.3 percent, compared with a 17 percent increase in home prices as the country bounced back from the housing crisis, according to an analysis by RealtyTrac. In the Chicago area, average weekly wages rose 3.1 percent in that two-year period while median home prices posted a 20.5 percent gain. Meanwhile, the rate of rent increases has slowed, but average rents year over year in March rose 3.5 percent nationally and 2.7 percent in the Chicago area, according to real estate research firm Reis "Affordability, it's still the most important, most prevalent housing problem," said Sandra Newman, a professor at Johns Hopkins University. "We are honestly so much a part of the inequality discussion. We have to show how the housing unaffordability crisis is very connected to inequality." Working with another researcher, Newman found that the percent of income a low-earning family spent on housing had a profound effect on a child's reading and math scores. Test scores suffered when families spent more than half their income on housing, or less than 20 percent of it. Newman theorizes that spending too little puts a family in a bad housing situation in a bad neighborhood, but spending too much forces households to make choices that affect family members, like spending less on computers or books.”

Warrant: Unaffordable housing is hitting millennials the hardest

Champion Briefs 109 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Green, Andy. “The Crisis for Young People: Why Housing Is the Key to Social Mobility.” IOE LONDON BLOG, 4 July 2017, ioelondonblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/04/the- crisis-for-young-people-why-housing-is-the-key-to-social-mobility/.

“For previous generations, going back until the 1970s, when the late baby boomers came of age, housing proved to be a major source of wealth accumulation and ‘lifestyle mobility’ -– if not for all, then at least for a majority. If social mobility were measured in intergenerational changes in consumer power, then housing asset accumulation would have been counted a major engine of mobility both for baby boomers, and for the X Generation (born 1965 to 1979) that followed them. For the Millennial generation, by contrast, the protracted housing crisis has proven to be the major barrier to their life chances, and the main symbol of intergenerational declines in opportunity. Of all the domains in which young people see their opportunities restricted, housing is the most serious, and the one which most clearly represents a growing gap between generations in lifetime opportunities. Housing opportunities are not only declining for an entire generation, they are also becoming more polarised by social class, and more dependent on family background. In terms of home ownership – and the consumption that borrowing against housing assets allows – social mobility is in absolute decline.”

Impact: Lack of affordable housing has a generational impact, especially on children

Podmolik, Mary Ellen. “Research Links Affordable Housing to Children's Test Scores.” Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 7 Apr. 2015,

“In Newman's mind, those trade-offs and decisions that low-income families face have effects that will ripple from one generation to another. “My argument on inequality is

Champion Briefs 110 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

if housing affordability affects children, the next generation, and it puts them behind in terms of economic skill, that is going to perpetuate inequality for the next generation," Newman said. "That's the issue." Newman's research was supported by the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation, as is another study she is involved in that focuses on housing choices, neighborhoods and the challenge of finding affordable housing. Sitting in during interview sessions proved a sobering experience, she said, because educational choices weren't brought up by participants. They were focused on the characteristics of the home itself.”

Impact: Intergenerational immobility increases poverty

Acolin, Arthur. “Housing and Opportunity.” Penn Institute for Urban Research, University of Pennsylvania, Feb. 2017, www.penniur.upenn.edu/uploads/media/Housing_and_Opportunity.pdf.

Champion Briefs 111 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

between levels of upward mobility and housing cost increase at the metropolitan level over the period 2000 to 2014. We find that areas with a higher level of intergenerational mobility have experienced higher growth in housing costs. This has the potential to limit future mobility to these regions. The implications for intergenerational mobility of the work by Chetty et al. (2014) on regions are mirrored by local poverty concentration within metropolitan areas. Using census tract data, Jargowsky (2016) reports that the number of people living in neighborhoods with poverty rates of 40 percent or more increased by 72 percent between 2000 and 2010.”

Analysis: This is one of my favorite arguments on the topic. When compared to education or income, housing is often underscored as a tool for social mobility. This argument presents some really cool weighing within itself in the form of intergenerational impacts. At that point, it sets up really nicely to weigh on things like urgency and time frame later in the round.

Champion Briefs 112 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Market rate housing creates a path for social mobility

Answer: The effects of market-rate housing don’t reach the poor

Warrant: Market rate housing is often geared towards luxury housing, decreasing affordable places to live.

Chew, Amee. “What We Know About Market-Rate Housing Construction and Displacement.” Shelterforce, 19 Dec. 2018, shelterforce.org/2018/11/05/heres- what-we-actually-know-about-market-rate-housing-development-and- displacement/.

Rent control. It’s on the ballot in California this November as tenant campaigns pick up steam across the country and revive an old refrain: “The rent is too damn high!” The real estate industry’s biggest argument in opposition? Rent control will hurt new construction. And, as developers would have us believe, the only way to pull ourselves out of our dire housing shortage would be by building new construction. But this unquestioning reliance on new construction—a code phrase used by developers to signify for-profit building—is deeply flawed. For one, for-profit new construction is overwhelmingly geared toward the luxury market. But it’s lower-income households who face the most severe affordable housing shortfalls. While our high-end stock has steadily grown, since 1990 on balance we’ve lost over 2.5 million affordable units renting for under $800. To what? In large part, rent increases. Secondly, new construction takes decades to depreciate down to rents that are actually affordable to most renters. “Trickle down” isn’t happening fast enough.

Analysis: Given that most market-rate development is geared towards the upper echelon of the housing market, this response essentially takes out the idea that any benefit regarding social mobility will trickle down to the poor.

Champion Briefs 113 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Answer: Market rate housing exacerbates the current crisis and will only continue to hinder social mobility

Warrant: Market rate housing drives up rent, pushing low-income households out.

For one, for-profit new construction is overwhelmingly geared toward the luxury market. But it’s lower-income households who face the most severe affordable housing shortfalls. While our high-end stock has steadily grown, since 1990 on balance we’ve lost over 2.5 million affordable units renting for under $800. To what? In large part, rent increases. Secondly, new construction takes decades to depreciate down to rents that are actually affordable to most renters. “Trickle down” isn’t happening fast enough. Even worse, however, new construction actually fuels displacement in the short term, even when no already existing housing is knocked down. Why? Numerous studies show that market-rate housing development has price ripple effects on surrounding neighborhoods, driving up rents and increasing the burden on lower-income households. Many residents in communities transformed by gentrification can already attest to the connection between for-profit development, rising living costs, and the mass exodus of lower-income residents. Maybe this won’t play out in Malibu, or a sparse neighborhood with very few low-income folk, but otherwise the above effects are widespread in our cities.

Warrant: Market rate housing makes the crisis worse

Champion Briefs 114 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Redmon, Tim. “Building Market-Rate Housing Makes Crisis Worse – San Francisco Tenants Union.” San Francisco Tenants Union, San Francisco Tenants Union, 4 Apr. 2018, www.sftu.org/2018/04/market-rate-housing-makes-crisis-worse/.

“In fact, they note, the money that market-rate developers pay to subsidize affordable units doesn’t even cover the housing impacts that their projects create. Let me say that again, because it’s critical (and not easily understood, and should have a profound impact on policies like the Mission Moratorium): If you require less than about 40 percent affordable housing, the net impact of high-end construction is to make the housing market worse. For the most part, they result in net additions to the number of people in the city: If the person who buys a new condo moves out of a rental unit, someone else will move into that rental. Quickly. The people with high disposable incomes who fill those condos or luxury rentals will spend money in town, creating a demand for jobs – restaurant workers, grocery clerks, cops and firefighters, bank tellers … and those people will also need a place to live. So according to the study, by Keyser Marston Associates, every time the city allows 100 new high-end housing units, it needs to build between 20 and 43 new affordable units – just to keep the housing balance the way it is now. Put the affordable units in the main complex and the impact is lower (because fewer millionaires move in). Built them, as is common, somewhere else and the impact is greater. In summary, for every 100 market rate condominium units there are 25.0 lower income households generated through the direct impact of the consumption of the condominium buyers and a total of 43.31 households if total direct, indirect, and induced impacts are counted in the analysis. If the city demands 15 percent affordable set-asides, then every market-rate building adds more demand for affordable housing than it supplies. That means every new building makes the housing crisis worse.”

Analysis: This response indicates that the demand for affordable housing will always outpace supply, even with market rate housing as an option. Rates are never going to truly ever be

Champion Briefs 115 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019 affordable because of the tangential projects that come along with market-rate development. Therefore, people will struggle to find housing, further hindering their social mobility.

Champion Briefs 116 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Market rate housing is key to solving the housing crisis

Argument: The United States is facing a major affordable housing crisis in which the supply is unable to meet the current demand. Unfortunately, this problem will only escalate over time as more and more people will require affordable housing that does not yet exist.

Warrant: We have a serious housing problem where having a home, in and of itself, has become a luxury

Wiener, Scott. “Market-Rate Housing Isn't a Bad Word, and We Won't Solve the Housing Crisis Without It.” ART + Marketing, ART + Marketing, 16 Apr. 2017,

“Who pays the price for our exclusionary housing policies that make it so hard to create housing? Low-income people suffer the most, at least the large majority of low income people who don’t win the lottery for a subsidized unit. Next is the middle class, which has almost a zero percent chance of winning a subsidized unit and which cannot afford to rent or buy due to the lack of enough overall housing. The exact same homes that were once affordable to young families and middle-class workers are now within reach to only our very highest earners. It’s not that all this housing is luxury housing — it’s that we have created a world where it is a luxury to have housing at all, given public policies specifically designed to stifle housing production. Which means: In addition to expanding the supply of subsidized income-based affordable units, we must increase the overall supply of housing, and that means — you guessed it — market-rate housing. Some describe all new market-rate housing as “luxury housing,” because it’s expensive. Well, of course it’s expensive, since for decades we haven’t built enough of it. According to California’s Legislative Analyst, the state needs to produce

Champion Briefs 117 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

about 180,000 units of housing a year to keep up with growth. In practice, we produce less than half that number.”

Warrant: The situation is dire right now

Terwilliger, Ronald. “Solving the Affordable Housing Crisis: The Key to Unleashing America's Potential.” American Bar Association, American Bar Association, 16 Mar. 2018,

“As someone who has worked in the homebuilding industry for more than forty-five years, I have never seen the housing situation more desperate. The combination of rising rents and unsustainable housing costs is wreaking havoc on families across America. The major engine driving today’s soaring rents is the acute shortage of affordable rental homes. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that, in 2015, there were only 62 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 “very low-income” households and just 38 for every 100 families with “extremely low-incomes.”4 This supply-demand imbalance has grown worse over the past decade. Soaring rents are having a major spillover effect in the homeownership market, making it even more difficult for young families to accumulate funds for a mortgage down payment. This fact has conspired with years of stagnating incomes; tighter-than- normal underwriting standards; record levels of student loan debt; and the continuing fallout from the subprime debacle to weigh heavily on the national homeownership rate, which has plummeted more than five percentage points since reaching a high of 69.2 percent in 2004. The homeownership rate for minority families has fallen dramatically over the past several years, while the rate for those aged thirty-five to

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forty-four has dropped to 1960s levels.5 The result is millions of households who are shut out of the wealth-building opportunities that homeownership can provide.”

Warrant: Rising diversity and an aging population will only increase the demand for rental housing and make things worse

Terwilliger, Ronald. “Solving the Affordable Housing Crisis: The Key to Unleashing America's Potential.” Sex Trafficking and HIV/AIDS: A Deadly Junction for Women and Girls | Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, American Bar Association, 16 Mar. 2018,

“America is growing increasingly diverse. Minorities will be responsible for the lion’s share of new household formation over the next fifteen years. The Urban Institute projects that minorities will account for seventy-seven percent of overall household growth from 2010 to 2020 and a staggering eighty-eight percent from 2020 to 2030.6 Unfortunately, the median incomes of African American and Hispanic families continue to lag significantly behind those of whites and Asian Americans, a circumstance that will complicate the ability of many to become homeowners. At the same time, our nation also is growing older. The number of Americans aged sixty-five and above is projected to exceed seventy-four million by 2030, nearly a doubling of the number in 2010.7 By 2030, more than one in five Americans will be a senior citizen.8 As they grow older, many seniors will seek to downsize into smaller homes, with millions expected to move out of homeownership into rental housing. These demographic changes—the increasing diversity of the U.S. population along with a steep increase in the number of seniors—mean that the already strong demand for rental housing will intensify even more in the coming years. A drop in the national homeownership rate to sixty percent or even lower is not a far-fetched notion. Building

Champion Briefs 119 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

new rental housing that is affordable to those at the bottom of the income ladder remains an extremely difficult task, absent substantial government subsidies. In far too many communities, land-use, permitting, and other regulatory requirements unnecessarily raise the cost of developing new affordable rental homes, often acting as an insurmountable barrier to their production.10 Yet, the continuing scarcity of affordable rental homes will put upward pressure on rents, contributing to housing instability for millions of families.”

Solvency: Market-rate housing solves- current legislation exists

To remedy this unacceptable situation, our nation must undertake a major and sustained investment in the production of new affordable rental housing. To this end, a significant expansion of the highly successful Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program is essential. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) have recently introduced bipartisan legislation (S. 548, the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act) that would increase federal support for the Housing Credit by fifty percent. Enactment of this bill would represent an important first step in closing the affordable supply gap.

Analysis: This is going to be the central argument on the aff. There is no denying that the US housing bubble is only growing larger and larger. Without some remedy to the solution, the problem is only going to keep getting worse. This argument has a really cool link into directly

Champion Briefs 120 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019 harming low-income residents, which means when the bubble pops, they will be hit the hardest.

Champion Briefs 121 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Market rate housing is key to solving the housing crisis

Answer: Market Rate housing may actually be counterintuitive as a means to solve the housing crisis.

Warrant: Market rate housing makes the crisis worse

Champion Briefs 122 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

households if total direct, indirect, and induced impacts are counted in the analysis. If the city demands 15 percent affordable set-asides, then every market-rate building adds more demand for affordable housing than it supplies. That means every new building makes the housing crisis worse.”

Warrant: Affordable housing tends to create social issues

Elkin, Maria. “What Everyone Gets Wrong About Affordable Housing.” New America, New America Weekly, 24 Aug. 2017, www.newamerica.org/weekly/edition- 174/what-everyone-gets-wrong-about-affordable-housing/.

“Yet this still doesn’t get at the image people typically conjure when they think about low-income or affordable housing: the projects. Indeed, you might be imagining those high-rise public housing developments—subsidized apartment buildings where residents pay below-market rent. These were built in the mid- to late-20th century with HUD funds and authorization. But the once-preferred method of increasing public housing, “the projects,” as they came to be known, soon created a number of social issues. As time went on, insufficient funding and poor management caused many developments to fall into disrepair. Distressed housing developments intensified racial and economic segregation, concentrated poverty and crime, and even led to more health problems and deaths among the residents because the buildings were often of substandard quality to begin with.”

Analysis: The warranting behind the first response is pretty sound and provides a direct turn to the idea of market-rate housing as a solution. The second response provides layered terminal defense; however, when coupled with a direct turn, it could be hard to beat back. At the end of the day, I don’t think teams should be spending too much time arguing the link about whether or not a crisis is occurring. It makes more sense and is more strategic to spend time attacking the warranting.

Champion Briefs 123 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Answer: Public Housing works just as well, it’s just stigmatized

Warrant: There already exists a perfectly good solution on the market

“Today, most public housing developments do, in fact, deliver on their promise of providing adequate, affordable housing to people in need, but they remain stigmatized because of the negative associations with distressed public housing. Also important to remember is that only about one in four families who qualify for public housing assistance actually get it; most are left to fend for themselves in the cutthroat private rental market. One particularly pernicious myth centered around affordable housing is that, if people can’t afford to live in the city, they should simply pick up and move. But let’s quash that red herring. People struggle to make rent all over the country, not just in cities like San Francisco, D.C., and New York. Besides, moving takes money, energy, time off work—in other words, resources people in poverty already don’t always have. They may also face discrimination from quality affordable housing because of their race, their children, past eviction records, or unstable income. And in the big cities, as rents in the center become more expensive, people do move to the fringes, driving up demand, and therefore rent, in those places as well. Meanwhile, suburban poverty, too, is on the rise.”

Analysis: This response would work really well in conjunction with the first two response because it provides an alternative to market rate housing, yet still solves back for the impacts of displacement while preventing the crisis.

Champion Briefs 124 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Market rate housing alleviates displacement

Argument: Giving people a roof over their head carries tangential benefits that allow for economic and social mobility. However, alleviating displacement and eliminating homelessness carry their own unique benefits as well.

Warrant: Affordable housing creates avenues to decrease displacement

Turner, Margery. “Housing and Economic Mobility.” Urban Institute, The Urban Institute, 29 Sept. 2015, www.urban.org/debates/housing-and-economic- mobility.

“There is increasing evidence that demonstrate that a family's stability in housing and residing in a place with access to employment, education and health care resources are important for economic mobility. The affordability of housing is a crucially important factor in maintaining stability. We should also acknowledge the connection between financing and ownership structures and the stability of housing. For homeownership, this speaks to buyer preparation and responsible mortgage products. For rental housing, mission-driven, community-oriented owners and investors can be the difference between maximizing return by displacing tenants rather than accepting a reasonable return and promoting stability. Access to employment, education and health care resources can be achieved by supporting resident mobility, or by bringing those resources to existing low-access, low-opportunity neighborhoods. There is a challenging balance to be struck between resourcing mobility options and investing in low-opportunity neighborhoods.”

Warrant: Research suggests that market rate housing directly reduces displacement

Champion Briefs 125 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Cortright, Joe, and Nick Adams. “If You Want Less Displacement, Build More Housing.” CityLab, 30 Aug. 2018, www.citylab.com/equity/2018/08/if-you-want-less- displacement-build-more-housing/568714/.

“Whether restricting the creation of housing—any type of housing—will work as a longtime anti-displacement strategy is, of course, another question—one that city council member Teresa Mosqueda posed at last week’s meeting. “I still struggle with the terminology that if we were to do more development—again, through the community lens, led by community organizations and neighborhood leaders who who can talk about the type of housing that they’d like to see—we can actually benefit by seeing increased housing and density requirements in some of these areas that are being called at risk of displacement. “If they are at risk of displacement, then [it seems like] we would like to see more opportunities for folks to live in those areas and not get pushed out,” Mosqueda concluded. In the game of musical chairs that is the urban housing market, the only way to make sure that all people find a place to sit—i.e. not be displaced—is to add more chairs. The research that’s been done on the subject, notably by California’s Legislative Analyst Office—and confirmed by the skeptical academics at UC Berkeley’s Anti-Displacement project—is that building more market- rate housing reduces displacement.”

Warrant: Higher housing supply reduces homelessness

Homelessness arises from a lack of homes. That conclusion of a recent UCLA study would seem intuitive, given that lacking a home and being homeless are one and the

Champion Briefs 126 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

same. But the connection between the state’s gaping housing shortage and its spreading homelessness still strikes too many Californians as a great controversy requiring endless debate. Lest neighborhoods and politicians accept the pressing need to build a lot more housing of every kind in the state’s cities and suburbs, the housing shortage and homelessness are often treated as separate subjects. Take San Francisco’s recent mayoral race, in which every major candidate addressed the pervasive ravages of homelessness but only one consistently professed support for measures to increase the overall housing supply. Local officials across the state are forever lobbying Sacramento to spend more on homelessness while simultaneously doing their best to kill any measure that would force them to approve more homes.

