California Housing, Politics, and Polycrisis: Key Concepts and Models

47 flashcards

What is the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)?: Zones where residential communities meet undeveloped natural land; a primary geographic intersection of housing scarcity, climate megafires, and insurance crisis.
What is a California example of the Polycrisis feedback loop involving climate, housing, and finance?: Megafires in the Wildland-Urban Interface destroy homes, shrinking supply, driving up rents, and forcing home insurers to exit California, threatening state fiscal stability via the FAIR Plan.
How are 'Boundary Problems' defined in Stone's Polis Model?: Political struggles over who belongs to the political community, determining access to rights, state benefits, and civic representation (e.g., undocumented residents, unhoused populations).
How can ballot initiatives affect legislative flexibility under California's hybrid democracy?: They can lock in spending requirements, reducing lawmakers' flexibility over the state budget.
How can Proposition 13 be connected to intergenerational inequality?: Its benefits can favor existing property owners over prospective buyers.
How did Proposition 13 alter the financial relationship between local cities and Sacramento?: Local governments lost control over their main property tax revenues, forcing the state government in Sacramento to step in and fund local public schools and services.
How do Abundance Agenda proponents view traditional local community oversight in housing approvals?: As an abusive 'discretionary veto' that empowers wealthy incumbent homeowners (NIMBYs) to block broader societal needs like housing and clean energy.
How do equity/justice advocates respond to deregulatory housing solutions proposed by Abundance advocates?: They argue deregulation alone fails because unchecked private developers will only build market-rate luxury units, ignoring deep poverty and climate displacement without direct state construction.
How do Polycrisis and Abundance explanations differ in their housing-crisis focus?: Polycrisis emphasizes compounding climate, financial, and inequality shocks; Abundance emphasizes zoning and procedural bottlenecks.
How does a Citizen Initiative get placed on the California ballot?: Proponents draft text and collect signatures equal to 5% of votes cast in the last gubernatorial election for state statutes, or 8% for constitutional amendments.
How does a Polis Model analysis approach 'Housing' differently than a Market Model analysis?: Market treats housing as a commodity governed by supply/demand clearing; Polis treats housing as a contested public good tied to equity, community power, and anti-displacement equity.
How does the Abundance Agenda explain policy paralysis?: Institutional vetoes and procedural delays can block construction of housing, clean transit, and energy.
How does the Market Model define efficiency in Stone's framework?: Efficiency is Pareto efficiency: maximizing overall market output through market exchange.
How does the Market Model define information compared to the Polis Model?: Market Model assumes complete, objective information (prices, market clearing). Polis Model views information as strategic, interpretive, and politically framed through symbols and narratives.
How does the Market Model view power?: Power is dispersed through voluntary market choices rather than organized political contests.
How does the Polis Model define efficiency?: Efficiency is a political choice about who receives benefits and who bears costs.
How does the Polis Model understand power?: Power is contested through veto points, lobbying, and control.
How does the Prop 13 debate illustrate Stone's Market Model rhetoric?: It was framed around homeowner tax protection, limits on government spending, and tax efficiency.
How does the Prop 13 debate illustrate Stone's Polis Model?: The policy redistributed community power, favoring incumbent property owners and reshaping local governance and land-use incentives.
How does the study guide describe Proposition 13's effect on local governance power?: Financial power became more centralized in Sacramento as local governments lost control over their main property-tax revenues.
How does the study guide propose synthesizing Polycrisis and Abundance?: Treat housing as both an economic and political battleground, combining streamlined review with public capital investment.
Name the 8 independently elected constitutional officers in California's Plural Executive.: Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, State Controller, State Treasurer, Insurance Commissioner, Superintendent of Public Instruction.
What additional role does the Attorney General have in direct democracy?: The Attorney General manages the state DOJ and drafts official initiative ballot summaries.
What are the Secretary of State's main institutional duties?: Chief elections officer; manages state archives; oversees campaign finance records.
What are the three main tax constraints created by Proposition 13 (1978)?: 1. Property tax capped at 1% of assessed value; 2) Annual assessment increases capped at max 2%; 3) 2/3 supermajority vote required for state/local tax increases.
What are the three mechanisms of direct democracy established in California in 1911?: Initiative, Referendum, and Recall.
What are two institutional roles of California's Governor listed in the study guide?: The Governor is chief executive and commander of the state militia, in addition to holding line-item veto power.
What changes did Proposition 28 (2012) make to California legislative term limits?: Capped total legislative service at 12 years combined across either chamber (replacing Prop 140's strict 6-year Assembly / 8-year Senate limits).
What did Proposition 13 do to local property-tax control?: It reduced local control over property-tax revenue and increased reliance on state government and volatile income taxes.
What does California's Lieutenant Governor do according to the study guide?: Presides over the State Senate, serves on UC/CSU boards, and assumes the Governor's office in the Governor's absence.
What does the Abundance Agenda mean by artificial scarcity?: Procedural and institutional barriers can make public goods scarce even when society has the capacity to build more.
What does the Polycrisis Thesis mean by compounding shocks?: Problems in climate, housing, public health, and finance intersect so that one crisis can intensify another.
What does the study guide identify as a Polycrisis explanation for California's housing crisis involving wealth?: Global wealth inequality and speculative real estate can compound other housing and climate pressures.
What does the study guide say a California policy response to both frameworks would need to address?: Procedural barriers to construction alongside public investment and protections against compounding climate and economic shocks.
What is 'Ballot Box Budgeting'?: Voters passing ballot initiatives that mandate specific spending allocations (e.g., Prop 98 for education) without providing new revenue, locking up state General Fund decisions.
What is 'Everything-Bagel Liberalism'?: The habit of adding numerous secondary social mandates (labor rules, localized mitigation fees, historic preservation) onto a primary project goal, making it too expensive or complex to build.
What is 'Helpless Victim' framing in policy debate?: Defining a target population as powerless against systemic forces (e.g., tenants facing algorithmic rent hikes) to assign moral blame and justify state intervention.
What is 'Inclusionary Zoning'?: A local policy requiring housing developers to set aside a specific percentage of units in a new project for low-income tenants in exchange for building permits.
What is 'Infill Housing' and why is it central to California policy debates?: Building high-density housing within existing urban boundaries; favored by Abundance advocates to reduce emissions and climate exposure, but frequently delayed by local zoning and CEQA litigation.
What is a 'Story of Decline' in Deborah Stone's narrative framework?: A political narrative asserting that conditions were once good, have deteriorated drastically, and require urgent intervention (e.g., 'California's middle class is being priced out').
What is a 'Vetocracy'?: A political structure where power is so fragmented that almost any organized group (NIMBYs, interest groups, litigants) can exercise a veto to delay or block public projects.
What is a Plural Executive?: An executive branch where authority is split among multiple statewide officials independently elected by voters, rather than appointed by a single chief executive.
What is a Recall election and how does its ballot work?: A process to remove an elected official before their term ends via a two-part ballot: Part 1 asks if the official should be recalled; Part 2 selects their replacement.
What is a Referendum in California governance?: A mechanism allowing voters to approve or repeal legislation recently enacted by the state legislature before it takes effect.
What is California's 'Hybrid Democracy'?: A system combining representative government through the legislature with direct citizen democracy through initiative, referendum, and recall.
What is CEQA and how is it used according to Abundance Agenda critics?: The California Environmental Quality Act (1970); critics argue it is weaponized through civil litigation to delay infill housing, clean transit, and renewable energy infrastructure.
What is Deborah Stone's broader critique of using economic rationalism to understand public policy?: Policy decisions occur in a political community where equity, efficiency, liberty, and security are contested values.