“Big Tent” US Infrastructure Proposals: Catching Up With Modern Reality?

A group of 4 Black Youth, pose on their bright red delivery bikes.
DSC_8972 photo by Joseph Young is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
A group of bikers delivers food to the less fortunate in Washington, D.C. Could this support be "infrastructure?" President Biden thinks so.

For the past few decades in America, “small government” policies have been supported by both Democrats and Republicans. In particular, the name of the game has been to shrink what the government invests in, leave as much as possible to the blessings(?) of free enterprise.

In the grand scheme of things, the central thinking of both political parties has been focused upon a century-old idea of the infrastructure of a nation: those basic “hard” services — roads, bridges, water services, sewer services, electrical grid, and the like. Over recent years, lip service has increasingly been paid to the need to repair such hard services as they decay. But successive governments, having sounded the alarm, promptly hit the snooze button.

Now the new Biden administration, once imagined to be as centrist and snooze-worthy as its recent predecessors, has brought a cattle prod to the legislative table — a wake-up call in the form of an expansive definition of infrastructure. Not only does it embrace never before considered services such as broadband internet, it also includes commitment to public housing as a both a basic national “service” that should be addressed through infrastructure legislation and spending.

Most controversial of all, it boldly includes “soft services” such as child care and preventing homelessness.

This new and extremely expensive ($trillions) proposal supported by the Biden administration is guaranteed to provoke impassioned argument. Read more at POLITICO Playbook: The question that’s about to dominate politics

How will this “Big Tent” approach to infrastructure impact on those who press for an end to homelessness, as well as truly affordable housing for all?

Details so far are sketchy, but if the promise of this progressive legislation leads to optimism, there is still good reason to be cautious about its content, let alone its chances for adoption.

An NBC News article quotes a White House source on the scope of President Biden’s affordable housing plan as “All Carrot, No Stick.”

This is far from encouraging. Without any sense of the final details, we can be fairly certain that the carrots will be induce (bribe?):

  • neighbourhoods to accept low and no income incomers,
  • local governments to encourage the change of zoning regulations,
  • developers to ensure they profit from any low-cost housing that they choose to build.

This is a developer dream vision promoted by the US so-called YIMBY movement: open up neighbourhoods to allow developers to build whatever. Pay developers to include at least a tiny bit of somewhat more affordable housing. And if the fantasy plays out, in the fullness of time, the higher end buildings will begin to decay, and some carrot peelings from the billions that will be invested may fall to those with low and no incomes. Read more about the sketchy details, if not the causes for skepticism at NBC NEWS: All carrot, ‘no stick’ in Biden’s affordable housing plan