Impact: Lack of affordable housing has a generational impact, especially on children

Podmolik, Mary Ellen. “Research Links Affordable Housing to Children's Test Scores.” Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 7 Apr. 2015,

“In Newman's mind, those trade-offs and decisions that low-income families face have effects that will ripple from one generation to another. “My argument on inequality is if housing affordability affects children, the next generation, and it puts them behind in terms of economic skill, that is going to perpetuate inequality for the next generation," Newman said. "That's the issue." Newman's research was supported by the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation, as is another study she is involved in that focuses on housing choices, neighborhoods and the challenge of finding affordable housing. Sitting in during interview sessions proved a sobering experience, she said, because educational choices weren't brought up by participants. They were focused on the characteristics of the home itself.”

Champion Briefs 127 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Impact: Intergenerational immobility increases poverty

Acolin, Arthur. “Housing and Opportunity.” Penn Institute for Urban Research, University of Pennsylvania, Feb. 2017, www.penniur.upenn.edu/uploads/media/Housing_and_Opportunity.pdf.

“There is an emerging body of literature on the potential long run consequences of growth in spatial inequality, particularly for social mobility. Chetty (2014) describes intergenerational mobility as the ability of individuals to move beyond the socioeconomic status of their birth throughout their lifetime. Chetty et al. (2014) use administrative income data for children (family income from 2011-2012 for children born between 1980 and 1982) and their parents (average family income from 1996 to 2000) to analyze intergenerational income mobility by metropolitan area based on mobility measures and finds substantial differences across areas. They find that, while in Salt Lake City, San Jose, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, New York, Washington, or Seattle, children born in the lowest quintiles of the income distribution have more than a 10 percent chance of reaching the highest quintile, children born in the lowest income quintile in Charlotte, Atlanta, or Milwaukee, among others, have less than a 5 percent chance of reaching the top income quintile. Using the same data on intergenerational mobility, Acolin and Wachter (2017) estimate the correlation between levels of upward mobility and housing cost increase at the metropolitan level over the period 2000 to 2014. We find that areas with a higher level of intergenerational mobility have experienced higher growth in housing costs. This has the potential to limit future mobility to these regions. The implications for intergenerational mobility of the work by Chetty et al. (2014) on regions are mirrored by local poverty concentration within metropolitan areas. Using census tract data, Jargowsky (2016) reports that the number of people living in neighborhoods with poverty rates of 40 percent or more increased by 72 percent between 2000 and 2010.”

Champion Briefs 128 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Champion Briefs 129 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Market rate housing alleviates displacement

Answer: Market Rate housing increases displacement through rising prices and the inevitable gentrification that frequently occurs.

Warrant: Market rate housing gives landowners the power to charge as much as they want.

Leshnower, Ron. “What Exactly Is Market-Rate Housing?” The Spruce, The Spruce, 9 July 2018,

“Market rate housing is an apartment that has no rent restrictions. A landlord who owns market-rate housing is free to attempt to rent the space at whatever price the local market may fetch. In other words, the term applies to conventional rentals that are not restricted by affordable housing laws. Market rate housing can be beneficial for landlords, as it is less complicated and they may be able to generate higher rent income as a result. But if you're a tenant looking for an apartment you can afford, a living in a market with a high cost of living can make things tricky. Here are a few things you should know about market rate housing and how to find an apartment you can afford.”

Warrant: Market rate housing drives up rent, pushing low-income households out.

For one, for-profit new construction is overwhelmingly geared toward the luxury market. But it’s lower-income households who face the most severe affordable housing

Champion Briefs 130 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

shortfalls. While our high-end stock has steadily grown, since 1990 on balance we’ve lost over 2.5 million affordable units renting for under $800. To what? In large part, rent increases. Secondly, new construction takes decades to depreciate down to rents that are actually affordable to most renters. “Trickle down” isn’t happening fast enough. Even worse, however, new construction actually fuels displacement in the short term, even when no already existing housing is knocked down. Why? Numerous studies show that market-rate housing development has price ripple effects on surrounding neighborhoods, driving up rents and increasing the burden on lower-income households. Many residents in communities transformed by gentrification can already attest to the connection between for-profit development, rising living costs, and the mass exodus of lower-income residents. Maybe this won’t play out in Malibu, or a sparse neighborhood with very few low-income folk, but otherwise the above effects are widespread in our cities.

Warrant: Gentrification leads to displacement.

Location matters in predicting the pathway of gentrification. Gentrification is more likely for poor neighborhoods that border rich neighborhoods (Kolko 2007; Guerrieri et al. 2013). A study of over 27 metro regions in the U.S., including Los Angeles, found that out-migration of poor residents and in-migration of richer residents was 64 percent more likely for neighborhoods within half a mile of an existing rich neighborhood, compared to those further from the nearest rich neighborhood (Guerrieri et al. 2013, 59). Again, this is likely due to price effects: housing prices in poor neighborhoods that bordered or were within a mile of rich areas appreciated by a significantly higher

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amount than prices in poor neighborhoods further away (51, 56). Housing booms do not affect prices in all neighborhoods equally; in fact, poor neighborhoods that start out with low housing prices and are near richer neighborhoods experience the largest price increase effects (46).

Analysis: This response functions as a turn to the argument and the entire aff narrative as a whole. The fact that landowners can charge whatever price they want, they can essentially push low-income families out with unaffordable rents. The rising trend of urbanization means it’s only a matter of time before the housing gets filled, leaving families on the street.

Answer: Market-rate housing has different effects at the regional and neighborhood levels

Warrant: Market-rate housing exacerbates displacement at the neighborhood level

Bond, Graham, Darwin. “UC Berkeley Report: Affordable Housing Is Best Way to Combat Gentrifcation.” East Bay Express, 27 May 2016, https://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2016/05/27/uc-berkeley- report-lao-wrong-about-market-rate-housing-panacea.

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found "market-rate construction can simultaneously alleviate housing pressures across the region while also exacerbating them at the neighborhood level."

Analysis: This response indicates that the demand for affordable housing will always outpace supply, even with market rate housing as an option. Rates are never going to truly ever be affordable because of the tangential projects that come along with market-rate development. Therefore, people will struggle to find housing, further hindering their social mobility.

Champion Briefs 133 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Rent Controls significantly hurt minority groups

Argument: Rent controls represent a significant detriment to minority groups.

Warrant: Rent controls incentivize people to stay, leaving most people to never get access to affordable housing

Edwards, Jim. “No, Rent Control Does Not Work - It Actually Benefits the Rich and Hurts the Poor.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 3 Sept. 2015, www.businessinsider.com/does-rent-control-work-no-it-actually-increases-rent- prices-for-most-people-2015-9.

“Rent control actually drives up the price of most rents by restricting the supply of new units onto the market. While some renters may get a bargain, most people never get access to rent-controlled flats. Once people move into a rent-controlled place, they are incentivised to never move out, because it is so cheap. The classic rent- control lease in New York lasts indefinitely, so once someone is in, they can stay for the rest of their life. (In New York, it's commonplace inside rent controlled apartments to see cookers, radiators, and kitchen fittings that date back to the 1960s because landlords just won't replace them, and tenants won't move out.) People can even sub- let their apartments or pass them on to next-of-kin which is why personal connections in the market are so important. That removes a huge chunk of available housing from the market. Demand for new housing remains the same, but now the supply of new housing is reduced. So prices everywhere else go up. Under rent control, landlords and property owners know not to create any new housing units that fall under rent control, because they won't be able to maximise their investment. So they build as few units as possible in that category.”

Champion Briefs 134 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Warrant: The rent control system is temporary, and hurts the tenant when the occupied units age out of the system

“He told me that in his job, he frequently had to deal with apartments and tenants that re-entered the free market after years as rent-controlled units. The problem was that it's rent control, not ownership control. Tenants aren't guaranteed their units forever and eventually all units age out of the rent control system, sometimes when buildings are sold or when the tenant on the lease moves out. At that point, these tenants are ejected back onto the free market — where rents are now hundreds or thousands of dollars higher than they're used to paying. They're totally unequipped to deal with "normal" housing prices, and they have zero equity in the housing they were living in.”

Warrant: This will be especially harmful for minorities

Champion Briefs 135 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

growth from 2010 to 2020 and a staggering eighty-eight percent from 2020 to 2030.6 Unfortunately, the median incomes of African American and Hispanic families continue to lag significantly behind those of whites and Asian Americans, a circumstance that will complicate the ability of many to become homeowners. At the same time, our nation also is growing older. The number of Americans aged sixty-five and above is projected to exceed seventy-four million by 2030, nearly a doubling of the number in 2010.7 By 2030, more than one in five Americans will be a senior citizen.8 As they grow older, many seniors will seek to downsize into smaller homes, with millions expected to move out of homeownership into rental housing. These demographic changes—the increasing diversity of the U.S. population along with a steep increase in the number of seniors—mean that the already strong demand for rental housing will intensify even more in the coming years. A drop in the national homeownership rate to sixty percent or even lower is not a far-fetched notion. Building new rental housing that is affordable to those at the bottom of the income ladder remains an extremely difficult task, absent substantial government subsidies. In far too many communities, land-use, permitting, and other regulatory requirements unnecessarily raise the cost of developing new affordable rental homes, often acting as an insurmountable barrier to their production.10 Yet, the continuing scarcity of affordable rental homes will put upward pressure on rents, contributing to housing instability for millions of families.”

Impact: The housing crisis is hitting minorities harder and is pushing them into poverty

Hobbes, Michael. “America's Housing Crisis Is A Ticking Time Bomb.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 19 June 2018, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-inequality-harvard- report_us_5b27c1f1e4b056b2263c621e

“At every level, the housing crisis hits minorities harder. And the housing crisis doesn’t just make it harder to buy, it profoundly affects where people choose to live. Though

Champion Briefs 136 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

the number of Americans living in poverty has increased by 41 percent since 2000, the number of “high-poverty census tracts” has increased even faster. By now, 51 percent of blacks and 44 percent of Hispanics live in these areas of concentrated poverty, compared to just 17 percent of whites. According to numerous studies, children who grow up in areas of concentrated poverty are disadvantaged on nearly every measure, from school quality to violence to social mobility. All of this adds up to one inescapable conclusion: For some Americans, housing is a way out of poverty. For others, it is the trap keeping them there.”

Impact: Poverty is significantly worse for minorities

Badger, Emily. “Black Poverty Differs from White Poverty.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 12 Aug. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/12/black-poverty-differs- from-white-poverty/?utm_term=.8e6a2c29122f.

“The poverty that poor African Americans experience is often different from the poverty of poor whites. It's more isolating and concentrated. It extends out the door of a family's home and occupies the entire neighborhood around it, touching the streets, the schools, the grocery stores. A poor black family, in short, is much more likely than a poor white one to live in a neighborhood where many other families are poor, too, creating what sociologists call the "double burden" of poverty. The difference is stark in most major metropolitan areas, according to recent data analyzed by Rutgers University's Paul Jargowsky in a new report for the Century Foundation. Concentrated poverty is getting worse because poor people — especially poor African Americans — are increasingly left behind. And a number of forces drive this pattern, including systemic discrimination, policies that have historically concentrated public housing and modern zoning laws that keep the poor out of wealthier communities. Just last week, to take one example, the Chicago Tribune reported that dozens of wealthy

Champion Briefs 137 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

suburbs had ignored a state deadline to produce affordable-housing plans. That's the kind of willful inaction that actively contributes to concentrated poverty in Chicago.”

Analysis: I think this argument could work really well with a race DA (or even just a narrative), specifically talking about how housing policies have led to the marginalization and discrimination of certain minority groups. Moreover, the argument sets up nicely for some really cool weighing to be done later in the round, specifically on urgency and magnitude.

Champion Briefs 138 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent Controls significantly hurt minority groups

Answer: Rent controls have empirically helped minorities

Warrant: Rent control has social benefits

Warrant: When actually used in practice, rent controls significantly reduced displacement for minority groups.

Diamond, Rebecca. “The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco.” Stanford.edu, Stanford University, 21 Dec. 2018, web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/DMQ.pdf.

“These estimated overall effects mask economically interesting heterogeneity. We begin by repeating our analysis separately within each racial group. Racial minorities may face

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discrimination in the housing market, indicating that rent control may be especially impactful on limiting their displacement. Figure 7 shows the treatment effects of remaining in one’s 1993 address for whites, and then the differential effects for each racial group. Since our sample sizes within any given racial group are smaller, we will focus on the overall “post” impact of rent control, not separating out the short-, medium-, and long-term effects. Whites are 2.1 percentage points more likely to remain at their treated address due to rent control. For both blacks and hispanics, we find larger treatment effects of 10.7 and 7.1 percentage point increases for these groups, respectively.14 This suggests these minority groups disproportionately valued rent control. In contrast, the effect for asians is statistically indistinguishable from the whites effect, with a point estimate of 0.9 percentage points. We see further evidence that racial minorities disproportionately benefited from rent control when looking at the impact of the law on remaining in San Francisco. Rent control leads treated whites to be 2.8 percentage points more likely to remain in San Francisco, while blacks, hispanics, and asians are 10.7, 10.1, and 6.4 percentage points more likely to remain in San Francisco, respectively.15 This suggests that rent control had a substantial impact on limiting displacement of minorities from the city, an additional sign that rent control strongly benefits the initial cohort of renters who are covered by the law.”

Analysis: These responses work really well together as a layered defense. The second response acts as well as the internal warranting found within the first card act as independent reasons for why rent control leads to more minorities in housing. Since displacement is going down, the rent controls have to be having some success.

Answer: Rent controls alleviate poverty for low-income minorities

Warrant: Rental controls alleviate poverty for those most affected

Champion Briefs 140 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Fischer, Will. “Chart Book: Rental Assistance Reduces Hardship, Promotes Children's Long-Term Success.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 9 Feb. 2018, www.cbpp.org/research/housing/chart-book-rental-assistance-reduces- hardship-promotes-childrens-long-term-success.

Over 5 million low-income households receive help affording modest homes through federal rental assistance, primarily in the form of Housing Choice Vouchers, Section 8 Project-based Rental Assistance, or Public Housing. Rental assistance sharply reduces homelessness, housing instability, poverty, and other hardships. A growing body of research also finds that rental assistance can improve families’ health, as well as children’s chances of long-term success, particularly if it enables families to live in safe, low-poverty neighborhoods with good schools. A large body of research finds that rental assistance sharply reduces homelessness, housing instability, and overcrowding. For example, a rigorous study found that among families with children, vouchers reduced housing instability (living doubled up with family or friends or homeless) by four-fifths and reduced homelessness (living in a homeless shelter or on the street) by three-quarters.

Analysis: While this response pertains to multiple forms of governmental housing assistance, rental assistance is outlined as a key way in which poverty is alleviated for those in low-income households, which are disproportionately minorities.

Champion Briefs 141 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Rent Control Undermines Property Rights

Argument: Property owners have the right to charge whatever they want.

Warrant: Landowners are told what they can charge, restricted by the government.

Shuchman, Daniel. “Rent Control Violates Property Rights: Why Occupy 76th Street Is Not Fair.” Forbes. 04/30/12. https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/04/30/rent-control-violates- property-rights-why-occupy-76th-street-is-not-fair/#cb687e771fd0

Thirty years and twenty-nine blocks later, it seems the Court has gotten quite comfortable with the physical occupation of property, not just by rooftop cables, but by living people. It is increasingly shocking to read the disingenuous frivolity with which our courts dismiss issues of economic liberty, once considered fundamental American rights. In rejecting the Harmons’ claim, the Court of Appeals merely asserted, contrary to the obvious reality, that the rental arrangements being forced upon them do not constitute a physical taking of their property that must be compensated. Surreally, the Court cited the fact that the Harmons retain the right to demolish their building - which is also their own home - even though that desperate recourse would hardly provide “compensation” to the Harmons (and might not even be possible due to the building’s landmark status). And under the law, the Harmons could evict their tenants if they had “immediate and compelling necessity” to use the apartments themselves. (Although apparently they would be obligated to find them comparably-priced apartments in the same neighborhood.)

Warrant: Restricting property rights is unjust, owners have rights too.

Champion Briefs 142 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Shapiro, Ilya. “Rent Control Violates Property Rights and Due Process.” Cato Institute. 11/29/11. https://www.cato.org/blog/rent-control-violates-property-rights-due- process

As expected, therefore, New York City’s Rent Stabilization Law—the most (in)famous in the country—has led to precisely these effects: housing is scarce, apartment buildings are dilapidated because owners can’t charge enough to fix them, and housing costs have only increased (in part because costs are transferred to non-rent mechanisms such as “non-refundable deposits”). Yet the RSL persists, benefiting those grandfathered individuals who rent at lower rates but hurting the city as a whole. Harmon v. Kimmel challenges New York’s law on the grounds that it is an arbitrary and unsupportable regulation amounting to an uncompensated taking that violates the Fifth Amendment. Jim Harmon’s family owns and lives in a five-story brownstone in the Central Park West Historical District. The Harmons inherited the building—and along with it three rent-controlled tenants. Those tenants have occupied apartments in the building for a combined total of 91 years at a rate 59 percent below market. In their lawsuit, however, the Harmons face many unfriendly precedents that have given states free reign to regulate property, to the point that it is occupied on an essentially permanent basis while surviving Fifth Amendment scrutiny.

Impact: Rent controls are unconstitutional violations of property rights.

Will, George. “Rent control laws: foolish and unconstitutional.” The Washington Post. 02/15/12. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rent-control-laws-foolish- and- unconstitutional/2012/02/14/gIQAcZvbGR_story.html?utm_term=.4f711bca9bd d

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Rent control is unconstitutional because it is an egregious and uncompensated physical occupation of property. The Constitution says that private property shall not “be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The Harmons get no compensation for being coerced into privatized welfare: The state shows compassion to tenants — many of whom are not needy; one of the Harmons’ entitled tenants owns a house on Long Island — by compelling landlords to subsidize them. A property right in a physical thing is a right to possess, use and dispose of this thing. Because government-compelled possession of property by a third party is an unambiguous taking, the Harmons’ property right has been nullified. John Locke, an intellectual source of American freedom, said that property rights, which he defined to include rights to “lives, liberties and estates,” exist prior to, and independent of, government, and their preservation is “the great and chief end” for which governments are founded. Property rights provide a sphere of personal sovereignty, a zone of privacy into which government should be able to intrude only with difficulty and only so far. Because they are the basis of individual independence, America’s Founders considered property rights the foundation of all other liberties, including self-government — the governance of one’s self.

Analysis: By telling property owners what they can charge, the government is essentially telling citizens what they can and cannot do with their own property. This constitutes a taking, which means the government must justify its restriction of owners’ rights.

