Trump as President? Meaning for Landscape Architects?

[ida]

Trump promises a lot of deregulation, a lot of infrastructure building, jobs, economic growth, and, he’s an experienced developer… so how do you think his presidency will impact our profession? Will we see more projects coming in? Less red tape? Or… are you worried?

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

I’m a residential LA. I’m hoping for more diversity of demographic in clientele. It has become about 80% people who work for financial firms in the last 6 years. It used to be all kinds of people. Oddly enough, Wall Street has done way better than Main Street in recent years. That and the lack of home equity has limited real estate changes in ownership mostly to high end waterfront raze and replace properties being purchased for summer homes for those with a ton of money in my area – not complaining about the work, just that it is limited to the lucky few who are referred in such a market.

I expect that there may be more opportunities for the middle class creating a wider potential market for us to work in.

Also hoping for reduction in red tape that will make it easier for businesses to have full time employees. Right now a lot are limiting their employees to part time to avoid benefits to control costs. That will empower the middle class as well.

These are all hopes. I have no idea that they will happen, but they clearly were not happening under status quo. Something needed to be shook up.

[Dave McCorquodale]

We live & die by oil down here in Texas. Simple as that. To be fair, there are other industries that shore things up, but when the oil guys are down & out, everyone feels it. I’m in favor of meaningful regulations, but want fewer of the ones that aren’t accomplishing anything. And $3.00/gal gas (currently $2.00/gal around here). $3.00 seems to be the tipping point between a stable economy and a booming one here in the lone star state.

[Rob Halpern]

https://landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2016/11/15/get-ready/

[Rob Halpern]

https://placesjournal.org/news/after-the-election/

[Leslie B Wagle]

Our own LANewsDigest had an article in the last issue giving as close to a “state of things” as we can get from surveying our own profession, and it is described as “tepid.”

https://www.asla.org/land/LandArticle.aspx?id=49538

Of course, that is not a prediction. And it’s hard to get a pulse anyway, when there are wide variations in focus and size of firms in so many different locations. But I think it helps explain all the “where do I go from here” questions by new grads, and the disquieting feeling that things have only come up from a bottom, never having regained an (overall) comfortable plateau yet. 

[Anonymous]

I see it as a boom for private sector building and a bust for middle class and public sector. Deregulation tends to support the elites, not the middle class. But deregulation may also open up funding opportunities for people to access and leverage – you know, kinda like what led to the great recession. So IMO, grab your ankles and hold tight.

[J. Robert (Bob) Wainner]

[Rob Halpern]

 He has stated that he plans to put forth a Trilion dollars on our infrastructure.  And, go after ALL forms of energy, including renewable energy. 

How will he pay for that? And how will he convince Congressional and GOP rank-and-file deficit hawks to agree to it? Promises are cheap. Infrastructure requires cash.

He’s a successful developer, understands business & jobs.  I also thought it was interesting to note that while he is President of the U.S., he will NOT be accepting a “salary”.  Nor, will he be controlled by “special interest groups”…he doesn’t need their money.  

Actually that is questionable. He is  certainly a sly businessman. But most of his accomplishments depended on cheating, strong-arming and stiffing governments and contractors. But now we are those contractors!

[Anonymous]

Really Bob?! Who put us in this situation to begin with – uh, Bush anyone? And with those free-market republican ideals American’s over reached to buy homes that lenders gladly supported and developers (every tom dick and harry) cashed-in on it all. I mean, have you ever worked with (not for) developers? They are, above all, business people only willing to do the minimum it takes to get past laws so they can separate people from their money. They tend to only care  about THEIR bottom line. Environment – don’t care; community – not my problem; beauty – only if it sells; so on and so on. Those reasons are why a lot of us went into LA to begin with. So be careful when you say developers are good; and, btw Trump’s not even a successful one! How many times has he been bankrupt now??? 3-4x’s? Geez man. 

All that said, with the dergulation that’s inevitably coming, I think we’ll have another big boom/bust cycle. So ride the wave as long as you can, but don’t forget to be making a bomb shelter in your basement when it finally goes belly-up (again).

[Leslie B Wagle]

I think it wasn’t free market ideals alone as much as a blend with a social engineering agenda (let’s get everybody into a home whether traditionally qualified or not) that the market responded to, then followed up with some pretty creative ways of passing on the inevitable risk. Mortgage backers would have been far more careful lending if they weren’t prodded into the everybody-in-a-house craziness but then regulators looked the other way at the bundling of strange packages that got passed on to “investors.”

