The idea behind sharecropping was simple and wrong. Get people to work on your land in exchange for a unreasonably large amount of the product they produced. This practice was rightly seen as wrong and detrimental.

In the 1950s-1970s, home ownership became the norm for American families creating generational wealth, as well as urban sprawl and the suburbs. Through the 1980s-today the idea that urban sprawl is bad and city living in densely packed cities was more cost effective and better for the planet deeply took root in urban planning. The product of which was a plethora of interwoven laws limiting the building of single family homes, and increasing the building of appartments. For example, California has 3X the population but less new home construction than in the 1970s.

Undersupply of homes lead to massive price increases, and forced the majority of young and minority Californians into renting at prices that make it impossible to save for a home. Even if the majority did save enough for homes the prices would simply be bid up as not enough land is zoned to allow for new construction and the process to be allowed to start building a home in most cities takes 6 months to a year.

Home building is one of the most disincentivized economic activities. Which is surprising seeing as homeownership is the main form of wealth for most families and buying a home has such a big tax incentive.

There was more but it got deleted so I’ll end with this. It cannot be that a green future is built by forcing the working class into green cages a paycheck away from homelessness. Make all farm zoning have the option to be turn residential, streamline permit processes to 1 month or less for cities to approve single family home building, and subsidize permit fees.