Champion Briefs 144 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent Control Undermines Property Rights

Answer: Rent control is constitutional

Answer: The supreme court has repeatedly upheld rent control

Cohen, Adam. “What if the Supreme Court Kills Rent Control?” Time. 03/19/12. http://ideas.time.com/2012/03/19/what-if-the-supreme-court-kills-rent-control/

Rent control has a long history. New York City adopted its law after World War I, when a shortage of housing and a glut of renters — including soldiers returning from the war — put extreme pressure on rents. Many other localities have rent-control laws, including dozens in New York State and California. Along with New York City, some of the largest are San Francisco, Oakland and Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld rent control, going back to 1921. In 1988, in Pannell v. San Jose, it ruled6-2 that San Jose’s law did not violate the Constitution — in an opinion written by the very conservative then Chief Justice William Rehnquist. In 1992, in Yee v. City of Escondido, the court unanimously rejected a claim that a rent-control ordinance was an unconstitutional taking of property — just the issue Harmon is raising. These rulings should settle the question. But rent-control opponents clearly think they have a chance, given how pro-corporation the court is today. Harmon’s challenge is attracting strong support from real estate interests and conservative groups like the Cato Institute. They argue that rent control unconstitutionally deprives landlords of the right to charge as much rent as they want. They like to point to extreme cases of people benefiting who do not need it — like the actress Faye Dunaway, who until recently had a $1,048.72-a- month one-bedroom on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Warrant: The supreme court is not taking cases challenging rent control.

Champion Briefs 145 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Liptak, Adam. “U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Suit Challenging the Rent Stabilization Law.” NYTimes. 04/23/12. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/us/supreme-court-declines-to-hear- rent-control-challenge.html

A lawyer for the city, Alan Krams, said it was pleased with the ruling. “Rent regulation in New York City has a long history,” he said in a statement, “and the court properly left it to elected state and city officials to decide its future.” Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled against the Harmons. A three-judge panel of the appeals court said the couple knew what they were getting into when they acquired the building. It was that decision that the Supreme Court declined to consider. The Court of Appeals added that the couple retained important rights under the regulations: they could in some circumstances reclaim the apartments for their own use; they could demolish the building so long as they did not replace it with housing; and they could “evict an unsatisfactory tenant.” All of that meant, the panel said, that the city’s regulations did not amount to “permanent physical occupation of the Harmons’ property” and so did not run foul of the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, which says private property shall not “be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The Supreme Court has said that government regulation of private property can be “so onerous that its effect is tantamount to a direct appropriation or ouster.”

Analysis: Rent control does not constitute a taking, and the Supreme Court has ruled this on multiple occasions. Even if rent control were a taking, takings can be justified so long as the government has a legitimate purpose as ruled in Kelo v. New London.

Champion Briefs 146 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Rent Control Leads to Property Deterioration

Argument: Rent control removes the incentive for landowners to renovate and restore their properties.

Warrant: Landlords no longer have a profit motive.

Block, Walter. “Rent Control.” The Library of Economics and Liberty. https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html

Existing rental units fare poorly under rent control. Even with the best will in the world, the landlord sometimes cannot afford to pay his escalating fuel, labor, and materials bills, to say nothing of refinancing his mortgage, out of the rent increase he can legally charge. And under rent controls he lacks the best will; the incentive he had under free-market conditions to supply tenant services is severely reduced. The sitting tenant is “protected” by rent control but, in many cases, receives no real rental bargain because of improper maintenance, poor repairs and painting, and grudging provision of services. The enjoyment he can derive out of his dwelling space ultimately tends to be reduced to a level commensurate with his controlled rent. This may take decades, though, and meanwhile he benefits from rent control.

Warrant: Studies show rent controlled properties deteriorate faster.

Block, Walter. “Rent Control.” The Library of Economics and Liberty. https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html

Economists have shown that rent control diverts new investment, which would otherwise have gone to rental housing, toward greener pastures—greener in terms of consumer need. They have demonstrated that it leads to housing deterioration, fewer

Champion Briefs 147 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

repairs, and less maintenance. For example, Paul Niebanck found that 29 percent of rent-controlled housing in the United States was deteriorated, but only 8 percent of the uncontrolled units were in such a state of disrepair. Joel Brenner and Herbert Franklin cited similar statistics for England and France. The economic reasons are straightforward. One effect of government oversight is to retard investment in residential rental units. Imagine that you have five million dollars to invest and can place the funds in any industry you wish. In most businesses, governments will place only limited controls and taxes on your enterprise. But if you entrust your money to rental housing, you must pass one additional hurdle: the rent-control authority, with its hearings, red tape, and rent ceilings. Under these conditions is it any wonder that you are less likely to build or purchase rental housing?

Impact: Benefits of rent control are offset by the harms of deterioration and disinvestment.

Blackwell, Lisa. “The High Cost of Rent Control.” National Multifamily Housing Council. https://www.nmhc.org/news/articles/the-high-cost-of-rent-control/

By reducing the return on investments in rental housing, rent control also can lead to a drop in the quality and quantity of existing rental stock. This may take the form of condominium and cooperative conversions or, in some cases, abandonment of unprofitable property. It can also lead to a deterioration of the quality of housing stock as providers faced with declining revenues may be forced to substantially reduce maintenance and repair of existing housing.

A study by the Rand Corporation of Los Angeles' rent control law found that 63 percent of the benefit to consumers of lowered rents was offset by a loss in available housing due to deterioration and other forms of disinvestment.(5) Studies of rent control in New York and Boston similarly found marked differences between rent-

Champion Briefs 148 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

controlled and other units in housing quality and the level of expenditures on maintenance and repair.

Analysis: If property owners don’t have a profit motive, they’re not going to repair and improve their properties. What this means is that tenants end up stuck in low-quality housing, which can offset any potential benefits to the consumer. -

Champion Briefs 149 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent Control Leads to Property Deterioration

Answer: Landlords still need to maintain their property to make a profit.

Warrant: The link between rent control and maintenance is tenuous.

Kutty, Nandinee. “The impact of rent control on housing maintenance: A dynamic analysis incorporating European and North American rent regulations.” Cornell University. 4/12/07. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02673039608720846

This paper examines the widely accepted view that rent control leads to lower reinvestment in housing and, hence, lower housing quality. This view is based on fairly simple housing models and a very simple form of rent control that rarely occurs in practice. We consider the impact of rent control on housing maintenance within the framework of a dynamic model of housing reinvestment developed in Kutty (1995) that incorporates adjustment costs, durability of housing, uncertainty, and the role of future expectations. This paper develops a range of cases of rent control, incorporating particular features of actual rent control regulations prevalent in Europe and North America. We find that the impact of rent control on housing maintenance, within the theoretical framework of our dynamic model, is ambiguous. In most cases that we consider, though not in all, the level of reinvestment under rent control is lower than the level of reinvestment in the absence of rent control. Adjustment costs and future expectations play an important part in the response of landlords to rent control and, together with features of actual rent control ordinances, contribute to the theoretical ambiguity of the impacts of rent control on housing maintenance. We find that the discouraging effect of simple rent control on housing maintenance can be mitigated by provisions in rent control ordinances that reward quality improvements, and/or

Champion Briefs 150 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

include the enforcement of housing quality codes. An important result in this paper is that when rent control ordinances allow increases in the level of housing services to be valued at their market price, the level of reinvestment under rent control is the same as the level of reinvestment in the absence of rent control.

Warrant: Increased stability under rent control suggests tenants are fine with housing quality.

Singh, Shanti and Preston, Dean. “Dear Business School Professors: You’re Wrong, Rent Control Works.” Shelterforce. 3/28/18. https://shelterforce.org/2018/03/28/rent-control-works/

The Stanford paper fully supports the conclusion that rent control works to keep people in their homes: “We find that rent control increased the probability a renter stayed at their address by close to 20 percent.” The stabilizing effects are “significantly stronger among older households and among households that have already spent a number of years at their treated address.” In other words, seniors and long-term tenants find longer-term stability because of rent control.

Analysis: The link between rent control and maintenance is ambiguous at best. Landowners know that properties still have to be maintained for their own sake, regardless of the motivation of increasing rents. Furthermore, the fact that tenants stay in properties longer under rent control suggests that property deterioration is not having a significant effect on tenants.

Champion Briefs 151 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

PRO: Rent Control Unfairly Targets Landlords

Argument: Landowners are punished by rent control.

Warrant: Rent control, like other price ceilings, limits what landowners can charge.

Block, Walter. “Rent Control.” The Library of Economics and Liberty. https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html

Rent control, like all other government-mandated PRICE CONTROLS, is a law placing a maximum price, or a “rent ceiling,” on what landlords may charge tenants. If it is to have any effect, the rent level must be set at a rate below that which would otherwise have prevailed. (An enactment prohibiting apartment rents from exceeding, say, $100,000 per month would have no effect since no one would pay that amount in any case.) But if rents are established at less than their equilibrium levels, the quantity demanded will necessarily exceed the amount supplied, and rent control will lead to a shortage of dwelling spaces. In a competitive market and absent controls on prices, if the amount of a commodity or service demanded is larger than the amount supplied, prices rise to

eliminate the shortage (by both bringing forth new SUPPLY and by reducing the amount demanded). But controls prevent rents from attaining market-clearing levels and shortages result.

Warrant: Landlords fear decreased revenue under rent control.

Miller, Nathan. “Rent Control: What it Means for the Real Estate Marketplace.” Forbes. 5/31/18. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesrealestatecouncil/2018/05/31/rent- control-what-it-means-for-the-real-estate-marketplace/#6ccb5b487670

Champion Briefs 152 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Rental rates continue to rise year over year, with a vast majority of the nation’s 100 largest cities seeing increases. For tenants, the first question that often comes to mind is: "Is this even legal?!" The short answer is yes, unless you live in an area that has rent- control or rent-stabilization acts in place. And rent control probably isn’t going anywhere — a report from late last year indicated that there was not a single location in the country where someone working a full-time minimum wage job could afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment. But what exactly is rent control, anyway? The topic seems to be making headlines regularly. People typically picture one of two things: Tenants imagine beautiful apartments at below market value (think the Friends apartment), while landlords think of reduced profits and lost incentives. Straight out of the dictionary, rent control is the government regulation of the amount charged as rent for housing. In other words, rent control is a program that places limits on how much landlords may raise rent on existing tenants.

Impact: Investors are afraid that rent control stifles landlords too much.

Torres, Bianca. “Wall Street already jittery about possible expansion of rent control in California.” San Francisco Business Times. 08/29/18. https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/08/29/wall-street-rent- control-california-reits-housing.html

"We do not know which cities would enact stricter rent control and what form it might take," another SunTrust report on Essex states. "Depending on the form rent control takes, it has the potential to perhaps drive up rent for non-controlled units and for units in nearby cities that do not (add) such regulations." Landlords argue that rent control limits new housing supply because it puts a cap on how much revenue a landlord can reap from a particular property. Banks and construction lenders fund new construction based on a project’s revenue projections

Champion Briefs 153 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

and tend to not provide financing to projects where revenue is projected to fall below lenders' expectations. Also, Prop. 10 opens up the possibility of applying rent control to single-family homes, not just apartments. “If you simply ask voters in the State of California if they would support rent controls as it relates to controlling housing costs in the state, more than a majority would likely say yes,” said Sean Breslin, chief operating officer of AvalonBay during the company’s most recent earnings call with analysts. “Based on what we know — to the extent that you educate voters about what a repeal of Costa-Hawkins specifically means — the outcome could be quite different.”

Analysis: While most of the discussion centers on the tenant, landlords are also significantly affected by rent control. By limiting what landlords can charge, the market and the property owners are significantly harmed, and revenue plummets.

Champion Briefs 154 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent Control Unfairly Targets Landlords

Answer: Landlords still make plenty of money under rent control.

Warrant: Property appreciates in value under rent control.

Singh, Shanti and Preston, Dean. “Dear Business School Professors: You’re Wrong, Rent Control Works.” Shelterforce. 03/28/18. https://shelterforce.org/2018/03/28/rent-control-works/

The $7 billion savings for tenants is the tip of the iceberg, relating only to the studied group—tenants in small buildings who lived in their homes in 1994 when they became rent controlled. As the authors note, it does not measure the benefit for all of the tenants who moved into the studied properties after they gained rent control.Meanwhile, landlords were not exactly scraping to get by. They enjoyed the significant appreciation of their properties and rising rental income thanks to government policy designed to maximize landlord profits (Prop. 13 kept their taxes low; Costa-Hawkins kept their rents high.) With landlords continuing to thrive while tenants saved money and realized greater housing and community stability, one would expect some comments about how rent control has been a wildly successful program.

Warrant: There is a degree of profit built into rent control to ensure sustainability for the landlord.

Onerent. “Can Landlords Profit Under Rent Control?” Onerent.co. 07/11/17. https://www.onerent.co/property-management/can-landlords-profit-under- rent-control/

Champion Briefs 155 Pro Arguments with Con Responses March 2019

Two of real estate investing’s “dirty words,” the phrase rent control can give investors pause when they learn a building they’re considering falls under a city’s rent control ordinances. However, while rent control does preclude absolute maximization of a property’s potential to generate profit, the ordnances can leave room for an owner to derive a profit from their investment, if they manage it carefully. So, can you profit under rent control? Yes—if you’re very strategic. A Degree of Profit is Built In In most cases, rent control marries annual increases to the rate of inflation in the region in which the property exists. The idea of rent control is to help make sure affordable housing is available to lower-income residents, while also ensuring the owner of the property a profit on their investment. Many of rent control’s detractors tend to overlook this when they rail against their ability to make the maximum amount of profit from the property.

Analysis: Rent control policies are not designed to bankrupt landlords. If anything, rent control is dependent upon a system where landlords have incentives to maintain and continue renting their properties, meaning that profit necessarily must be built in.

Champion Briefs 156

Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Market Rates housing causes segregation

Argument: Market rate housing causes segregation

Warrant: High costs displace low-income residents

Amee Chew, Shelterforce, "Here’s What We Actually Know About Market-Rate Hous ing Development and Displacement", 11/05/18, https://shelterforce.org/2018/11/05/heres-what-we-actually-know-about- market-rate-housing-development-and-displacement/

Studies show that market-rate housing development is linked to the mass displacement of neighboring low-income residents (Davidson and Lees 2005, 2010; Pearsall 2010). Such displacement occurs even when low-income housing is not directly demolished and destroyed to make way for new development—because it operates through indirect and exclusionary means, such as “price shadowing” (Davidson and Lees 2005, 2010). Market-rate housing production causes significant price impacts in surrounding neighborhoods, raising area rents and real estate taxes (Oliva 2006; Pearsall 2010; Zuk and Chapple 2016). These price impacts have resulted in higher housing cost burdens for low-income residents, as well as their displacement (Davidson and Lees 2005, 2010; Pearsall 2010). In fact, a study of displacement in New York City based on a survey of 18,000 housing units found that most displaced households were forced to move due to cost considerations; in contrast, low-income residents who managed to remain in gentrifying neighborhoods overwhelmingly lived in public housing or rent stabilized units insulated from price dynamics (Newman and Wyly 2006, 29, 41, 43). Rent burdens rose considerably in gentrifying areas, so that only 1 out of 15 poor renters remaining in these New York City neighborhoods rented in the unregulated market (40-1).

Champion Briefs 158 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Warrant: New market rate housing construction fails at retaining low-income residents

Emily Badger, The Washington Post, "How to make expensive cities affordable for eve ryone again", 02/19/16, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/19/how-to-make- expensive-cities-affordable-for-everyone-again/

More market-rate units won't protect low-income renters Alex Karner, assistant professor, Georgia Tech School of City and Regional Planning, and Chris Benner, professor, University of California, Santa Cruz Environmental Studies Department The LAO report is correct that there is a housing shortage across California. It’s also correct that existing affordable-housing programs are inadequate. But the report errs in several ways, and for that reason we should think twice before taking its results seriously. Most importantly, the report claims that constructing market rate units will protect low- income communities against displacement. But it relies upon a single imperfect definition of displacement and doesn’t distinguish between parts of the Bay Area that are growing rapidly and where land is cheap from the tight housing markets in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. These three cities account for about a third of new market-rate units in areas the report focuses on. But other top producers include cities on the urban fringe as well as unincorporated areas where displacement pressures are minimal. Grouping together these very different places can make it appear as though new market-rate units prevent displacement, when in fact the opposite might be true. The report also ignores clear evidence from other sources of ongoing shortfalls in affordable housing supply. The state tracks how well cities perform on the goal of providing housing affordable to all income levels. Between 2007 and 2014, fully 99 percent of the Bay Area’s need for high-end units was met. Conversely, building permits lagged far behind need for low- and moderate-income units. To be sure, more supply is needed, but unless it is targeted to those who need it most, it will only help

Champion Briefs 159 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

wealthier residents. To truly expand affordable housing in California, we need innovative policies that move beyond the limited existing programs. The most promising programs would provide direct subsidies to create permanently affordable housing and incentivize developers to include affordable units in their buildings. Even taking land permanently out of the market with land trusts should be on the table. We understand which mechanisms will work. The real question is whether we have the political will to overcome local opposition to new development and to change policies, like the mortgage interest deduction, that currently do more to subsidize middle-and high-income homeowners than struggling low-income renters.

Warrant: This phenomenon occurred in Buffalo

Susan Schulman, Buffalo News, "The other side of Buffalo's rental boom? Not enough low-income apartments", 06/19/17, https://buffalonews.com/2017/06/19/need-affordable-housing-leads- inclusionary-zoning-debate/

While $2,000-a-month apartments with granite countertops, high ceilings and in- building gymnasiums attract millennials to downtown Buffalo, demand for government-subsidized, low-income rental housing also seems to be growing. One reason is that Buffalo’s low-income population has inched up in recent years, census data shows. Plus rents are increasing, often beyond inflation, sometimes reflecting rising real estate values when buildings are sold, housing experts say. And sometimes, landlords increase rents simply “because they can,” Riegel said. The result is that more lower-income people in Buffalo – which has a $31,918 median household income – are being priced out of market-rate housing, increasing demand for government- subsidized, low-income housing, housing advocates say. “There is a huge demand for affordable housing not being met,” said developer Nick Sinatra, president of Sinatra & Co. “There are a lot of poor people,” Riegel added. “Incomes don’t seem to be rising

Champion Briefs 160 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

very much, but market-rate rents are going up. It’s been really noticeable the last two years.”

Impact: Segregation harms the economy

Emanuella Grinberg, CNN, "The hidden costs of segregation", 03/29/17, https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/28/us/urban-institute-cost-of-segregation- study/index.html

In regions where there is a high level of economic segregation, access to education, jobs, housing and public services is largely concentrated in the areas where high- income people live, and far away from where low-income people live. This kind of economic segregation can take a toll on the economy of the region as a whole, because it keeps workers away from potential employers. Places with greater segregation between low- and high-income people also tend to have greater income inequality on the whole. What does an economically segregated region look like? Take for example New York City, which tops the list. People living in affluent neighborhoods reap the benefits of good schools, low crime rates and access to public services, while those priced out of those areas may have to travel farther for access to services, work or school -- if they can afford the trip at all. The result is uneven distribution of wealth, which keeps poor neighborhoods poor and limits potential spillover effects of affluence. Previous studies have found that economic segregation is higher today than it was in 1970, with the share of Americans living in middle-income neighborhoods dropping from 65% then to 42% in 2009. The report takes a closer look at the trend. It found that between 1990 and 2000, economic segregation decreased in 92 metropolitan areas. Then, in 2000, the trend began to reverse and from 2000 to 2010, economic segregation increased in 72 areas as high-poverty and high-affluence neighborhoods began to outnumber mixed-class, middle-income neighborhoods.

