How Lefty Urbanists Quash Housing Supply

[Kamaji]

How Lefty Urbanists Quash Housing Supply

Left-wing urbanists see duplexes and triplexes as the antidote to racist ramblers and ranch houses.

By Roger Valdez
February 11, 2022

It has been twelve years since I suggested to a Seattle developer that the cause of the housing “crisis” was a lack of supply. She dismissed my argument, claiming the word “supply” was “too Republican.” Today, things have changed—you’re allowed to propose supply-side reforms, as long as you balance them out with a proposed intervention, like taxing the production of new housing to pay for affordable housing.

Consider this example. A piece in the Denver Voice with the headline, “Denver seeks to capitalize on homebuilding activity with new affordable housing regulations,” discusses the city’s attempt to boost the supply of “missing-middle housing“—clustered and multifamily housing units scaled for single-family neighborhoods.

How exactly does the city of Denver propose to boost its missing middle housing supply? By increasing fees, of course.

To left-wing urbanists, missing-middle housing is all the rage—they see duplexes and triplexes as the antidote to racist ramblers and ranch houses. It’s one way to get progressives to embrace density—to eliminate zoning regulations because they limit production is, as my developer colleague said, “too Republican.” The argument has to be dressed in the language of race.

*  *  *

There you have it. Housing prices rise because housing is scarce and lots of people need it. People with fewer dollars to spend on housing see a bigger share of those dollars consumed by housing costs. When more housing starts getting built, the “solution” proffered by the government is adding more costs to construction, costs that will get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, ensuring that housing inflation—“the crisis”—stays in place. Then, people with less money can get in line to wait for the subsidies to offset the rising costs caused by the additional fees imposed to fund the subsidies.

*  *  *

Source:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/how-lefty-urbanists-quash-housing-supply/

[LMAO]

Is there any left-wing concept or idea that eventually doesn’t have the law of unintended consequences rear its head?

[Kamaji]

Is there any left-wing concept or idea that eventually doesn’t have the law of unintended consequences rear its head?

In a word?  No.

The fundamental problem is that leftists never consider the consequences of their actions.  All they consider are their own subjective feelings and their motivations.

[dfwgator]

In a word?  No.

The fundamental problem is that leftists never consider the consequences of their actions.  All they consider are their own subjective feelings and their motivations.

You cannot kill The Invisible Hand.