I am retelling this from the insights of someone behind the scenes in banking who passed it on. Bush actually warned that the system was in big trouble that had been accumulating (and I wasn’t a Bush fan). In fact, it was Congress that flatly rejected his call for years to reform the mess. His repeated attempts for more supervision were thwarted by the legislative maneuvering of those who emphatically denied there were problems. At any rate, the government as well as banks were up to their eyeballs in it, and it’s ludicrous to see any side or party try to ride around now like a knight on a white horse. Kinda like how the A.C.A. appealed to insurance companies and they are now bailing out as we begin to see the inevitable results of attempting to ignore the logical operation of insurance rates….that is, the avoidance by young people who are resisting their assigned role to pay what they don’t need (yet) themselves, in order to fund older sicker people who can’t cover what they didn’t prepare for. People don’t like to save for the future, wait for their goodies, or accept basic consequences ….who could imagine that?

A little p.s. Could maybe all the reckless building era be partly a way to “keep a lot of people busy” as the least vulnerable part of the economy to foreign competition that we were letting into everything like textiles, steel etc.? Think about it…surveyors, lawyers, designers, contractors, tradesmen, land sales people, all the distributors or carpets and wallpaper and lighting and appliances (even if products were imported), the ladies who “show” houses…the decorators, magazine photographers, landscapers…

[Anonymous]

Actually, it makes sense why a) people wanted to give mortgages to people b) why people wanted to have them. It stems from the American dream (right?), not ‘social engineering’, unless you call the propagation of picturesque 1950s american values as social engineering (which you could). Yes, people thought they should own a roof over their heads, just like their parents and their parents before them. And congress was okay helping give them that dream because it means disenfranchised groups of people bought into communities, invested, and then they simultaneously stimulated the economy. Sure, those actions by congress helped people into mortgages they couldn’t afford, and real estate professionals were all too ready to finance it, and developers build it. I don’t dare think that there wasn’t a group involved that doesn’t have dirty hands. 

I’ll have to take your word on Bush’s role but irregardless the republican’s free market society ideology is flat-out dangerous and leads to hard boom/busts. It’s good while it’s good and then man is it bad. 

[Mark Di Lucido]

I don’t think I’ll invite any of you to my Christmas party.

[Dave McCorquodale]

That’s awesome.  You win the forum today!  

Dave

[J. Robert (Bob) Wainner]

Jonathan…..You might want to go back and do some serious “research” on the causes of the “housing/economic crisis near the end of Bush’s final term. Ever heard of Democratic Congressman “Barney Frank”??? He was responsible for pushing “Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac” big time! Of the 19.2 million sub-prime loans out there, 62% of them belonged to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Barney Frank realized his error in 2007, but, by then, it was too late. A lot of blame to go around on that deal…Dems, GOP, Bill Clinton & Bush too.

Obama put a TON of taxpayers’ money out there in his famous “Stimulus Bill”…yeah, to create all of those “shovel ready jobs”…what a joke!

And, I have worked very closely with many developers…yes, I know how they think and operate. Most businesses are all about “the bottom line”. The Developers I designed for were more than “fair” with me and my LA fees…and I was always watchful of how the “contractors” were treated by my Developer Clients. If all developers went really “green” as so many believe they should…you wouldn’t see many projects going up, because profits would be minimal. For instance, installing “solar panels” takes at least 20 yrs. to break even…few developers operate like that. Maybe one day, when you get some “real experience”, you’ll understand?

I hope Trump’s staff is getting a TON of “shredders” ready, so they can feed Obama’s “regulations” to them…LOL. Then, our Nation can get back to work and we can put the 95 million Americans who are out of work…back to work. Had Hillary been elected, she wanted OPEN borders, that could easily have allowed well over 100 million additional illegal immigrants to stroll into the U.S…making out debt worse, stressing our resources (water, food, energy & jobs)…more crime & drugs too. Hillary wanted OPEN borders, so she could get millions more illegals into the U.S. to vote for her & Democrats.

I, for one, am very optimistic for our Nation & the LA profession…due to Trump’s win in this election. Hillary would have just added 8 more years of “Socialism” to our Country…and ZERO additional jobs.

Bob

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