Champion Briefs 161 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Analysis: This argument is strategic as it a negative impact market rate housing has on even renters that are currently housed in a certain area. Also, this argument could be strategically cross applied to any evidence of long-term communal benefits of market rate housing, as the original community is displaced and not able to see those benefits.

Champion Briefs 162 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Market Rates housing causes segregation

Response: Market rate housing does not lead to segregation

Warrant: Market rate housing did not increase economic segregation in Sweden

Hans Lind and Anders Hellström, European Journal of Housing Politcy, "Market Rents and Economic Segregation: Evidence From a Natural Experiment", 02/17/07, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616710600787718?scroll=top &needAccess=true

One argument against deregulating the rental housing market is that high market rents in attractive areas would increase economic segregation. During the 1990s one major city in Sweden (Malmö) increased rents step by step in attractive areas, while another (Stockholm) did not do so. This ‘natural experiment’ makes it possible to get new evidence about the relation between market rents and economic segregation. The development in different types of areas within the cities is compared over a ten-year period. The results indicate that segregation increased in almost the same way in both cities. Possible counteracting factors are discussed, but the conclusion is that the result must be seen as important evidence against the hypothesis that a (slow) move towards market rent would drastically increase economic segregation.

Warrant: Market rate housing reduced displacement in California

Daniel Hertz, City Commentary, "Report: Market-rate housing construction is a weapon against displacement", 09/02/16, http://cityobservatory.org/report-market-rate- housing-construction-is-a-weapon-against-displacement/

Champion Briefs 163 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

That finding comes from California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, which just released a new report on the state’s ever-growing affordability crisis. Using a broad definition of displacement—any decline of a neighborhood’s low-income population relative to its total population—the LAO shows that, even controlling for other demographic factors, Bay Area communities with the greatest expansion of market-rate housing also see the least low-income displacement. The effect is strong: changing from a low- construction neighborhood to a high-construction neighborhood was associated with a decline in the probability of displacement from 46 percent to 26 percent.

Analysis: This is a good response because it empirically turns the negative’s advocacy. Not only did market rate housing not increase economic segregation in Sweden, but in California it reduced displacement by 20%.

Response: Economic segregation has alternate causalities

Warrant: Americans self-segregate

Emily Badger, Citylab, "The Rise of Economic Segregation", 08/02/12, https://www.city lab.com/equity/2012/08/rise-economic-segregation/2793/

Income inequality has been on the rise in America for several decades now (for complicated reasons that we’ll let Richard Florida explain), and the trend has been starker in some regions of the country, and in some cities, relative to others. Now, however, we are also beginning to see – all the way down to the neighborhood level – that America’s growing gap between the rich and poor is also affecting where (and with whom) we live. A new report from the Pew Research Center documents that it’s not just income inequality that’s increasing. Residential segregation by income is, too. "Growing income inequality does not automatically lead to growing residential segregation by income. Conceivably, we could still have a middle class hollowing out

Champion Briefs 164 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

but people still living in mixed neighborhoods," says Paul Taylor, one of the report’s authors. Turns out this is not, however, what is happening. As Americans are growing farther apart on the income scale, we are also effectively moving apart from each other within cities, into our own economic enclaves. So why is that? The answer, Taylor says, may lie more in human behavior than economic data. "We know over the whole entirety of human history that people have a tremendous tendency to cluster among themselves, whether in tribes, whether in nations," Taylor says. "Like attracts like. That’s not always the case for some people who value diversity. But it’s sort of hardwired into human nature."

Warrant: Economic segregation is caused by wealthy families moving to districts with better schools

Emily Gersema, USC News, "Neighborhood segregation is driven by income inequality, choice of school districts", 06/10/16, https://news.usc.edu/99804/neighborhood-segregation-is-driven-by-income- inequality-and-choice-of-school-districts-study-finds/

Neighborhoods are becoming less diverse and more segregated by income — but only among families with children, a new study has found. Study author Ann Owens, an assistant professor of sociology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, examined census data from 100 major U.S. metropolitan areas from Los Angeles to Boston. She found that, among families with children, neighborhood segregation is driven by increased income inequality in combination with a previously overlooked factor: school district options. For families with high income, school districts are a top consideration when deciding where they will live, Owens said. And for those in large cities, the families have multiple school districts where they could choose to buy homes. Income segregation between neighborhoods rose 20 percent from 1990 to 2010, and between neighborhoods it was nearly twice as high among households that have

Champion Briefs 165 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

children compared to those without. For childless families, schools are not a priority for selecting a home, which, Owens said, likely explains the reason they did not see a rise in the income gap or in neighborhood segregation. “Income inequality has an effect only half as large among childless folks,” said Owens, whose study was published in the journal American Sociological Review. “This implies that parents who have children see extra money as a chance to buy a home in a good neighborhood so that their kids may attend a good school.”

Analysis: This is a good response because it shows multiple other societal justifications for why cities are becoming more economically segregated. If citizens are choosing to self-segregate by income, or if wealthy parents are always going to dominate the best school districts, no amount of housing reform will alter these patterns.

Champion Briefs 166 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Rent Control decreases housing supply

Argument: Lack of rent controls reduce the number of new homeowners, crippling the rental supply

Warrant: Home prices are increasing at an incredibly fast rate

Diana, CNBC, "Home prices make the biggest jump in four years", 06/03/18, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/02/housing-is-getting-more-expensive-as- home-sellers-retreat.html

It is a seller’s market, undeniably. The supply of homes for sale is low, demand is high, and now prices are heating up even more. But sellers today see more reasons to stay put than to profit. Home prices jumped 7.1 percent annually in May, according to a new report from CoreLogic. That's the biggest jump in four years. Annual price gains had been shrinking slightly, as mortgage rates rose, but apparently higher rates are not hurting demand. They are, however, exacerbating the already critical supply shortage. “During the first quarter, we found that about 50 percent of all existing homeowners had a mortgage rate of 3.75 percent or less,” said Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. “May’s mortgage rates averaged a seven-year high of 4.6 percent, with an increasing number of homeowners keeping the low-rate loans they currently have, rather than sell and buy another home that would carry a higher interest rate.”

Warrant: The low supply of housing and its lack of affordability forces people to rent longer

Diana Olick, CNBC, "Rents are rising at the fastest pace in almost two years", 03/22/18,

Champion Briefs 167 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/22/rents-are-rising-at-the-fastest-pace-in- almost-two-years.html

The critical housing shortage is now taking its toll on renters. Potential buyers are having an increasingly difficult time finding a home they can afford, so they are renting longer. That's pushing rental demand higher and rent prices along with it. The median rent in the United State rose 2.8 percent over the past year to $1,445, the fastest pace of appreciation since May 2016, according to Zillow. Rents are rising fastest in some expected markets, like Seattle and Sacramento, California, and in some unexpected places, including Minneapolis and Atlanta. Rental appreciation had slowed in the past two years as new apartment supply came online following a construction boom. But it is now rising again due to the record-low supply of homes for sale. "For- sale inventory is tight, and with home prices continuing their rapid climb, it's becoming more and more difficult for renters to become owners, forcing them to rent longer than they otherwise would have," said Zillow senior economist Aaron Terrazas. "Searching for the 'right' home has become a drawn- out affair and rising prices require more savings for a down payment." The strong pace of apartment construction in the last five years has mitigated some of the supply problem, but most of the new apartments are in luxury buildings. Luxury rents have actually come down in the past six months, but rents in the rest of the market, where supply is leaner, are doing just the opposite. Rising mortgage rates only exacerbate the problem because they decrease affordability for potential buyers as well. New households are forming at the fastest pace in two years, and more of them are owner households, a reversal from the recession when renter households outpaced owners by far. But current renters are not moving to ownership at even close to a normal pace, and that is keeping occupancies high.

Champion Briefs 168 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Warrant: New housing construction rarely is affordable, unless it is mandated by the government

Maya Brennan and Solomon Greene, US Partnership on Mobility from Povery, "Why Isn’t There Enough Affordable Housing for the Families Who Need It Most?", February 2018, https://www.mobilitypartnership.org/file/1218691/download?token=5KantOQ3

Inclusionary zoning programs, which may be voluntary or mandatory, can be an effective source of new affordable housing by incentivizing developers to create a certain number of affordable units (or pay a suitable in-lieu fee) when building market- rate housing. The evidence shows that mandatory inclusionary zoning is more effective than voluntary.33 Inclusionary zoning rarely brings rents down to the levels needed by very low–income households, unless doing so is both mandated and funded. Local government may use tax abatements or fee waivers to indirectly fund developers who add units for very low–income households, or the additional subsidy could be more direct: for example, under the Montgomery County, Maryland, inclusionary zoning program, the public housing authority may buy a portion of the apartments to use as scattered-site public housing.34 Inclusionary zoning programs are more effective in high-cost markets where demand for new development is strong. Inclusionary zoning programs have been spreading, but some states have used preemption laws to prevent local governments from adopting them.

Impact: Lack of affordable housing harms communities

Michael Hobbes, Huffington Post, "America’s Housing Crisis Is A Ticking Time Bomb",

Champion Briefs 169 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

06/19/18, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-inequality- harvard-report_us_5b27c1f1e4b056b2263c621e

For decades, housing costs have risen faster than incomes. Since 1960, renters’ median earnings have gone up 5 percent while rents have spiked 61 percent; homeowners earn 50 percent more while home prices have gone up 112 percent. This has obvious human costs. As the National Low Income Housing Coalition reported earlier this month, a growing share of the nation’s renters cannot afford to live in the cities where they work. In 2016, nearly half of renters were considered cost-burdened — i.e. they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent — a proportion that has more than doubled in the last 50 years. Rising rents also have indirect impacts. The Harvard study noted that the cities with the greatest increases in housing costs also have the greatest increases in homelessness. Expensive housing encourages private equity firms and other investors to buy up apartment buildings and evict the current residents. Displacement leads to sprawl, long commutes and workers spending more time away from their families. From cheap restaurants to affordable childcare to neighborhood community centers, rising rents are a tsunami that sweeps away support networks and social amenities critical to low-income residents.

Analysis: This argument is strategic because it has a linear impact. Unless the government mandates that affordable housing gets constructed, the affordability crisis will only get worse.

Champion Briefs 170 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent Control decreases housing supply

Response: The problem is not the supply of housing

Warrant: The problem is instead income inequality in cities

Tania Solé, Patch Media, "DID YOU KNOW that The Difference Between Affordable Housing and Fair Market Housing Is Often a Function Of Income", 04/13/15, https://patch.com/california/redwoodcity-woodside/did-you-know-difference- between-affordable-housing-and-fair-market-housing-often-function-income

Historically the difference between the fair market rent rate and an affordable rent rate for an apartment in most US cities was small. Metropolis like New York City and San Francisco that did have a big difference between fair market rents and affordable rents implemented rate control programs that they hoped would solve the problem. However with time these programs have become huge bureaucracies that instead of creating a level playing field have in their own way created winners and losers. Winners include renters with rent controlled units, losers include not only landlords who cannot at times raise rents sufficiently to properly maintain units and renters that do not have rent controlled units as they must compete for an even smaller number of market rent rate units. Assuming that the problem of affordable housing is based on supply and demand of housing, affordable housing activists have decided that the way to assure affordable rents is to increase supply drastically and let the market lower the rates back to where the differential between fair market rate and affordable is either small or negligible. This belief leads to a push for more and more building and increasing density. Unfortunately the problem of affordable housing is not due to an imbalance in the supply and demand of housing, it is actually a problem as Paul Krugman has called it of the great divergence of incomes. For low, low income people minimum

Champion Briefs 171 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

wage incomes means that the actual hard costs of paying the monthly rent requires more and more people to share small spaces. For the really affluent whose income is disproportionately high in relation to their housing expenses; it means that they can own several homes most of which stand empty year around as regardless of their affluence they can still only be at one place at a time. In fact so strong is the divergence between low income people and affluent elite's that not only have high outright earnings but also power that a City Manager, like the City Manager of Redwood City who earns almost twenty thousand dollars a MONTH (more than a minimum wage earner earns in a year) not including benefits, tries to negotiate for a housing allowance of eight thousand dollars further driving up the base cost of housing.

Warrant: Housing construction has kept pace with housing demand

Bill Conerly, Forbes, "Housing Forecast 2018-2019: Declining New Demand", 09/20/17, https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2017/09/20/housing-forecast-2018- 2019-declining-new-demand/#1ae8326258c6

The ability to live on one’s own, whether that means moving out from parents or from an ex-spouse, ties to employment and wage rates. As we noted in our article on the consumer spending forecast, job growth has been moderately slow, and wage inflation has not accelerated. I expect wage rates to improve next year, but not soon enough to change the trend in household size. So new demand for housing units will be (under these assumptions) 1.183 million units. For comparison purposes, so far this year we are on pace to build 1.287 million single family houses, apartment and condo units, and manufactured homes. Looks like we’re building too much, at least nationwide. Will pent-up demand take up some of these homes? I look at how many vacant housing units there are. Some vacancy is normal and even good. For non-rental housing (mostly single family homes, but also some condos), average vacancy is 1.4 percent. In the

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recession, vacancy hit 2.9 percent, but most recently was down to 1.5 percent. So supply is not tighter than normal despite talk of another housing bubble.

Analysis: This is a good response because it provides an alternate causality for the negative’s impacts. This is important as if there is another reason why housing is unaffordable and it is not due to a small supply of housing, then there is no reason to affirm.

Response: Inclusionary zoning is bad

Warrant: Housing prices increased in cities with inclusionary zoning laws

Gerrit-Jan Knaap, Antonio Bento, Scott Lowe, National Center for Smart Growth Res earch and Education, "Housing Market Impacts of Inclusionary Zoning", 2008, http://smartgrowth.umd.edu/housingmarketimpactsofiz.html

We also found that housing prices in cities that adopted inclusionary zoning in creased about 2-3 percent faster than cities that did not adopt such policies. In addition, we found that housing price effects were greater in higher priced housing markets than in lower priced markets. That is, housing that sold for less than $187,000 (in 1988 dollars1) decreased by only 0.8 percent while housing that sold for more than $187,000 increased by 5.0 percent. These findings suggest that housing producers did not in general respond to inclusionary requirements by slowing the rate of single family housing construction but did pass the increase in production costs on to housing consumers. Further, housing producers were better able to pass on the increase in costs in higher priced housing markets than in lower priced housing markets.

Warrant: Inclusionary zoning makes housing construction more expensive

Champion Briefs 173 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Benjamin Schneider, Citylab, "CityLab University: Inclusionary Zoning", 07/17/18, https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/07/citylab-university-inclusionary- zoning/565181/

While builders and developers express a range of opinions on IZ, they are usually the primary opponents of these policies. Developers in Chicago and California recently filed lawsuits against their local IZ laws, claiming that they violate private property rights. “Penalizing homebuilders with more costs and mandates deters the creation of more housing, and raises the overall cost of market-rate homes,” said one of the lawyers representing the California Building Association in a press release. This is, essentially, the main argument against IZ. Policy think tanks and economists: Rather than argue against inclusionary zoning per se, many policy think tanks and economists argue that inclusionary zoning has a perverse effect because it increases housing prices. It puts a damper on housing supply, they say, by increasing the cost of new market rate units. In a 2016 study, UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation estimated that Oakland’s new inclusionary zoning policy would lead to a 6 to 12 percent reduction in total unit production as compared to a scenario without IZ. Oakland’s policy would also reduce revenue from taxes and fees by between 6 to 19 percent, or about $9.2 to $27.7 million. It would, however, increase the proportion of below-market rate units being produced in the city from 4 percent to 11 percent. Other academic studies have come to similar conclusions.

Analysis: This is a good response because it turns the negative’s advocacy. Their method of solvency actually increases the cost of housing overall, which by their logic would most likely increase displacement and segregation.

Champion Briefs 174 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Rent Control benefits communities

Argument: Rent controls benefit their communities

Warrant: Rent controls prevent price increases

Apartment Ratings, "Rent Control: Who Really Benefits?", 04/05/10, https://ohmyapt.apartmentratings.com/rent-control-who-really-benefits.html

Rent control laws regulate or prohibit a landlord of residential property from raising rent. The concept, however, is not universally supported, and the debate over whether landlords or tenants are the true beneficiaries of rent control laws is heated and multi- sided. Rent Control Defined A landlord of a rent-controlled apartment is prohibited from raising rent beyond a prescribed amount, meaning that there is a price ceiling for rent on that specific unit. Typically, only residential properties are subject to the laws, and in all circumstances the apartment must have been built prior to February 1947. State or county legislatures enact the specific state rent control guidelines for the state, but some states have chosen to preempt or prohibit rent control. To determine if your rent control is available in your state, check with the local realtor’s association.

Warrant: Market rate housing allow infinitely rising rents

Homes for All, "MEDIA ADVISORY /RELEASE MOMENTUM GROWS FOR RENT CONTROL: HUNDREDS TO ATTEND STATEWIDE TENANT CONFERENCE", 09/23/17, https://homesforall.org/pressroom_post/media-advisory-release- momentum-grows-for-rent-control-hundreds-to-attend-statewide-tenant- conference/

Champion Briefs 175 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Renters in California deal with the everyday impacts of the state’s disastrous policies that restrict rent control and make it easier for landlords to evict – particularly Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act and the Ellis Act. On Sunday afternoon of the conference Assembly members Rob Bonta, Richard Bloom, and David Chiu who are sponsoring AB 1506, a state bill to repeal Costa Hawkins will be part of a Q&A legislators panel. “Most cities don’t have laws that stop landlords from increasing the rent however much they want. Landlords, developers and real estate speculators make millions while we face the trauma of rising rents, evictions, displacement and homelessness. Communities can’t thrive in these conditions,” says Betty Gabaldon a tenant in Concord, Ca working with Tenants Together “Everyone has a right to a safe, healthy, affordable home. Everyone has a right to stay in their home and live where they choose.” “Displacement and gentrification aren’t accidents. They are rooted in racist, sexist and colonial practices which directly impact communities of color and women the hardest,” says Alma Blackwell, organizer with Causa Justa :: Just Cause and a tenant in Oakland, “It’s up to us, those most deeply affected by the state’s shameful housing policy – low-income people of color – to build the world we want,”

Warrant: Rent controls increased the probability of a person staying in their home by 20 percent

Dean Preston and Shanti Singh, Shelterforce, "Dear Business School Professors: You’re Wrong, Rent Control Works", 03/28/18, https://shelterforce.org/2018/03/28/rent-control-works/

The Stanford paper fully supports the conclusion that rent control works to keep people in their homes: “We find that rent control increased the probability a renter stayed at their address by close to 20 percent.” The stabilizing effects are “significantly stronger among older households and among households that have already spent a number of years at their treated address.” In other words, seniors and long-term

Champion Briefs 176 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

tenants find longer-term stability because of rent control. Equally importantly, the study confirms how rent control prevents displacement from the city. “We can see that tenants who receive rent control protections are persistently more likely to remain at their 1993 address relative to the control group. Not only that, but they are also more likely to be living in San Francisco.” The paper also acknowledges the substantial financial benefit conferred on tenants because of the expansion of rent control in San Francisco in 1994. “Across the entire population, the aggregate benefit was $7.085 billion dollars, reflecting an annual average of $394 million dollars. Note also that these welfare numbers are only for the 1994 population impacted by the rent control expansion. It does not take into account the welfare benefits for renters who moved into the impacted properties in later years, which presumably were also quite large.” The $7 billion savings for tenants is the tip of the iceberg, relating only to the studied group—tenants in small buildings who lived in their homes in 1994 when they became rent controlled. As the authors note, it does not measure the benefit for all of the tenants who moved into the studied properties after they gained rent control.

