Netflix is advertising a documentary on the story of the Rajneeshee commune in Oregon. The trailer below makes it appear that the problem with the commune was religious intolerance on the part of rural Oregonians. In fact, the real problem was land-use intolerance on the part of urban Oregonians.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was an Indian philosophy professor who decided to become a guru preaching free love and sex. The Indian government wasn’t too happy with his followers’ behavior, which included tax fraud and smuggling, so he decided to move to the United States. If they had moved to Texas, or Kansas, or some other interior state, land use would never have been a major issue.
Instead, in 1981, his group bought 64,000 acres in eastern Oregon with the intention of housing several thousand people on the land. But the land was outside of urban-growth boundaries, so they weren’t allowed to build on it, at least not homes for thousands of people.
They tried to incorporate as a city, Rajneeshpuram, and even sought support from 1000 Friends of Oregon, the state’s land-use watchdogs. As the strongest backer’s of the state’s land-use regulations, 1000 Friends told the Rajneeshees they would be welcome to settle in Oregon as long as it was inside of existing urban-growth boundaries.
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Okay, so they might not have been good neighbors even if they had decided to settle in Texas, Kansas, or some other state that doesn’t have intolerant land-use laws.
Before anyone knew about the Rajneeshees’ thuggish behavior, however, 1000 Friends began using them as a fund-raising tool, sending out numerous direct-mail fund appeals featuring photographs of Rajnesspuram and claiming it was a threat to the entire state of Oregon. At the time, the Antiplanner was working on other issues, but I found the xenophobic nature of the fund appeals repugnant and tossed them.
For 1000 Friends, however, this was a crucial test case, as urban-growth boundaries were still new in Oregon. If the Rajneeshees were allowed to create a new city, then anyone with a big chunk of rural land could do the same, rendering the state’s growth boundaries worthless. In short, the first volleys in the war were fired not by rednecked ruralites or sex-crazed cult leaders but by Portlanders who wanted to confine all newcomers to the 1-1/4 percent of the state’s land that was inside of a growth boundary.
The sex cult lost and the land-use cult won. Since 1980, Oregon’s rural population has declined 14 percent, or nearly 120,000 people. The state’s urban population has grown by 1.3 million, or 74 percent. While cities have slightly expanded their urban-growth boundaries, the 2010 census found that all of state’s urban areas still occupied less than 1.2 percent of the land. The massive growth of urban populations on the same urban footprint has made housing unaffordable and traffic more congested. While the Rajneeshee’s response to land-use regulation was wrong, on the issue of the regulation itself, they were in the right.
The Antiplanner wrote:
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was an Indian philosophy professor who decided to become a guru preaching free love and sex. The Indian government wasn’t too happy with his followers’ behavior, which included tax fraud and smuggling, so he decided to move to the United States. If they had moved to Texas, or Kansas, or some other interior state, land use would never have been a major issue.
I seem to recall that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had other legal problems in the United States (might have been tax fraud, he would not be the first). I am not excusing Oregon’s draconian land use laws when I say that either. Have not heard any mention of that name in many years.
If he had wanted to establish a sort of new town, he should have moved to West Virginia. Plenty of land available at reasonable prices and not much in the way of land use regulation.
Hare Krishnas from India established New Vrindaban in Marshall County, West Virginia as far back as 1968, and it exists even today (note that I do not imply that Bhagwan is or was Hare Krishna, though maybe he is).
According to Wikipedia, New Vrindaban is not incorporated.
I grew up not too far away. There is no doubt that the land-use issue was simply the most convenient and effective weapon at hand to try to get rid of the Rajneeshees. But it has always been thus. Land-use planning was sold from the very beginning as a way to keep the damnable Californians from ruining the state. This was made explicit by Governor Tom McCall – “You’re welcome to visit Oregon, but please don’t stay.” Shameless NIMBYism on an statewide scale.
pokep wrote:
There is no doubt that the land-use issue was simply the most convenient and effective weapon at hand to try to get rid of the Rajneeshees. But it has always been thus. Land-use planning was sold from the very beginning as a way to keep the damnable Californians from ruining the state.
I am from Montgomery County, Maryland, and our county zoning ordinance and related procedures and regulations are much beloved by planning groupies, though those groupies usually consider Portland, Oregon to be perfection and Heaven-on-earth.
The ugly history behind the Montgomery County Zoning Ordinance is that it was established in the 1920’s to keep Negroes in their place. The groupies don’t like to talk about that part. Of course, there was once a state law in Oregon that prohibited persons of color from settling there.
Portland has a long history of using “planning” to push the marginalized further into the margins. This is very well documented, yet the city is still at it today. Just one example: the primary effect of the MLK Light Rail line (connecting a historically black neighborhood to downtown) has been to accelerate gentrification and push the largely black population of that neighborhood out to the eastern margins – where the roads are crumbling, sidewalks absent and parks are badly maintained. There is plenty of money to build rail lines to take rich (and overwhelmingly, white) folks to the upscale shopping and entertainment district, but no money for sidewalks to let ordinary children walk to the playground safely.