Killing it isn't the answer

The interview below is one year old.  As Mr. Chandler explains, every year there is an attempt to overturn the ban on inclusionary zoning in Oregon, and this year is no different.  His comments in 2014 are still pertinent today.  You can hear him speak at a public hearing on HB2564 on February 23, 2015 and read his testimony online for a better understanding of the injustice to builders and developers if mandatory inclusionary zoning laws are allowed.   Read also testimony of proponents of the bill to see their arrogance and disregard for the rights of others as they plead their cases.  

For those who like to preach about injustices of all kinds, making one class of businesses bear the burden for a community social responsibility seems to be OK.  How can this even be constitutional?  

 Opal - an activist group mentioned below - in a NGO in Portland, calling itself a group for Environmental Justice.  It is funded by 6 foundations, 1 religious group, and 3 government agencies: City of Portland, Metro and the EPA.  I call your attention to this group as representative of the kind of activist voices that populate public hearings and purport to speak for the masses.  What is the agenda of their funding organizations, their board of directors and staff, and what do any of these groups do to further the cause of liberty and freedom in America?  Who speaks for you?

Lobbyist behind Oregon's inclusionary zoning ban argues that killing it isn't the answer to gentrification  

The Oregonian/Oregonlive, Mach 24, 2014 By Anna Griffin

Advocates for poor Oregonians and economically diverse neighborhoods say lifting Oregon’s ban on mandatory inclusionary zoning is a critical step in preventing gentrification and financial segregation.

Oregon is one of just two states -- Texas is the other -- that bar county and cities from essentially requiring developers to include a certain percentage of affordable housing in new construction.

Jon Chandler, CEO and lobbyist for the Oregon Home Builders Association, was the driving force behind that ban when legislators approved it in the late 1990s and he remains the leading force for keeping it in place.

"My fear was that if you give citizens activists a tool they’re going to use it even if there are other tools that they should try first. We didn’t feel like being the tool."

"There was a bill last session that didn’t get out of committee on inclusionary zoning, and the testimony on it in a hearing got into food deserts and rent control and transit headway and poor people in East County not being able to afford to get to jobs downtown. They talked about the lack of park land, density dumping, the fact that there are too many apartments on 82nd Avenue…. Those are all extraordinarily important issues, but they don’t have anything to do with this bill."

"This time what struck me wasn’t that I was worried about the bill passing, it was the fact that you had a bunch of young Turks, the OPAL people, environmental justice advocates, leading it. They were talking about issues that were important. But this is not the right solution."

"What we hear all the time is ‘we need more tools in the toolbox.’ It’s the tool we don’t have in the toolbox. But I just don’t think that particular tool would do what people dream it might do. In a lot of places what they’ve found is that inclusionary zoning and rent control in some places have had the opposite effect. They actually lower production of housing, not just affordable housing, because people say ‘to hell with it. I’m not building there.'"