Impact: Lower prices increase tenants investment into their communities

Jake Blumgart, Pacific Standard, "IN DEFENSE OF RENT CONTROL", 04/01/15, https://psmag.com/economics/in-defense-of-rent-control

Renters are often maligned for not investing in their neighborhoods or houses. Mason argues that rent regulations give tenants a greater stake in their community and incentivize them to put time, energy, and even money into their homes. Without that kind of security in their occupancy, there is little return for contributing to the neighborhood and building relationships in the surrounding blocks. The common critique, elucidated in Krugman’s column, is that regulating rents on some housing units will drive up rents on those that are not controlled, while resulting in less new housing development because real estate interests are disinclined to build if they can’t be

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guaranteed market rate returns. According to this logic, housing stability for older residents should not take precedence over the ability of new residents to move to a highly desirable community. And, as the argument often goes, building more market rate housing creates more affordable housing eventually. (Maybe in some places, but not in tight markets like Silicon Valley and New York.) But a comprehensive review of literature by New York housing lawyer Timothy Collins found that the received wisdom regarding rent regulations is overly simplistic—partially because hard ceilings on rents are often imagined, while the reality is more often (as in New York’s case) a more measured approach meant to discourage landlords from dramatically raising rents and displacing tenants.

Analysis: This argument is effective because it shows that keeping communities intact relies on rent controls. Affirming and increasing market-rate housing would displace people from their communities. Additionally, long term people can give back more to their communities if they’re able to stay put for longer periods of time.

Champion Briefs 178 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent Control benefits communities

Response: Rent controls are not feasibly implemented

Warrant: Landlords use loopholes to get out of rent controls

Tanvi Misra, Citylab, "Rent Control: a Reckoning", 12/29/18, https://www.city lab.com/equity/2018/01/rent-control-a-reckoning/551168/

A new working paper published in the National Bureau for Economic Research provides a complicated answer: While these policies are a boon to many low-income tenants who directly benefit, they worsen the affordability crisis in the longterm. “It’s somewhat of a transfer from future tenants to incumbent tenants,” said Rebecca Diamond, an assistant professor of economics at Stanford University, who authored the paper along with colleagues Timothy McQuade and Franklin Qian. Rent control policies impose limits on rent increases for the duration of a tenant’s stay. But since landlords have many loopholes for escaping those requirements, the Stanford researchers found that that they ended up pulling properties from the rental market—shrinking the rental housing supply overall. The researchers examined the impact of a 1994 ballot initiative in San Francisco, extending rent control protections to certain smaller buildings built before 1980. Its passage created a natural opportunity to compare these buildings with similar ones built in the period after that were not rent controlled. Diamond and her colleagues followed the landlords and the tenants in these buildings over time. What they found was that the tenants who benefited from the law were between 10 and 20 percent more likely to remain at the same address, compared to their counterparts in the non-rent controlled buildings. This was particularly true for the less mobile tenants—elderly folks and those families who’d lived at that address for a long time.

Champion Briefs 179 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Warrant: Rent controls are banned in most states

Gary M. Galles, Foundation for Economic Education, "Why State Bans on Rent Control Are Just", 11/26/18, how many states have banned rent controls

Virtually every rent control story focuses on local government policies. Less well-known, however, is that a majority of states actually ban or restrict local governments’ power to impose rent control. And currently, in at least four states (California, Oregon, Washington, and Illinois), those restrictions are under attack. Municipalities want power they are currently denied so they can impose rent control, supposedly to give local citizens “what they want.” That raises the question of whether rent control policy should be vested at the state level or the local level.

Analysis: This is a good response because it limits the scope of the negative’s impacts. If most states ban rent controls, and landlords can get out of them anyway, a national policy pushing for market-rate housing probably is more reasonable.

Response: Rent controls make housing on net more expensive

Warrant: Rent controls increase prices in surrounding markets

Walter Block, The Library of Economics and Liberty, "Rent Control", https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html

Rent control, like all other government-mandated price controls, is a law placing a maximum price, or a “rent ceiling,” on what landlords may charge tenants. If it is to have

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any effect, the rent level must be set at a rate below that which would otherwise have prevailed. (An enactment prohibiting apartment rents from exceeding, say, $100,000 per month would have no effect since no one would pay that amount in any case.) But if rents are established at less than their equilibrium levels, the quantity demanded will necessarily exceed the amount supplied, and rent control will lead to a shortage of dwelling spaces. In a competitive market and absent controls on prices, if the amount of a commodity or service demanded is larger than the amount supplied, prices rise to eliminate the shortage (by both bringing forth new supply and by reducing the amount demanded). But controls prevent rents from attaining market-clearing levels and shortages result. With shortages in the controlled sector, this excess demand spills over onto the noncontrolled sector (typically, new upper-bracket rental units or condominiums). But this noncontrolled segment of the market is likely to be smaller than it would be without controls because property owners fear that controls may one day be placed on them. The high demand in the noncontrolled segment along with the small quantity supplied, both caused by rent control, boost prices in that segment. Paradoxically, then, even though rents may be lower in the controlled sector, they rise greatly for uncontrolled units and may be higher for rental housing as a whole.

Warrant: Rent controls have negative externalities for surrounding neighborhoods

Rebecca Diamond, Brookings Institute, "What does economic evidence tell us about the effects of rent control?", 10/18/18, https://www.brookings.edu/research/what- does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/

Autor, Palmer, and Pathak (2014) (APP), studies the impact of this unexpected change and find that newly decontrolled properties’ market values increased by 45 percent. In addition to these direct effects of rent decontrol, APP find removing rent control has substantial indirect effects on neighboring properties, boosting their values too. Post-

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decontrol price appreciation was significantly greater at properties that had a larger fraction of formerly controlled neighbors: residential properties at the 75th percentile of rent control exposure gained approximately 13 percent more in property value following decontrol than did properties at the 25th percentile of exposure. This differential appreciation of properties in rent control–intensive locations was equally pronounced among decontrolled and never-controlled units, suggesting that the effect of rent control had been to reduce the whole neighborhood’s desirability. The economic magnitude of the effect of rent control removal on the value of Cambridge’s housing stock is large, boosting property values by $2.0 billion between 1994 and 2004. Of this total effect, only $300 million is accounted for by the direct effect of decontrol on formerly controlled units, while $1.7 billion is due to the indirect effect. These estimates imply that more than half of the capitalized cost of rent control was borne by owners of never-controlled properties. Rent controlled properties create substantial negative externalities on the nearby housing market, lowering the amenity value of these neighborhoods and making them less desirable places to live. In short, the policy imposed $2.0 billion in costs to local property owners, but only $300 million of that cost was transferred to renters in rent-controlled apartments.

Analysis: This is a good response because it turns the negative’s impact. In the long term, if rent controls increase the costs of housing and harm surrounding communities, many more people would be benefitted by market-rate housing instead.

Champion Briefs 182 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Rent Control rewards luxury housing development

Argument: Market rate housing increases luxury housing development

Warrant: For-profit housing incentivizes luxury development

Amee Chew, Inequality.Org, "Luxury Development is Making Our Housing Crisis Worse", 11/04/18, https://inequality.org/research/luxury-development-making- housing-crisis-worse/

Rent control costs the public little. Unlike Section 8, which follows market prices and doesn’t prevent rents from increasing overall, rent control would make sure landlords get a fair return but cannot price gouge. Section 8’s targeted subsidies, supposedly more efficient because they reach only a few of the neediest, can perversely reward landlords who impose large rent increases. But rent control’s more universalist approach, covering all renters, better protects the public good. And we cannot rely on the private market to provide the new construction we need. Our housing market is broken. Most renters now direct unaffordable levels of their income towards rent. But for-profit housing cannot meet most renters’ needs. And that’s by design: when profit determines pricing, the housing needs of low-income folks never matter as much as the demand of a few rich individuals at the luxury end. Instead, we must massively expand the non-profit financing, development, and construction of social and public housing. We must protect land and housing from the vagaries of the market by creating community land trusts, cooperative housing, and mutual housing on a large-scale. Other rich countries have done it. Sweden addressed its dire postwar housing shortage with hundreds of thousands of cooperatives and an even more massive boom in public housing construction. Thanks to these policies – along with strong rent regulations – a

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much larger swathe of its population enjoys extremely low housing costs than in the U.S.

Warrant: There is already an affordable housing shortage

Andrew Aurand et. al, National Low Income Housing Coalition, "A Shortage of Afforda ble Homes", March 2018, https://nlihc.org/gap

The U.S. has a shortage of 7.2 million rental homes affordable and available to extremely low income renters, whose income is at or below the poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income. Only 35 affordable and available rental homes exist for every 100 extremely low income renter households. Extremely low income households face a shortage in every state and major metropolitan area, including the District of Columbia. Among states, the supply of affordable and available rental homes ranges from only 15 for every 100 extremely low income renter households in Nevada to 59 for every 100 extremely low income renter households in Maine. For the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S, the supply ranges from 10 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low income renter households in Las Vegas, NV to 47 in Providence, RI.

Warrant: Market rate housing tends to be luxury housing, and drives up rents in surrounding neighborhoods as well

Amee Chew, Shelter Force, "Here’s What We Actually Know About Market-Rate Hous ing Development and Displacement", 11/05/18, https://shelterforce.org/2018/11/05/heres-what-we-actually-know-about- market-rate-housing-development-and-displacement/

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Impact: Rising rents are unaffordable for low income renters and burden their lives.

Patrick Sisson, Curbed, "State of U.S. rental market: Rich get more options, poor suffer affordability crisis", 12/14/17, https://www.curbed.com/2017/12/14/16776074/apartment-rent-harvard- study-rental-market

The focus on downtown helped boost the median asking rent for a new apartment 27 percent between 2011 and 2016, resulting in a nationwide average rent of $1,480 a month. That may seem reasonable or ridiculous, depending on where you live. But based on the standard measure of affordability—a household should spend 30 percent of income on rent—you’d need to make $59,000 a year to move into this average apartment, more than $20,000 more than what the average renter makes

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($37,300). Choices for the high-end of the market do not mean more choices for lower cost rental housing. Rising prices and demand has helped make life for low-income renters increasingly challenging. The share of units renting for $850 or less shrunk from 40 percent of the total supply to 20 percent of the total supply in the last decade.

Analysis: This argument is strategic as market rate housing only increases housing supplies for the wealthy. Additionally, seeing as this housing increases prices even in surrounding neighborhoods, market rate housing would unduly burden low-income residents.

Champion Briefs 186 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent Control rewards luxury housing development

Response: The issue is not motivations to produce luxury housing, but rising land costs are raising housing costs

Warrant: Zoning and land use controls are more impactful for housing prices

Edward L. Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko, Harvard Institute of Economic Research, "The Impact of Zoning on Housing Affordability", 02/18/02, https://law.yale.edu/system/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf

Does America face an affordable housing crisis and, if so, why? This paper argues that in much of America the price of housing is quite close to the marginal, physical costs of new construction. The price of housing is significantly higher than construction costs only in a limited number of areas, such as California and some eastern cities. In those areas, we argue that high prices have little to do with conventional models with a free market for land. Instead, our evidence suggests that zoning and other land use controls play the dominant role in making housing expensive.

Warrant: US ally Japan has large deposits of rare earths, it’s not necessary that we drill ourselves

Michael E. Kanell, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Metro Atlanta housing top-heavy, not enough priced for first-timers", 06/07/18, https://www.ajc.com/business/metro-atlanta-housing-top-heavy-not-enough- priced-for-first-timers/k2JntNa2Cy0lWW1eyZPIBO/

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New construction used to churn out many “starter” homes. Now, new construction is disproportionately higher-priced. That is because the starting point for home prices are the costs of land and development – the higher those rise, the more a builder is driven to charge for his product. The median price of a home in metro Atlanta is a little more than $200,000. The median household income is about $62,000. But the market is saturated with homes priced far beyond their means. That is because once builders have spent upwards of $100,000 on the purchase and preparation of land, then more on labor and materials, they are simply not going to build an entry-level home, Hunt said.

Analysis: This is a good response because it is an alternate causality for inaffordable housing. It takes out the negative’s link. Even if market rate housing encourages luxury construction, the prices would have been high anyway.

Response: A lack of luxury units increases demand for other units

Warrant: Demand for luxury units is rising

Diana Olick, CNBC, "Luxury homes can't keep up with high demand", 10/26/17, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/luxury-homes-cant-keep-up-with-high- demand.html

The top 5 percent of homes by price sold in the third quarter saw their values increase 4.9 percent compared with a year ago, hitting an average of $1.71 million, according to Redfin, a real estate brokerage. The higher prices are the result of a sharp decline in listings in the luxury sector. The number of homes for sale priced at or above $1 million fell just over 18 percent compared with the same period last year. "There is still strong buyer demand for high-end homes," said Redfin's chief economist, Nela

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Richardson. "Despite declining inventory, luxury sales soared in the third quarter." Sales of homes priced at or above $1 million were up 11 percent from a year ago, while sales of homes priced at or above $5 million were up almost as much at 10 percent, Richardson explained. At the ultra-high end, the number of homes priced at or above $5 million fell 19 percent. This marked the first quarter in which super luxury listings fell year over year since Redfin began reporting on the luxury market in 2014. Given the high demand, supplies will likely continue to fall. Homebuilders are turning their attention to the lower end of the market, where demand has been rising for years and where the lack of supply is acute. The average price for nonluxury homes was $336,000 in the third quarter, up 5.3 percent compared with a year earlier.

Warrant: High luxury demand lowers the supply of affordable units

Mayer, Christopher. "Government Regulation and Changes in the Affordable Housing Stock." Economic Policy Review 9, no. 2 (June 2003): 45-62.

In this paper, we look at the relationship between these two issues to examine how government regulation affects the dynamics of the low-income housing stock. We find that, consistent with theoretical models of housing, restrictions on the supply of new units lower the supply of affordable units. This occurs because increases in the demand for higher quality units raise the returns to maintenance, repairs, and renovations of lower quality units, as landlords have a stronger incentive to upgrade them to a higher quality, higher return housing submarket. This result is disturbing because it highlights how policies targeted toward new, higher income owner- occupied suburban housing can have unintended negative consequences for lower income renters.

Champion Briefs 189 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Analysis: This is a good response because it functions as a turn to the negative’s argument. If luxury demand is increasing, landlords of middle- and low-income housing will move to upgrade their units so that they appeal to high income renters. This only increase competition for previously affordable housing.

Champion Briefs 190 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Market rate housing leads to gentrification

Argument: Market rate housing incentivizes rich people to move into neighborhoods, which pushes out the poor through gentrification.

Warrant: Market rate housing allows landowners to charge as much rent as they want.

Leshnower, Ron. “What Exactly Is Market-Rate Housing?” The Spruce, TheSpruce, 9 July 2018, www.thespruce.com/market-rate-apartment-155986.

Market rate housing is an apartment that has no rent restrictions. A landlord who owns market-rate housing is free to attempt to rent the space at whatever price the local market may fetch. In other words, the term applies to conventional rentals that are not restricted by affordable housing laws. Market rate housing can be beneficial for landlords, as it is less complicated and they may be able to generate higher rent income as a result. But if you're a tenant looking for an apartment you can afford, a living in a market with a high cost of living can make things tricky. Here are a few things you should know about market rate housing and how to find an apartment you can afford.

Warrant: Rising costs have burdened renters.

That’s the undeniable upshot of a new report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. The report compiles hundreds of metrics on the

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health of America’s housing sector and finds that, despite some short-term progress since the recession, the long-term prognosis is grim. The housing crisis is the ticking time bomb at the heart of the American economy, wiping out savings, increasing inequality and reducing the ability of workers to weather the next recession. It has been in front of us all along, but now, finally, it is impossible to ignore.1. Low-Cost Housing Is Disappearing From The MarketFor decades, housing costs have risen faster than incomes. Since 1960, renters’ median earnings have gone up 5 percent while rents have spiked 61 percent; homeowners earn 50 percent more while home prices have gone up 112 percent. This has obvious human costs. As the National Low Income Housing Coalition reported earlier this month, a growing share of the nation’s renters cannot afford to live in the cities where they work. In 2016, nearly half of renters were considered cost-burdened — i.e. they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent — a proportion that has more than doubled in the last 50 years.

Warrant: Market rate housing drives up rent, pushing low-income households out.

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down” isn’t happening fast enough. Even worse, however, new construction actually fuels displacement in the short term, even when no already existing housing is knocked down. Why? Numerous studies show that market-rate housing development has price ripple effects on surrounding neighborhoods, driving up rents and increasing the burden on lower-income households. Many residents in communities transformed by gentrification can already attest to the connection between for-profit development, rising living costs, and the mass exodus of lower-income residents. Maybe this won’t play out in Malibu, or a sparse neighborhood with very few low-income folk, but otherwise the above effects are widespread in our cities.

Warrant: Gentrification leads to displacement.

Champion Briefs 193 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

housing prices and are near richer neighborhoods experience the largest price increase effects (46).

Impact: Gentrification disproportionately hurts low income individuals.

Chong, Emily. “Examining the Negative Impacts of Gentrification.” Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy, Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy, 17 Sept. 2017, gjplp.org/2017/09/05/examining-the-negative-impacts-of-gentrification/.

However, in some situations, gentrification displaces the poor and unstable along with unique businesses, replacing them with the wealthy. The Berkeley Urban Displacement Project notes that over a quarter of San Francisco’s neighborhoods are at risk of displacement. As communities attract new businesses, high skilled workers, major developers, and large corporations, the demand for and cost of housing increases, pricing out low-income residents. It is not always the case that these residents are forced out. Typically, low-income residents struggle with financial security and therefore are more vulnerable to change. They may not be married, may have less job security, and must move. Single mothers, the elderly, disabled, and other vulnerable groups are then displaced to areas that gain negative connotations due to the high concentration of low-income residents as can be seen by the reputation of the Bronx.

Analysis: This argument is extremely effective because the impacts can be weighed in many ways. For example, on scope, you will probably always directly affect more people as half of all renters in the United States are burdened by high rent costs. The impacts of displacement is also often very convincing in front of most judges, as they are fairly easy to weigh against most economic arguments.

