We’re witnessing the end of a 400-year process that made property owners feel like investment geniuses. Three historical waves created this illusion: stolen Indigenous land enabling seemingly endless expansion, decades of falling interest rates inflating asset values, and continuous population growth generating new demand. All three have permanently ended. Yet landlords and city planners still operate as if these conditions will return, holding properties vacant rather than accepting reality.
Look at State Street’s empty storefronts. Property values no longer reflect local supply and demand — going forward they will be determined by global capital flows and interest rates. During the zero-rate era, investors paid premium prices assuming endless appreciation. At today’s normalized 4-5 percent rates, these properties are worth 30-50 percent less. Real estate generates no innovation premium but owners remain anchored to peak valuations, waiting for the next growth wave.
That wave will not come. We’ve exhausted ecologically viable land. Population growth has essentially stopped. The interest rate decline from 1982-2020 won’t repeat. Workforce participation is already maximized.
We’re not in a temporary downturn in a cycle. We’re at the end of four centuries of expansion. Property is now valued by its utility — providing shelter, retail and workspace — not as a speculative asset.
We Already Have a Waiting List
Currently, that waiting list is managed by money, selecting for wealth over residency, contribution, and community.
The question is how to ensure that families can stay in their places of origin without being displaced by economic pressures, manipulation of laws, or violence.
The answer isn’t growth—it’s adaptive Capitalism.
We must establish a transparent, residency-based priority system that values contribution and community over wealth.
Residential Framework: Protection against displacement for all current residents, with enhanced support systems for essential workers to enter and remain in the community. Parallel pathways ensure workforce participants can establish roots, families can reunite across generations, and the community remains open to new members who contribute to its vitality.
Commercial Framework: Community-serving businesses receive priority protection and support, with local entrepreneurs able to access affordable space to start ventures. Existing local businesses maintain stability rights similar to residents. Tourism and luxury retail develop within the space remaining after local needs are met.
This Isn’t “socialism.” It is scientific resource management. This isn’t radical — it’s what functional democracies already do. What’s truly radical is refusing to adapt and evolve!
Stockholm owns 70 percent of its land, managing allocation through transparent systems that prioritize long-term residents and those who work in and sustain the city. Paris owns 800+ commercial properties through SEMAEST, ensuring small businesses aren’t displaced by chains. Twenty-one percent 0f Parisians live in public housing. Barcelona’s 39 public markets guarantee food system resilience.
Montgomery County in Maryland demonstrates the financial model works. Its Housing Opportunities Commission uses municipal bonds for construction and restoration, with minimal net cost while providing thousands of affordable units. Santa Barbara should adopt this approach but with explicit ecological constraints — setting total housing stock based on water availability and resource limits, then allocating within those boundaries based on community priorities.
Implementation Requires Three Bold Steps: First, issue municipal bonds to acquire strategic properties, starting with vacant downtown buildings. Second, establish Housing Authority waitlists based on residency and employment criteria, not just income. Third, set rents at levels covering bonds and maintenance, not maximizing profit, while regularly reviewing priorities through democratic process.
Yes, this challenges the myth that economic outcomes reflect individual choices rather than birthright, timing, and structural advantages. Yes, this challenges the entire framework of market capitalism — the assumption that wealth accumulation reflects merit, that individual property rights supersede community needs, and that price mechanisms efficiently allocate resources.
Yes, wealthy outsiders would wait longer than local teachers. Yes, corporations would wait behind local businesses. But the alternative — our current trajectory — means becoming a pathetic playground for tourists and the rich while everyone who makes our city function commutes from increasingly distant locations. That’s neither ecologically sustainable, economically intelligent, nor just.
The real estate lobby, their lawyers, and hired economists will scream about free markets, but economics without evolutionary biology is maladaptive. They’ll cite “spontaneous order,” but cancer is literally “spontaneous order” at the cellular level.
Santa Barbara can pioneer a new model: the ecologically bounded city. Not anti-growth but post-growth. Not exclusive but sustainable. A city that prioritizes those who sustain it within nature’s limits rather than those who can pay the most to exploit it; adaptive Capitalism.
Our teachers, nurses, and firefighters—and the ecological systems we depend on—deserve better than a model based on deeply flawed economic assumptions. It’s time to design systems that work within evolutionary, ecological and social reality.
The Santa Barbara waiting list already exists. The only question is whether it will be adaptive, prioritizing community resilience, or maladaptive, selecting only those who can buy a spot at the front of the line.
