Those of us who have not been living in exclusive gated communities are probably aware that all is not wine and roses in America. Sure, the official unemployment rate is low –kept artificially so by the narrow definition of “unemployment” — but homeless shelters and food banks are working at capacity.
How can this be?
Well according to the experts cited in this article, it has to do with the high price of housing. When a family spends “too much” on housing, they don’t have enough money for food. And why is housing so expensive?
Among the concerns listed by HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson were slow permitting procedures and complex environmental regulations that can significantly increase the length and cost of home building review and approval processes.
That’s right. The official government stance is that this is the fault of states and local governments that want to make sure that new housing meets certain standards. Burdensome standards, like that they meet building codes. That a housing development won’t overwhelm local road and utility capacities. That developers don’t pave over a wetland and create a perennial flooding problem for miles around.
Mr. Jackson’s office calls many of these standards onerous and “archaic.”
Now, one thing that Mr. Jackson is right about is that affordable housing is necessary if we are to have people in our neighborhoods like teachers and nurses and firefighters. I will not dispute him on that point. But he is wrong that the same regulations which ensue safe, stable communities prevent these people from having affordable housing. Nor does Mr. Jackson address the issue of poverty, despite the fact that affordable housing is an even bigger problem to the poor than to the not-highly-paid professionals he speaks of. This is no surprise, since Mr. Jackson is on record as saying, more or less, that he doesn’t believe in systemic poverty.
But back to the issue of affordable housing. Why does this housing have to be owned? What is wrong with making sure there is adequate stock of “safe,” affordable, well-managed apartment housing? And why does this report not address other issues which undeniably drive up housing prices, such as rent controls (which artificially guts the supply of rental housing and thereby drives up the cost of owned housing)?
I will be utterly shocked if the HUD solution to the problem of affordable housing supply does not include “deregulation,” by which they will mean taking away the abilities of local governments to control local construction in any way shape or form. In the meantime, they will do everything possible to avoid looking for the real reasons real estate is experiencing double digit increases. Las Vegas house prices rose 47% last year. It had little to do with regulation, a lot to do with the fact that the city is gaining thousands of residents every month, and even more to do with the fact that the Las Vegas valley has a finite amount of buildable land.
In closing, Questions and Answers on Social Security and dispelling Social Security Myths. Seriously, it boils down to one question: if the problem is that Social Security will not have enough money, how is giving it less money going to help? Speaking of questions nobody will ask, what is more relevant, the percentage of kids who get a high school diploma, or the percentage of those kids who actually have the knowledge and skills to function in the job market? Oh, and here’s the latest in universal health care.