Champion Briefs 194 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Market rate housing leads to gentrification

Answer: Gentrification helps the community.

Warrant: Gentrification increases business growth.

Small, Andrew. “Tracking the Incredible Gentrification of New York City.” CityLab, 28 Apr. 2017, https://www.citylab.com/work/2017/04/the-gentrification-of- gotham/524694/.

Comptroller Scott Stringer reveals just how profoundly the city has been transforming in the 21st century by comparing business and neighborhood details in 2000 and 2015. Dig around in the data and you’ll find detailed portraits of the city before and after gentrification, for better or worse. The report leads with the good news: The number of businesses has increased and business establishment growth picked up more in the 22 lower-income communities of the city (an increase of 41 percent) than the 33 higher-income districts (an increase of 12 percent). The report touts the growth of high-income industries in these neighborhoods. But business growth was even more pronounced in gentrifying neighborhoods. The 15 gentrifying neighborhoods as identified by the Furman Center saw a 45 percent jump in the number of businesses (a 45 percent increase from 28,132 to 42,261). As the report notes, all but one of the neighborhoods with the fastest business growth were gentrifying, with the biggest increases in Central Harlem and Crown Heights. Greenpoint and Williamsburg weren’t far behind. Another thing to celebrate according the report: more grocery stores, banks, and restaurants.

Warrant: Gentrification helps local governments.

Champion Briefs 195 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Plunkett, Barry. “Impacts of Gentrification: A Policy Primer.” Penn Wharton Public Policy Initative, publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/live/news/1581-impacts-of- gentrification-a-policy-primer/for-students/blog/news.php.

As wealthier people move into a previously poor neighborhood, the median area income increases. This increases cash flows for local businesses and makes local business investment more desirable. Over a period of time, more businesses are built, new jobs are created, and wages increase. For example, in Milwaukee, WI, the city was becoming increasingly segregated and abandoned as wealthy residents and jobs left to the suburbs post industrial age. In the early 2000’s, new bars, restaurants, and waterfronts renewed the area through a revitalized night life and reversed the downward spiral of the city.Some have noted that the benefits of gentrification extend beyond the private sector. Gentrification provides a fiscal windfall for the city government. More affluent residents contribute more income tax to city coffers, and appreciating home values beget higher property taxes. These increased tax revenues allow the local government to increase investment in infrastructure, public transportation, public schools, law enforcement, and other citizen services. In Milwaukee, for instance, gentrification provided the revenue required to fund a mass transit project that contributed to urban revival.

Analysis: This response effectively turns the argument, as you could argue that gentrification could not only create jobs, but could also help a city’s infrastructure. This helps all of its residents regardless of the neighborhood.

Answer: Gentrification helps the individual.

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Warrant: Those in gentrified neighborhoods are no more likely to move out than those in non- gentrified neighborhoods.

These findings line up with my own map of class-divided Philadelphia, which shows the creative class in and around Center City and Manayunk-Roxborough (areas that were partially gentrifying from 1980 to 2000, according to the map above). Surprisingly, the study found that gentrifying neighborhoods do not lose residents at a substantially higher rate than other neighborhoods. In fact, residents of gentrifying neighborhoods are less than 1 percentage point more likely to move out than those in non-gentrifying ones. Residents of the most intensely gentrified neighborhoods are less than 4 percentage points more likely to move. And the majority of affluent residents that moved from gentrifying neighborhoods ended up leaving the city for the suburbs or elsewhere. Residents of gentrifying neighborhoods also tend to benefit from gentrification across the board, experiencing an average increase of 11 points in their credit scores—and roughly 23 in neighborhoods with intense gentrification—compared to non-residents. This is partly because residents of gentrifying neighborhoods are better off to begin with, and also because these neighborhoods tend to be more advantaged.

Warrant: Gentrification helps poor neighborhoods

Champion Briefs 197 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Gillespie, Patrick. “How Gentrification May Benefit the Poor.” CNNMoney, 12 Nov. 2015, https://money.cnn.com/2015/11/12/news/economy/gentrification-may-help- poor-people/index.html.

When a poor neighborhood attracts higher income residents, expensive cafes and pricy vintage clothing stores move in, making daily living more expensive. The narrative is that gentrification displaces low income residents and in the worst case scenario causes homelessness. Now, a new storyline is emerging that shows that it isn't fair to blame gentrification for displacing low income residents and that there might actually even be some benefits. A study by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve recently concluded that poor people are no more likely to move out of a gentrifying neighborhood than from a non-gentrifying one. That doesn't mean low income people are not pushed out of their neighborhoods. They are just not more likely to be displaced than a person of similar income in a neighborhood that's not gentrifying. Experts say there are may even be some benefits for the low-income residents that decide to stay in gentrifying neighborhoods. -- New job opportunities emerge as more stores open and construction picks up. -- Longtime homeowners benefit from rising property values. -- There's often a decline in crime. -- On average, credit scores of the poor residents improve in gentrifying neighborhoods.

Analysis: This response turns the impact of the argument. This proves that the notion that poor people get pushed out of gentrifying neighborhoods is false, and the impacts of gentrification are often the opposite of the truth. Through gentrification, members of gentrifying communities see more job opportunities, better property values, and less crime.

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CON: Market rate housing allows landlords to significantly increase rent costs.

Warrant: Right now in United States, we are facing a crisis of renters being increasingly burdened by a high cost of living.

Stein, Jeff. “In Expensive Cities, Rents Fall for the Rich – but Rise for the Poor.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 6 Aug. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-expensive-cities-rents-fall-for- the-rich--but-rise-for-the-poor/2018/08/05/a16e5962-96a4-11e8-80e1- 00e80e1fdf43_story.html?utm_term=.3601014c3327.

The ongoing increase in prices for low-end renters poses a challenge for city officials who have vowed to lower housing costs for working-class residents already struggling with tepid wage growth in the U.S. economy. City officials have said a boom in luxury housing construction would cause rents to fall for everyone else, arguing that creating new units for those at the top would ease competition for cheaper properties. In part based on that theory, cities have approved thousands of new luxury units over the past several years, hoping to check high rents that have led more than 20 million American renters to be classified as “cost burdened,” defined as spending more than 30 percent of one’s income on housing. But although some advocates say the dividends could still pay off for low-income renters, others say more direct government action is needed to prevent poor residents from being forced out of their cities or into homelessness. They have called for the federal government to help construct more affordable units, or offer greater rental assistance for poor families.

Warrant: Market rate housing adds to this crisis as there are no rent caps.

Champion Briefs 199 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Leshnower, Ron. “What Exactly Is Market-Rate Housing?” The Spruce, TheSpruce, 9 July 2018, www.thespruce.com/market-rate-apartment-155986.

Warrant: Market rate housing is often geared towards luxury housing, decreasing affordable places to live.

Champion Briefs 200 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

one, for-profit new construction is overwhelmingly geared toward the luxury market. But it’s lower-income households who face the most severe affordable housing shortfalls. While our high-end stock has steadily grown, since 1990 on balance we’ve lost over 2.5 million affordable units renting for under $800. To what? In large part, rent increases. Secondly, new construction takes decades to depreciate down to rents that are actually affordable to most renters. “Trickle down” isn’t happening fast enough.

Warrant: High rent leads to homelessness.

Stein, Jeff. “In Expensive Cities, Rents Fall for the Rich - but Rise for the Poor.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 6 Aug. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-expensive-cities-rents-fall-for- the-rich--but-rise-for-the-poor/2018/08/05/a16e5962-96a4-11e8-80e1- 00e80e1fdf43_story.html?utm_term=.3601014c3327.

In San Francisco, the average rent at the bottom of the market has soared from $1,700 to $2,600, a nearly 50 percent increase. Seattle’s poor have also had their rents rise by close to 40 percent. Nationwide, rents for those at the bottom have increased by 18 percent. Rising rents for the poor threaten to add to the nation’s homeless population, and put an additional severe strain on tens of millions of families, often forcing them to forgo other basic needs to avoid losing their housing. Construction in most U.S. cities came to a standstill during the Great Recession, amid a broader collapse in the housing market. As the economic recovery took off, its gains were disproportionately concentrated in a handful of cities, leading renters to move in droves to already densely populated urban areas. There was not enough housing there to greet them. By the early 2010s, rents in major cities were beginning to increase by more than 10 percent

Champion Briefs 201 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

annually. Several cities declared emergencies over their rising homeless populations.

Impact: Homelessness increases the probability of death.

Romaszko, Jerzy et al. “Mortality among the homeless: Causes and meteorological relationships” PloS one vol. 12,12 e0189938. 21 Dec. 2017, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0189938

The retrospective analysis is based on data concerning 615 homeless people, out of which 176 died in the analyzed period (2010–2016). Data for the study was collected in the city of Olsztyn, located in north-east Poland, temperate climatic zone of transitional type. To characterize weather conditions, meteorological data including daily minimum and maximum temperatures and the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) were used. Results The average life span of a homeless person was shorter by about 17.5 years than that recorded for the general population. The average age at death of a homeless male was 56.27 years old (SD 10.38), and 52.00 years old (SD 9.85) of a homeless female. The most frequent causes of death were circulatory system diseases (33.80%). A large number of deaths were attributable to smoking (47.18%), whereas a small number was caused by infectious diseases, while a relatively large proportion of deaths were due to tuberculosis (2.15%). Most deaths occurred in the conditions of cold stress (of different intensity). Deaths caused by hypothermia were thirteen-fold more frequently recorded among the homeless than for the general population. A relative risk of death for a homeless person even in moderate cold stress conditions is higher (RR = 1.84) than in thermoneutral conditions. Conclusions Our results indicate excessive mortality among the homeless as well as the weak and rather typical influence of atmospheric conditions on mortality rates in this subpopulation, except for a

Champion Briefs 202 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

greater risk of cold related deaths than in the general population. UTCI may serve as a useful tool to predict death risk in this group of people.

Analysis: This argument sets you up to weigh lives as a terminal impact of homelessness. Through the increase in rent that would come with the prioritization of developing market-rate housing units, which is usually luxury housing, people will have to pay higher rents as a result of rising property values. This cripples individuals in urban areas into being displaced from their homes and risk homelessness.

Champion Briefs 203 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Market rate housing allows landlords to significantly increase rent costs.

Answer: Low income individuals aren’t pushed out of their communities.

Warrant: Those in gentrified neighborhoods are no more likely to move out than those in non- gentrified neighborhoods.

Warrant: Residents of gentrifying neighborhoods are often well off to begin with.

Champion Briefs 204 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Florida, Richard. “The Closest Look Yet at Gentrification and Displacement.” CityLab, University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, 2 Nov. 2015, www.citylab.com/equity/2015/11/the-closest-look-yet-at- gentrification-and-displacement/413356/. Residents of gentrifying neighborhoods also tend to benefit from gentrification across the board, experiencing an average increase of 11 points in their credit scores—and roughly 23 in neighborhoods with intense gentrification—compared to non-residents. This is partly because residents of gentrifying neighborhoods are better off to begin with, and also because these neighborhoods tend to be more advantaged. That said, gentrification tends to divide the city into areas of concentrated advantage and disadvantage. From 2000 to 2013, the median household income increased by 42 percent in gentrifying neighborhoods, but decreased by almost 20 percent in non-gentrifying ones. Poverty rates also declined slightly in gentrifying neighborhoods, while increasing slightly in non- gentrifying ones.

Analysis: This response concedes that rent may increase in a given community, but its residents wouldn’t be displaced. This is true because residents of gentrifying neighborhoods are often affluent enough to stay there.

Answer: Landlords won’t charge high prices.

Warrant: It is illogical for landlords to charge high prices when tenants can find a cheaper place to live in the neighborhood.

Leshnower, Ron. “What Exactly Is Market-Rate Housing?” The Spruce, TheSpruce, 9 July 2018, www.thespruce.com/market-rate-apartment-155986.

Champion Briefs 205 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Market rate housing can be beneficial for landlords, as it is less complicated and they may be able to generate higher rent income as a result. But if you're a tenant looking for an apartment you can afford, a living in a market with a high cost of living can make things tricky. Here are a few things you should know about market rate housing and how to find an apartment you can afford. Market Rate Housing: What Affects Rental Prices? Landlords can't just charge whatever they want and hope to find a tenant. For example, if two-bedroom apartments rent for an average of $1,800 in a neighborhood, it wouldn't be realistic for a landlord to charge $3,000. But where do market-rate housing prices come from? Here are some things that affect the rental market.

Warrant: Prices are high right now because housing is scarce.

Wiener, Scott. “Market-Rate Housing Isn't a Bad Word, and We Won't Solve the Housing Crisis Without It.” ART + Marketing, ART + Marketing, 16 Apr. 2017, artplusmarketing.com/market-rate-housing-isnt-a-bad-word-and-we-won-t- solve-the-housing-crisis-without-it-ce67c06aff4d.

Which means: In addition to expanding the supply of subsidized income-based affordable units, we must increase the overall supply of housing, and that means — you guessed it — market-rate housing. Some describe all new market- rate housing as “luxury housing,” because it’s expensive. Well, of course it’s expensive, since for decades we haven’t built enough of it. According to California’s Legislative Analyst, the state needs to produce about 180,000 units of housing a year to keep up with growth. In practice, we produce less than half that number. And, let’s be real. While the new apartment or condo project down the street is expensive, so is the 75-year-old house or apartment you’re trying to buy or rent. It’s *all* expensive, and that’s not because it’s “luxury.” It’s because it’s scarce. The conversation I mentioned above — “yes, we need

Champion Briefs 206 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

housing, but it needs to be affordable housing” — needs to be deconstructed. What does “affordable housing” mean? It’s pretty simple: housing built with some sort of public subsidy, which is then price-controlled based on the resident’s income.

Analysis: This response makes sense logically. If it’s expensive to live in a given apartment when the building next door is charging half the rent, there is no incentive for a tenant to move into that apartment. It is called a market-rate house because the prices would be similar compared to neighboring buildings. Furthermore, building more housing units would further push prices down.

Champion Briefs 207 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Market rate housing leaves room for price discrimination

Argument: Market rate housing gives landlords the freedom to fluctuate prices and therefore the ability to discriminate against specific groups of people.

Warrant: Blacks and Hispanics pay more for housing than their white counterparts.

Bayer, Patrick “Price Discrimination in the Housing Market”, Economic Research Initiatives at Duke, May 2012, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/34e8/4a9a637ad0b4bf0fe96fedb28b7ba4749c eb.pdf

“Our results indicate that black and Hispanic buyers pay a statistically significant premium for comparable housing in all four major city markets, ranging from 1 to 4 percent relative to their white counterparts; the average estimated premium pooling across all four markets is more than over 2 percent for both black and Hispanic buyers in this initial analysis. The estimated premiums for black buyers are highest in the Chicago and Maryland areas, where they represent a reasonably large fraction of the population and segregation levels have historically been very high. There is weaker evidence for price discrimination for black buyers in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where the estimated premiums are 1.1-1.2 percent. The estimated premiums for Hispanic buyers are fairly comparable in Chicago, Maryland, and San Francisco (around 2.5-3.0 percent), but only 1.2 percent in Los Angeles. Due to the large sample sizes involved, all of these estimates are statistically significantly different from zero”

Warrant: Price Inequality in the housing market is reaching a historical peak.

Champion Briefs 208 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Clein, Emmeline “The US Housing Market is Deeply Unfair. Here’s How You Can Help”, The Nation, 14 Dec 2018, https://www.thenation.com/article/the-us-housing- market-is-deeply-unfair-heres-how-you-can-help/

“Like income inequality, housing inequality has recently reached a peak not seen since the 1930s. In the near-century between the Great Depression and 2012, the median US home cost tripled when adjusted for inflation. Over half of the total value of US housing stock is comprised of the most expensive 20 percent of owner-occupied homes. Residential segregation is rising with households in the top fifth of US income distribution increasingly less likely to live near people in different economic circumstances.”

Warrant: Market rate housing makes it difficult for commonly marginalized groups to find affordable housing.

“United States housing policy has long worked to benefit the real-estate industry in ensuring homes are treated as profit vehicles instead of accessible necessities. Decades of work by grassroots activists along with journalists and researchers have brought the issue to the fore over the past few years, as rent strikes and tenants’ unions sprouted up across Americas cities. The housing-justice movement’s power is growing, and in recent years it has centered housing as an issue where the various vectors of American oppression collide. Housing activists recognize that formerly incarcerated people, LGBTQ individuals, people of color, and low-income workers all face obstacles rooted in their identities in the search for affordable housing, and are bringing these seemingly disparate groups together to demand housing as a human right. In response,

Champion Briefs 209 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

politicians are finally proposing legislation that increases accessibility to affordable

housing on the federal and local levels.”

Impact: The perception of discrimination creates a social barrier that prevents discriminated groups from accessing affordable housing. Christensen, Sam “Barriers to Safe and Affordable Housing”, University of Missouri- Columbia, Spring 2013, https://www.como.gov/community-development/wp content/uploads/sites/14/2015/09/HousingBarriersReport.pdf

“Racial segregation in housing markets, both real and perceived, creates a social barrier to affordable housing. Perceived neighborhood discrimination was noted by Quigley and Raphael (2008) in their analysis of HUD’s Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program as a reason participants did not move to 4 areas with access to jobs when provided housing payment assistance. Roscigno, Karafin, and Tester (2009) found several cases of non-exclusionary housing discrimination such as intimidation, harassment, and differential treatment. Neighborhood communication and personal experiences regarding discrimination about particular areas is codified over time allowing a social barrier to those areas to emerge.”

Analysis: This argument demonstrates numerous examples of price discrimination against marginalized groups in America and the resulting harms associated with them. This argument is best expressed with a weighing analysis that makes it clear why we should be doing everything in our power to not discriminate against minority groups, why their voices ought to be heard, and why impacts to these groups of people are particularly harmful. The neg may argue that because these groups are already disadvantaged, further harms make their lives especially challenging.

Champion Briefs 210 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Market rate housing leaves room for price discrimination

Response: Price discrimination is illegal and several government actions are in place to prevent this from happening.

Warrant: Federal laws prohibit price discrimination based on several factors.

Stewart, Marcia “What Kind of Housing Discrimination Is Illegal”, NOLO, 30 July 2011, https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/renters-rights- book/chapter5-2.html

“The federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the federal Fair Housing Act Amendments Act of 1988 prohibit discrimination on the basis of the following criteria (called “protected categories”): race or color; religion; national origin; familial status or age— includes families with children under the age of 18 and pregnant women; disability or handicap, or sex. The federal Fair Housing Acts apply to all aspects of the landlord- tenant relationship. A landlord may not advertise or make any statement that indicates a limitation or preference based on race, religion, or any other protected category, falsely deny that a rental unit is available, set more restrictive standards for selecting tenants or refuse to rent to members of certain groups, before or during the tenancy, set different terms, conditions, or privileges for rental of a dwelling unit, such as requiring larger deposits of some tenants or adopting an inconsistent policy of responding to late rent payments, terminate a tenancy for a discriminatory reason.”

