Build More Housing

[Kamaji]

Build More Housing

When demand for housing rises and supply doesn’t keep up, prices rise.

By Roger Valdez
March 18, 2022

Rising prices are causing the left to reckon with the realities of supply and demand. The White House has made its position clear: Supply shocks, not an increase in the money supply, are driving inflation. Can rising rents and housing prices be explained the same way?

A recent New York Times article lists several of the Biden administration’s theories of the case on inflation. Recently, the Biden administration has characterized inflation as “Putin’s price hike,” occurring as a result of sanctions imposed on Russia. Toward the end of last year, they said it was caused by kinks in the supply chain related to Covid-19. In a recent press conference, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki summarized the issue in a few words: “It’s as simple as: Less supply raises prices.”

Progressives lose this clarity on supply and demand when it comes to housing. Here’s a formulation of the left’s view from a Seattle “urbanist” blog.

“To assume the market alone can solve homelessness—and the twin problem of the housing shortage in the low rent market—through supply has never been demonstrated in the real world. It’s a nice theory—a good topic for an Ayn Rand book. If it were that simple.”

Jenny Schuetz of the Brookings Institution would disagree with that assessment. She wrote that “anemic housing production in high-opportunity places is not primarily due to container ships with lumber backed up outside ports or a ‘Great Resignation’ among construction workers,” which are common reasons given for inflation in other sectors.  Schuetz argues that the real issue is supply, as “the policies that regulate land use and housing production make it extremely difficult to add more homes in desirable locations.” This restricts the supply side of the market, and as any econ undergraduate knows, drives up prices for consumers.

When it comes to housing, deriding solutions that involve “the market alone” is most often associated with the left, as is the urge to increase “affordable housing.” In practice, both phrases are code for providing more subsidies to nonprofits to build expensive housing. Dysfunctional policies at the local level are largely to blame for rising housing prices. To many progressives, however, discussing those policies is simply not on the table—even when they produce stunning examples of inefficiency.

In Los Angeles, for example, the city’s controller evaluated the progress of a $1.2 billion housing-bond measure passed more than five years ago, and found that per-unit costs of new housing built approached $800,000. So much for affordable housing.

The controller also found that the higher costs were significantly attributable to “a combination of cost factors including prevailing wage requirements, financing complexity, land use issues, project labor agreements, and building characteristics.” In other words, too many rules and regulations.

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Source:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/build-more-housing/

[DefiantMassRINO]

Limousine liberal NIMBY zoning prevents more housing to be built in high demand areas.  Every open piece of land that comes to sale gets acquired by government, a trust, or a conservancy to become "conservation land".

You know what "conservation land" is?  Government removal of buildable land from the housing market.

[Fishrrman]

Throw out 30-40 million illegals.
Then there will be plenty of available housing.

[roamer_1]

Everybody is priced out anyway. Just the cost of building materials - three to five times what normal used to be - is going to keep folks unable to afford it.

1/2" CDX plywood is almost 70 bucks a  sheet - This time of year, around here, that should be twelve to fifteen bucks. Think of what that is doing to the cost of construction across the board.

[libertybele]

Throw out 30-40 million illegals.
Then there will be plenty of available housing.

There is truth in that.

Housing costs have skyrocketed because of costs of goods, but the cost of insurance and taxes (at least around here) has skyrocketed as well.

Our insurance company cancelled us without warning -- we were lucky and another insurance company picked us up giving us apples for apples insurance for the same costs, but moving forward when our policy is up, we don't know what they'll offer us and at what price.

Those people who have older homes and roofs older than 10 years old are really scrambling right now trying to find someone to insure them at a somewhat affordable price. Replacing a roof isn't cheap.  Some insurance companies are basing insurance on older piping.  Having a repipe isn't cheap either.