Warrant: Discrimination in sales and rentals of housing has been illegal for over 40 years.

Champion Briefs 211 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Jost, Kenneth “Housing Discrimination”, CQ Researcher, 6 November 2015, https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre201511060 0

“Let me be clear: This new Washington mandate has nothing to do with race, as housing discrimination has been illegal for more than 40 years. The 1968 Fair Housing Act already makes discrimination illegal in the “sale, rental and financing of dwellings based on race, religion, sex or national origin.” Apparently, it's not enough to provide everyone with equal opportunity in housing matters. What the Obama administration wants is equal outcomes, and the only possible way to produce this is for the federal government to force itself upon local jurisdictions.”

Analysis: These responses make it explicitly clear that price discrimination has been outlawed by the federal government. This means that the harms expressed by the neg are punishable by law and are therefore already being solved.

Response: The evidence on price discrimination is flawed as numerous other factors might explain the difference in price seen by different groups of people.

Warrant: Literature explaining a link between housing prices and race neglect to take into account varying factors such as the quality of houses being purchased.

Bayer, Patrick “Price Discrimination in the Housing Market”, Economic Research Initiatives at Duke, May 2012, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/34e8/4a9a637ad0b4bf0fe96fedb28b7ba4749c eb.pdf

“This paper has two primary goals: (i) to estimate the extent of decentralized price discrimination in home sales, and (ii) to test whether racial animosity or prejudice on

Champion Briefs 212 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

the part of sellers provides the primary explanation for any measured price differences. Identifying the extent and nature of price discrimination in most market settings is inherently difficult because a variety of other factors might generate correlations between sales prices and the race of the buyer. An obvious reason why households of different races pay different prices for housing is that they purchase houses of varying quality, both in terms of structural and neighborhood amenities. To properly detect price discrimination, therefore, one needs to compare the price that buyers of different races pay for essentially identical properties.5 The previous literature has pursued this strategy by comparing the prices of homes purchased in the same neighborhood at roughly the same time. But these studies implicitly ignore unobserved differences in house quality within neighborhoods and, not surprisingly, typically find that white buyers, who have systematically higher levels of income and wealth, pay a ‘premium’ for housing.”

Analysis: This response points out that the con’s evidence about price discrimination is flawed. The studies which point out these disparities do not account for other differences between the housing purchased by different groups, thus making these statistics flawed.

Champion Briefs 213 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Rent control is a step towards a right to housing

Argument: Rent control facilitates a right to housing.

Warrant: Rent control has started a referendum on tenants’ rights.

Sisson, Patrick. “Rent control and tenants’ rights set to be larger political issues in 2018 elections.” Curbed. 07/11/18. https://www.curbed.com/2018/7/11/17560532/affordable-housing-eviction- rent-control-tenants-rights

Along with a growth in activity from tenants union and rent strikes, more and more local groups are succeeding in putting these issues on the political agenda. This grassroots energy flows in part from the fact that, in addition to traditionally being a local issue, housing was barely a factor in the 2016 election.“We need to make housing an issue because I don’t think candidates on a national level ever talk about it,” says Shanti Singh, communications and development coordinator for Tenants Together. “We’re obviously trying to change that.” Preston points to California, both due to his experience there and the increasingly expensive housing market, as a leading indicator of a national swing towards pushing for rent control, tenants’ rights, and housing legislation. The passage of rent control in Richmond and Mountain View in 2016 represented the first time in 30 years a municipality in California had passed such a law.

Warrant: Rent control has made tenants right a larger political issue.

Sisson, Patrick. “Rent control and tenants’ rights set to be larger political issues in 2018 elections.” Curbed. 07/11/18.

Champion Briefs 214 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

https://www.curbed.com/2018/7/11/17560532/affordable-housing-eviction- rent-control-tenants-rights

For Preston, what’s changed in California and elsewhere is that tenants and activists have simply had enough. He points to rising rents in city centers, a growing renter population, increasing consolidation of real estate ownership, and rises in displacement and evictions as catalysts for increased action. The lack of help from a federal level only reinforces the need for local advocacy, he says. “There are different takes on what caused and what can solve the crisis, but people are talking about it,” he says. In addition to rent control, tenants rights have become another rallying point for local activists and advocates. It’s a pressing issue; according to research by scholar and author Matthew Desmond, roughly 900,000 households faced eviction in 2016. San Francisco’s recent passage of a right to counsel for evicted tenants has opened up the issue to consideration across California. A national movement to secure a right to counsel— evidence shows that providing a tenant with legal representation reduces the chances of eviction—has sprung up, with right to counsel legislation passing in New York City and in the works in Newark, New Jersey. Philadelphia’s Eviction Protection Project offers an array of services to tenants, while the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel has also pushed the issue. But tenants’ rights has been a tougher sell, according to Preston, because by making it harder to evict, it takes away some of the power of landlords. The “elephant in the room” is the powerful landlord and real estate lobby. “There’s a willingness to talk more about the housing, but only by talking about solutions that don’t challenge real estate and profits,” he says. Impact: Rent control has created momentum for housing rights.

Howard, Tanner. “Rent Control’s Momentum.” Jacobin Magazine. 12/07/12. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/12/rent-control-decommodify-housing- chicago-california

Champion Briefs 215 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Rent control is only the beginning on the longer journey towards a right to housing for all. But elsewhere on Election Day, support for affordable housing spending is clear evidence that people want greater government intervention in the housing market. While increased affordable housing spending and rent control can only curtail the worst excesses of the marketplace and offer no guarantee of housing as a basic human right, the growing housing squeeze gives socialists an opportunity to advance a vision of housing beyond current political horizons. Perhaps the most promising affordable housing measure passed during the recent elections came in Austin, where voters overwhelmingly supported Proposal A, creating a $250 million housing bond funded by new property taxes. The measure was endorsed by the Austin DSA, and also saw a broad coalition organize to ensure its passage. Although Austin voters rejected a $78 million housing bond in 2012, organizers fought for as much money as possible this year, pushing the city to triple its initial $85 million proposal.

Analysis: The right to housing is fundamental and recognized by the UN. Rent control is a step in the right direction because housing is a basic right that protects against other rights violations.

Champion Briefs 216 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent control is a step towards a right to housing

Answer: Rent control undermines the supply of housing which is a step away from actual housing rights.

Warrant: Affordable housing declines, which decreases access.

Wright, Caylyn. “Rent control is the surest way to stop new affordable housing.” The Sacramento Bee. 09/03/18. https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op- ed/soapbox/article217648110.html

But we also need to look at the facts and data compiled over many years — that imposing rent control only makes housing problems worse. In June 2000, the liberal economist, Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about the “adverse side effects” of rent control, citing a poll in which 93 percent of economists surveyed said that rent control “reduces the quality and quantity of housing.” Little has changed since then, with independent analyses corroborating this conclusion, including an oft-cited Stanford University study last year on rent control in San Francisco.

Warrant: Newcomers have a harder time finding housing they can access.

Wiltz, Teresa. “Rent Control Is Making a Comeback. But is that a Good Idea?” Pew Trusts. 11/28/18. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and- analysis/blogs/stateline/2018/11/28/rent-control-is-making-a-comeback-but-is- that-a-good-idea

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A January study by the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that rent control creates both winners and losers — even among renters. Longtime renters who have been living in rent-controlled units benefit greatly from rent control, while newcomers end up paying higher rents because the supply of available units is constricted. Meanwhile, landlords facing rent control regulations are more likely to convert units into condos or redevelop buildings to circumvent regulations, further reducing rental stock and driving up rents, the study found. “There’s definitely a housing crisis. Everyone agrees on that,” said Alexandra Alvarado, director of marketing and education at the American Apartment Owners Association, a national advocacy group. “But we don’t agree on how to remedy that. We think that rent control is just not the way to go about it. Landlords are worried about shorting the housing supply.”

Champion Briefs 218 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Rent control is a step toward racial justice.

Argument: Rent control is an issue of racial justice.

Warrant: Rent control preserves diversity.

Placzek, Jessica. “Is Rent Control Working and Should We Have More or Less of It?” KQED News. 06/28/18. https://www.kqed.org/news/11677380/is-rent-control- working-and-should-we-have-more-or-less-of-it

The simulation found that getting rid of rent control would mean more than 16,000 households would find themselves in unaffordable housing overnight. Tenant advocates say that rent control is important for preserving diversity in cities by protecting vulnerable populations. Tony Samara of the advocacy group Urban Habitat says this is a civil rights issue and that rent control is a frontline defense against resegregation in the Bay Area. "When you look at where the impact [of displacement] is most heavy, it's disproportionately on black and brown communities," says Samara. “Renters are generally lower-income than homeowners, so rent control targets the appropriate demographic,” says Leslie Gordon of Urban Habitat. “That said, all renters regardless of income are deserving of stable rents.”

Warrant: White property owners are the ones who benefit from market rate housing.

Fulton, Muffie. “Vote yes on Prop. 10 – allowing local rent control is a matter of racial justice.” San Francisco Chronicle. 10/11/18. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Vote-yes-on-Prop-10- allowing-local-rent-13300831.php

Champion Briefs 219 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Opponents of Proposition 10, the local rent control initiative on the November ballot, might say rent control is an esoteric free market issue. But California’s housing crisis is not esoteric. It’s a racial justice issue, plain and simple. Voters should pass Prop. 10, which repeals the state’s Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, and start to address inequality in housing based solely on race. Prop. 10 would expand local government’s authority to enact rent control on housing. White Americans have been property owners for hundreds of years, and people of color historically have been compelled to be renters. Redlining, which discouraged banks from approving home loans in “undesirable” parts of cities where more people of color lived, began in the 1930s when federal housing programs established an appraisal system that tied home loan availability to race. Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion in home loans — 98 percent of which went to white families. Private lenders used these government guidelines to deny home loans or charge higher interest rates or fees. Warrant: White property owners are able to create generational wealth by profiting off communities of color.

This is not that long ago. My white grandparents got home loans. By buying property, they had access to the cornerstone of building familial wealth in this country while Californians of color did not. By allowing landlords to continually increase rents without limitations in California, we are continuing to build the wealth of white people at the expense of people of color. Today, most African Americans and Latinos in California are renters. Nearly 63 percent of white adults are homeowners in California, while 34 percent of African Americans and 42.3 percent of Latinos are homeowners. We need to pass Proposition 10 to allow local communities the ability to pass rent control, thereby

Champion Briefs 220 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

adding to the efforts to level the playing field for everyone. It won’t erase the grave racial disparities in our housing, but it’s a start. I don’t want my sons to live in a world that favors them simply because they are white, while making economic survival in California harder and harder for everyone else. Supporting Proposition 10 is a big part of that.

Champion Briefs 221 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent control is a step towards racial justice

Answer: Rent control ends up benefiting wealthy white renters.

Warrant: In the Bay Area, rent control has only magnified income inequality.

James, Scott. “How the Rich Get Richer, Rental Edition.” NYTimes. 02/17/12. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/us/san-francisco-rent-control-and-unintended- consequences.html

Thousands of people are expected to become rich in the latest Bay Area tech boom, and in San Francisco these newly minted millionaires will receive a benefit originally meant to help the poor and working class: rent control. Not that they have a choice. The law applies to rental apartments built before June 1979, regardless of the tenant’s income. Rent increases are limited to less than inflation — last year the increase was 0.1 percent, an all-time low. But with an estimated 30 percent of the city’s rental properties owned by mom-and-pop investors with four units or less, an unintended consequence of rent control is becoming more prevalent: people of relatively modest means subsidizing the housing of the extraordinarily wealthy.

Warrant: Rent control forms a barrier to racial integration.

Blackwell, Lisa. “The High Cost of Rent Control.” National Multifamily Housing Council. https://www.nmhc.org/news/articles/the-high-cost-of-rent-control/

By eliminating rents as the basis of choosing among a pool of potential consumers, rent control opens the door to discrimination based on other factors. As noted earlier, rent control forces housing providers to look to income and credit history in choosing among competing consumers, factors which sharply bias the selection process against poor and young consumers. In some cases, consumer selection decisions also may be based on a

Champion Briefs 222 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

potential consumer's race, sex, family size or other improper or unlawful factors. This may occur notwithstanding the rigorous enforcement of Fair Housing laws.

The reduction in housing caused by rent control also can slow the process of racial and economic integration of many communities, by limiting the opportunities of certain classes of consumers to reside in rent-controlled communities. In fact, in many middle- class communities rent control has raised a relatively impenetrable barrier to economic and racial integration.

Analysis: While it’s true that people of color have historically been excluded from desirable neighborhoods through price discrimination, redlining, and other racist policies, rent control is not the solution. In reality, rent control ends up giving the existing white middle class renters cheaper rent while making it tougher for low-income workers to enter the market.

Champion Briefs 223 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Rent control solves homelessness

Argument: Rent control solves homelessness.

Warrant: Homelessness increases in the most expensive markets.

“Homelessness Rate Increases Faster in Least Affordable Rental Markets” Zillow. 12/11/18. http://zillow.mediaroom.com/2018-12-11-Homelessness-Rate- Increases-Faster-in-Least-Affordable-Rental-Markets

Rising rents across the country are burdening financially limited renters, and contributing to higher rates of homelessness in many of the nation's least affordable markets. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates that 553,752 people nationwide experienced homelessness in 2017i, based on a point-in- time count in January. Since 2010, the counted homeless population has fallen by about 13 percent. However, prior researchii shows these counts are imprecise, and likely do not include the entire homeless population in the country. The actual number of people who were homeless is estimated to be closer to 661,000iii, 21 percent higher than the officially reported population. New research from Zillow®, in collaboration with researchers at the University of New Hampshire, Boston University School of Social Work and University of Pennsylvania, shows that the homelessness rate accelerates much more quickly when the rent burdeniv climbs above 32 percent. The research also identified distinct groups of communities respond similarly to changing rents and poverty levels, among other latent factors – all of this information can help policymakers and social-service organizations in otherwise disparate areas hone in on the most effective mitigation efforts by learning from the experiences of other areas in their peer group. This new research expands on Zillow research last year that examined the relationship between rising rents and homelessness.

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Siegler, Kirk. “Is Rent Control an Answer to California’s Housing Crisis?” NPR. 09/27/18. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/27/650533981/is-rent-control-an-answer-to- californias-housing-crisis

"It's an embarrassment more than anything else," he says. "At this point in my life, I should be sitting in a rocking chair waiting for the pearly gates to open up for me." New census figures show that California has the highest poverty rate in the nation because of its affordable housing crisis. And the state is now home to nearly a quarter of the country's entire homeless population, despite making up only 12 percent of the U.S. population as a whole. One proposed fix is Proposition 10, billed as a local rent control initiative, which will go before voters this November. It would repeal a 1990s-era law called the Costa Hawkins Act, which generally prohibits rent control on most places built after the 1970s, bars local cities from expanding rent control, and allows for units to move to free-market rates after rent-controlled tenants leave. Peter Dreier, a former city housing official in Boston and current public policy professor at Occidental College, says Prop 10 is a key first step to addressing California's broader affordable housing crisis.

Warranting: Homelessness is primarily caused by housing shortages.

Adler, Ben. “Homelessness is a housing problem.” City and State NY. 08/05/18. https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/opinion/commentary/homelessness- housing-problem.html

“Everybody has a misconception,” said Rhonda Jackson, a 57-year-old Queens native who lived in shelters for a year. Jackson used to work for the MTA in a token booth at Manhattan’s Fulton Street station. Traumatized by the nearby attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she quit her job and left the city. When she returned to New York last year to be near

Champion Briefs 225 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

her family, she could not afford a market-rate apartment. “I am the new homeless,” said Jackson, who now lives in an affordable unit in a new building in Williamsburg but has been able to find only sporadic retail employment. “I am not that person on the subway who doesn’t want to go in shelter. I’m not that person sleeping on the bench. I’m a working person who had some mishaps and just doesn’t have a place to live.” Unlike some other spikes in homelessness, this is primarily an economic, rather than social, predicament.“The driver of homelessness in New York City today – as opposed to earlier times … when deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill was happening – is (a) lack of affordable housing and rising housing costs,” said Oksana Mironova, housing policy analyst for the Community Service Society of New York.

Champion Briefs 226 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent control solves homelessness

Answer: The homeless are harmed by rent control.

Warrant: Rent control creates negative incentives which harm the homeless.

Jr, Richard. “America’s Homeless: Victims of Rent Control.” The Heritage Foundation. 01/12/89. https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/americas-homeless- victims-rent-control

Most of these negative incentives remain in place today. But by far the big gest impediment to low-income housing has been rent control. Over 200 com munities, including nearly all the major cities on the East and West Coasts block rent increases. These cities now all suffer serious homeless problems. An analysis of the rates of homelessness in 50 major cities across the country shows that rent control is the only factor that is associated with high rates of homelessness. The commonly suggested explanations high unemployment, high poverty rates, lack of public housing show no correlation. Rent control blocks the workings of the housing market and discourages developers from responding to increases in demand for low-income housing.

Warrant: Rent control goes hand in hand with anti-growth policy.

Jr, Richard. “America’s Homeless: Victims of Rent Control.” The Heritage Foundation. 01/12/89. https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/americas-homeless- victims-rent-control

Moreover, rent control often goes hand-in-hand with other anti-g rowth restrictions, such as zoning and building moratoria. All these market interven tions tend to benefit

Champion Briefs 227 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

existing homeowners and current residents, but create significant disadvantages for newcomers and the poor Scarce and Expensive Housing. A permanent solution to the homeless problem will require the federal government to encourage cities to clear a path through the tangle of local regulations that restrict the supply of low in come housing. It will mean finding ways to discourage local municipalities f rom using zoning and growth controls as a cost-free way of improving local property values at the expense of outsiders seeking housing Most of all, it will mean overturning municipal rent control. Although generally tolerated as a legitimate police power, rent control is in truth nothing but an attempt by sitting tenants to shift their housing costs to out siders and future tenants. Although it produces some short-term benefits for some individuals, the long-term effect is to make housing more scarce and e x pensive for everybody. If homelessness is going to go, rent control is going to have to go first MYTHS ABOUT THE CAUSES OF HOMELESSNESS None of the conventional housing explanations offer much help in explain ing why homelessness has become such a proble m . True, most American cities have long had their Skid Rows, generally populated by single, white over-30 males often addicted to alcohol. These vagrants slept in doorways and at missions, or were serviced by the local flophouse converted hotels offering p artitioned- off cubicles for a few dollars a night.

Analysis: Solving homelessness is not a matter of slightly decreasing rents. If homelessness truly is an issue of housing, the most important factor is the supply of housing which will not change without a profit incentive.

Champion Briefs 228 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Rent control is a health issue

Argument: Communities can stay in place under rent control, increasing the health of renters

Warrant: Tenants needn’t fear unexpected rent spikes

Barton, Stephen. “Rent control provides tenants with the stability our communities need right now.” Movement for Housing Justice.” 07/23/18. https://movementforhousingjustice.org/2018/07/23/rent-control-provides- stability/

We know that stable communities are safer and healthier communities. Rent control is the only way to provide tenants with the stability our communities need right now — not thirty years from now, after construction of massive amounts of new housing that may or may not ever be built. Opponents of rent control admit that it helps tenants to stay in the community longer, but argue that “reduced mobility” is a bad thing, when really, it’s the whole point. Families need stability to do well at work and in school and maintain connections with relatives and friends. Some economists find it more “efficient” to kick retired people and working families out of their rented homes so that higher-paid newcomers can move in. That’s not the kind of community most of us want to live in.

Warrant: Housing instability harms health

Boston Medical Center. “Housing instability negatively affects the health of children and caregivers.” Science Daily. 01/22/18. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180122110815.htm

Champion Briefs 229 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

When families don't have stable housing, their risk of struggling with poor health outcomes and material hardships, such as food insecurity, increases, according to a new study from Children's HealthWatch. Researchers surveyed over 22,000 families and found that one third of low-income renters were housing unstable, which was associated with negative impacts on their health. To determine housing instability, researchers asked families if they had been behind on rent or moved more than twice in the past year, and if their child had experienced homelessness. All three circumstances were associated with increased odds of adverse health outcomes, such as poor caregiver health, poor child health, maternal depressive symptoms, and food and energy insecurity, when compared to families with stable housing.

Impact: Low-income renters are less healthy without rent control.

Gill, Frances. “The Severe Health Consequences of Housing Instability.” People’s Policy Project. 07/09/18. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/07/09/the- severe-health-consequences-of-housing-instability/

The relationship between housing and health is intuitive and multifaceted. Causal pathways linking housing and individual health include everything from environmental health concerns (lead poisoning in old homes, for an example) to neighborhood characteristics (walkability, safety, access to affordable supermarkets) to the psychosocial stress of financial instability. The latter is of particular interest to public health researchers because the health effects of financially-related housing instability are so far reaching. Rent burdened households — i.e. households that spend more than 30 percent of their monthly income on rent — suffer profound health consequences as a direct result of their housing status. As more and more American households become rent-burdened, the downstream health consequences experienced by these households need to be articulated and addressed, preferably by upstream solutions.

Champion Briefs 230 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Champion Briefs 231 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent control is a health issue

Argument: Rent control increases dangerous crimes.

Warrant: Crime increases with rent control.

Fettke, Kathy. “Rent Control Breeds Crime – MIT Research Study.” Think Realty. 10/25/17. https://thinkrealty.com/rent-control-breeds-crime-mit-research- study/

MIT researchers are adding to the debate on rent control with a new paper on the relationship between rent control and crime. While many people feel rent control keeps people off the streets and away from a life of crime, this study found that by eliminating rent control, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, experienced substantially reduced crime rates along with billions of dollars in benefits to the city. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is located in Cambridge, but that’s not why researchers used Cambridge as their study subject. They analyzed Cambridge because the city went through a unique transition from strict rent control rules to a sudden abolishment of the rules in 1995. That gave them information on crime rates and other data before and after the rules were eliminated. The rules only applied to older non-owner occupied rental homes, condos, and apartments built before 1969. Those units tended to be clustered together in certain areas. Overall, about one third of the units in the city were subject to rent control rules.

Warrant: Violent crimes in particular increase with rent control.

Champion Briefs 232 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

Fettke, Kathy. “Rent Control Breeds Crime – MIT Research Study.” Think Realty. 10/25/17. https://thinkrealty.com/rent-control-breeds-crime-mit-research- study/

They say from the time rent control was abolished in 1995 to the year 2005, there was a 16 percent decrease in the total number of crimes. That represents a reduction of about 1,200 crimes a year across four categories including property crimes, public disturbances, drug and alcohol crimes, as well as violent crimes. Of that total, about 77 were violent crimes. The most common crimes were property crimes, like burglary, shoplifting, arson, and public disturbances, like assault, vandalism, trespassing, prostitution, and illegal possession of a firearm. By lifting those rules, researchers say rent control depressed home values, and gentrification helped bring home values back up. But, they say, gentrification can work both ways in regard to crime.

Champion Briefs 233 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Rent control is constitutional

Argument: The supreme court has ruled that cities can use rent control as a policy to solve housing crises.

Warrant: The supreme court has ruled that rent control is legitimate.

“Rent Control Constitutional, Supreme Court Rules.” Chicago Tribune. 02/27/86. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-02-27-8601150333- story.html

The Supreme Court Wednesday upheld the constitutionality of rent control, rejecting arguments from landlords in Berkeley, Calif., that a 1980 city ordinance freezing some rental charges violated antitrust laws. The high court, in an 8-1 opinion, said rent-control laws are legal as long as they are not the result of a conspiracy aimed at restraining free trade. Writing for the court, Justice Thurgood Marshall said, ''There may be cases in which what appears to be a state- or municipality-administered price stabilization scheme is really a private price-fixing conspiracy.'' ''However, we have been given no indication that such corruption has tainted the rent controls imposed by Berkeley`s ordinance,'' Marshall said. ''Adopted by popular initiative, the ordinance can hardly be viewed as a cloak for any conspiracy among landlords or between the landlords and the municipality.'' The ordinance at issue was adopted by Berkeley voters in 1980 and froze rents for about 23,000 privately owned rental units in the campus city.

Warrant: The Supreme Court won’t even hear a challenge to rent control.

Liptak, Adam. “U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Suit Challenging the Rent Stabilization Law.” NYTimes. 04/23/12.

Champion Briefs 234 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/us/supreme-court-declines-to-hear- rent-control-challenge.html

Tenants in nearly a million apartments subject to New York City’s rent regulations could breathe a sigh of relief on Monday. The United States Supreme Court, after indicating it might be interested in hearing a challenge to the regulations, decided to let them stand. As is customary when the court declines to hear a case, the justices gave no reasons. There were no published dissents. Perhaps one in a hundred petitions seeking review by the court is granted, meaning that the decision not to hear the case sent no larger message. The challenge to the rent law was brought by James D. Harmon Jr. and Jeanne Harmon, the owners of a five-story brownstone on West 76th Street near Central Park. They live on the lower floors and rent out the six apartments above them. Three of those apartments are subject to New York’s rent-stabilization regulations, under which the government sets maximum permissible rent increases and generally allows tenants to renew their leases indefinitely. According to the Harmons’ lawsuit, filed in 2008, the tenants in the rent-stabilized units pay around $1,000 a month, or about 60 percent below the market rate.

Warrant: The supreme court has repeatedly heard cases on rent control and ruled similarly.

Cohen, Adam. “What if the Supreme Court Kills Rent Control.” Time. 03/19/12. http://ideas.time.com/2012/03/19/what-if-the-supreme-court-kills-rent-control/

The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld rent control, going back to 1921. In 1988, in Pannell v. San Jose, it ruled6-2 that San Jose’s law did not violate the Constitution — in an opinion written by the very conservative then Chief Justice William Rehnquist. In 1992, in Yee v. City of Escondido, the court unanimously rejected a claim that a rent- control ordinance was an unconstitutional taking of property — just the issue Harmon is raising. These rulings should settle the question. But rent-control opponents clearly think they have a chance, given how pro-corporation the court is today. Harmon’s challenge is attracting strong support from real estate interests and conservative groups like the Cato Institute. They argue that rent control unconstitutionally deprives

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landlords of the right to charge as much rent as they want. They like to point to extreme cases of people benefiting who do not need it — like the actress Faye Dunaway, who until recently had a $1,048.72-a-month one-bedroom on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Analysis: The supreme court has repeatedly stated that rent controls are not an unjust taking of citizens’ property. While libertarians may claim that property rights are being violated, the highest court of the land disagrees.

Champion Briefs 236 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent control is constitutional

Answer: Rent controls are an unjust taking of property.

Warrant: Landowners can’t decide what to do with their homes.

Will, George. “Rent control laws: Foolish and unconstitutional.” Washington Post. 02/15/12. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rent-control-laws-foolish- and- unconstitutional/2012/02/14/gIQAcZvbGR_story.html?utm_term=.34c35632617 6

James and Jeanne Harmon reside in and supposedly own a five-story brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a building that has been in their family since 1949. But they have, so to speak, houseguests who have overstayed their welcome by, in cumulative years, more than a century. They are the tenants — the same tenants — who have been living in the three of the Harmons’ six apartments that are rent controlled. The Harmons want the Supreme Court to rule that their home has been effectively, and unconstitutionally, taken from them by notably foolish laws that advance no legitimate state interest. The court should. This “taking” has been accomplished by rent-control laws that cover almost 1 million — approximately half — of the city’s rental apartments. Such laws have existed, with several intervals of sanity, since the “emergency” declared because returning soldiers faced housing shortages caused by a building slowdown during World War I. Most tenants in rent- controlled units can renew their leases forever. Tenants can bequeath their rent- controlled apartments — they have, essentially, a property right to their landlord’s property — to their children, or to a friend who lives with them for two years . This is not satire; it is the virtue of caring, as understood by liberal government.

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Warrant: Rent control is an uncompensated physical occupation of property.

Analysis: The constitutional concern has not yet been resolved. There are still significant concerns that landowners’ rights are being violated by rent control policies.

Champion Briefs 238 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Rent control hurts artists

Argument: Artists are kicked out because they can’t afford market rate housing.

Warrant: Artists are being evicted.

Edwards, Jim. “San Francisco artist is evicted from his rent-controlled apartment after 34 years.” SFGate. 02/05/16. https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/San-Francisco-artist-kicked-out-of-apartment-6807971.php

If you're interested in whether rent control makes rent prices go down — and plenty of people think it actually makes them go up — then stop what you're doing and watch this video on San Francisco's real-estate war, by my colleague Andrew Stern. The video features a heartbreaking interview with artist David Brenkus, who has lived in a rent- controlled apartment on Walter Street for 34 years. His building has been bought, and now he is being evicted so the new landlord can move in. Brenkus' rent is $735 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, which includes a woodshop in the basement.

Warrant: Rent control is a necessary policy to keep artists and their work in the city.

Dubnau, Jenny. “Why New York Needs Commercial Rent Control.” Metropolitan Council on Housing. 09/15. http://metcouncilonhousing.org/news_and_issues/tenant_newspaper/2015/september/why_new_york_n eeds_commercial_rent_control

CBGBs, the venerable East Village rock’n’roll club, closed in 2006 when its rent went from $19,000 to $35,000 a month. In 2013, over 50 artists were forced to vacate their studio spaces in Industry City (the huge industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn) when their rents were jacked up, some by as much as 40 percent. This year, an entire block of Latino-owned businesses in Washington Heights, including Punta Cana, a restaurant serving the neighborhood for over 40 years, was evicted by their landlord, Coltown Properties. And Pearl River Mart, the Chinatown emporium of everything Asian, went out of business when its rent shot up from $100,000 to an unbelievable $500,000 per month. New Yorkers in every neighborhood, from the West Village to Bushwick to Jackson Heights, are seeing their local mom-and-pop stores go under at a terrifying pace, replaced by banks and Duane Reade chain drugstores. In

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many cases, they’re simply shuttered and the storefronts left vacant, as landlords sit tight and wait for higher-paying tenants to arrive (collecting tax breaks in the meantime). Much attention has been paid, as it should be, to the affordable-housing crisis and the erosion of the rent-regulation laws. But as neighborhoods across the city gentrify, with rents rising and communities of color being displaced by wealthier, whiter residents, we should also turn our attention to the commercial rent crisis. Hundreds of small businesses that provide services, jobs, and community to their neighborhoods are being forced out.

Warrant: Artists are being kicked out of the Los Angeles Arts District because they can’t afford to live there.

Miranda, Carolina. “Rent hikes and evictions – is it the last stand for artists in the Arts District?” LATimes. 10/27/17. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-last-stand- artists-arts-district-20171027-story.html

“It felt really surreal,” Parker says with a sardonic laugh. “I have all of these urban theorists from abroad asking how Los Angeles works — and this happens.” Parker isn’t the only artist who faces a tenuous future in the Arts District. Named for the artists who made the neighborhood a creative hub in the 1970s and ’80s, the Arts District could soon find itself with few actual artists living within its borders — no small irony given its name and the fact that Mayor Eric Garcetti likes to regularly tout Los Angeles as an “arts capital” in statements and speeches. At 800 Traction Ave., a warehouse building that began life as a coffee and spice factory in 1918, residents have received a 60-day quit notice. Just beyond the southern fringes of the Arts District, the Santa Fe Art Colony is expected to start charging market rates after operating for 30 years under a contract with the now-defunct Community Redevelopment Agency as a low- and moderate- income housing site; that contract is now expiring.

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A/2: Rent control hurts artists

Argument: Artists need lower rents which is only achievable through increased supply.

Warrant: Rent control shrinks the rental supply, increasing price.

Misra, Tanvi. “Rent Control: A Reckoning.” Citylab. 01/29/18. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/rent-control-a-reckoning/551168/

Rent control policies impose limits on rent increases for the duration of a tenant’s stay. But since landlords have many loopholes for escaping those requirements, the Stanford researchers found that that they ended up pulling properties from the rental market— shrinking the rental housing supply overall. The researchers examined the impact of a 1994 ballot initiative in San Francisco, extending rent control protections to certain smaller buildings built before 1980. Its passage created a natural opportunity to compare these buildings with similar ones built in the period after that were not rent controlled. Diamond and her colleagues followed the landlords and the tenants in these buildings over time. What they found was that the tenants who benefited from the law were between 10 and 20 percent more likely to remain at the same address, compared to their counterparts in the non-rent controlled buildings. This was particularly true for the less mobile tenants—elderly folks and those families who’d lived at that address for a long time.

Warrant: Due to decreased supply, the poor feel the effects disproportionately, including artists.

Blackwell, Lisa. “The High Cost of Rent Control.” National Multifamily Housing Council. https://www.nmhc.org/news/articles/the-high-cost-of-rent-control/

Champion Briefs 241 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

The costs of rent control fall disproportionately on the poor. As described earlier, these costs include (a) an often substantial drop in the quality of existing rental housing, and (b) substantially reduced access to new housing.

Poor families suffer a marked decline in existing housing as the quality of existing housing falls in response to reduced maintenance expenditures. The middle class can move out; for many reasons, poorer families lack this option.

Poor families also are at substantial disadvantages when it comes to finding new housing. In a tight market, there may be more people looking for housing than available rental units, thereby giving housing providers substantial discretion in choosing among competing potential consumers. In an unregulated market, this consumer selection process will be governed by the level of rents. However, by restricting rent levels rent control causes housing providers to turn to other factors, such as income and credit history, to choose among competing consumers. These factors tend to bias the selection process against low income families, particularly female- headed, single-parent households.

Analysis: Artists are just like other renters, they go wherever they can afford to live happily. If rent control is a significant impediment to affordable rent in downtown areas, then artists should campaign against it.

Champion Briefs 242 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

CON: Rent control decreases poverty

Argument: The impoverished are the most affected by rent controls.

Warrant: At risk citizens are the ones who benefit, especially long-term renters.

“We find for the tenants that were living in San Francisco at the time of the law change, [that became covered by rent control,] they benefit dramatically,” says Diamond. People who ended up in rent-controlled apartments at the time of the law change saved $7 billion over 18 years. People over 40 saved the most, and saw three times the benefit of younger people -- probably because young people can’t stay put in the same way. They need to leave those rent-controlled apartments because of new jobs, marriages and growing families.

Warrant: The poorest residents end up getting evicted with market rate housing.

Dougherty, Conor. “Why Rent Control is a Lightening Rod.” NYTimes. 10/12/18. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/business/economy/rent-control- explained.html

Tenants’ rights organizations argue that California’s affordability crisis demands more rent-controlled units, as well as tools like vacancy control. They say the disparity between rent-controlled units and market rate prices encourages landlords to evict poorer residents in favor of people who can pay more. Vacancy control could prevent

Champion Briefs 243 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

this by regulating the rent regardless of who lives there: Why would landlords push tenants out if they couldn’t raise the rent for the next person? On the other hand, most studies show that even though rent control is great for tenants who get it, the policies can lead to higher rents and fewer units over all.

Warrant: The supply issue that market rate housing advocates claim dooms rent control is a façade. Most development ends up being luxury housing that the poor cant afford.

Chew, Amee. “Here’s What We Actually Know About Market Rate Housing Development and Displacement. Shelterforce. 11/05/18. https://shelterforce.org/2018/11/05/heres-what-we-actually-know-about- market-rate-housing-development-and-displacement/

Analysis: Rent control is the most important protection for poor citizens at risk of eviction. The supply issue that detractors point to is not solved by market rate housing, which only further stratifies the income gap.

Champion Briefs 244 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

A/2: Rent control decreases poverty

Answer: Rent control discourages meaningful change in the housing stock.

Warrant: Rental prices go up

Salins, Peter. “Does Rent Control Help the Poor?” City-Journal. 1991. https://www.city- journal.org/html/does-rent-control-help-poor-12772.html

But the horror stories, bizarre as they may seem, are not aberrations. The most distressing and consistent reality of rent regulation is what we might call the “all the wrong people” syndrome. With almost faultless precision the rent-regulation system bypasses, or hurts, those it was meant to help, and heaps most of its benefits on relatively privileged New Yorkers. The system does not help the poor; it particularly penalizes new New Yorkers, who have always been vital to the city’s economy; and it encourages landlords and tenants alike to behave in ways almost perfectly calculated to tighten the housing market still further and raise rental prices higher. There is no trade- off between horror stories and help for the poor; the help never comes and the horrors remain. The abiding sin of rent control is that it misallocates resources. It is a truism, for instance, that housing in New York is expensive. But the truism is not true. Housing in New York is cheap, or at least New York has lots of cheap housing, and average prices are reasonable. The problem is that the wrong people live in that cheap housing, while many others are stuck in housing they cannot really afford.

Warrant: Tenants who rent for the long term benefit, but poor renters usually move a lot, meaning they don’t reap the rewards.

Champion Briefs 245 Con Arguments with Pro Responses March 2019

“How Rent Control Hurts the Poor.” NYTimes. 05/30/89. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/30/opinion/how-rent-control-hurts-the- poor.html

Rent regulation started in New York in 1943 to protect tenants in a wartime economy oblivious to housing needs. Then it turned into a scheme to subsidize existing individual tenants, whether or not they needed it, at the expense of individual landlords, whether or not they could afford it. A law intended to preserve tenant freedom to move in wartime now offers perverse incentives to stay put. Many upper- and middle-income families pay rents much lower than they would without regulation. In a freer market, many of them would have moved as children grew up, opening their former homes to others with lower incomes. Some families in the highest income groups became even richer by buying apartments they rented, reselling them later at 10 and 15 times what they paid. Behold the losers. They include owners of small apartment houses who expected to retire on the rental income. Often, their costs exceeded regulated rent; many have lost their properties in mortgage or tax foreclosures. The losers also include their former tenants, who often clung desperately to their fading apartments after rent collection stopped. Homeowners also are losers to rent regulation. It diminishes the taxable value of apartment houses, requiring higher taxes on owner-occupied homes.

Analysis: The impoverished are marginally able to afford most rent controlled apartments anyway. Problematically, when they actually can get a rent controlled apartment, they’re more likely to be forced to move, which mitigates most if not all of the benefits for the tenant.

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