a) There is already an oversupply of rental housing. There might be an affordability gap, but that is a financial problem, not an availability problem.
b) My property taxes go up and up and up.
While I don't claim to understand all of the various agencies, authorities, levels of government, etc involved in creating affordable housing/ urban renewal, it seems to me that even a large city government is too small an entity to effectually intervene in the housing market without taxing its citizens to death and/or drowning in debt. Broader issues of the (mal)distribution of wealth should be taken more seriously, but that debate belongs more at the national level (as dreary as the political climate may be), not the local level.
That said, there are some innovative things that the city could do to encourage the marketplace to work better, which will of course encounter political resistance...
Property tax reform: Tax the land, not the buildings. From the book "Home from Nowhere", by James Howard Kunstler, Chapter 7:
"Our system of property taxes punishes anyone who puts up a decent building made of durable materials. It rewards those who let existing buildings go to hell. It favors speculators who sit on vacant or underutilized land in the hearts of our cities and towns. In doing so it creates an artificial scarcity of land on the free market, which drives up the price of land in general, and encourages ever more scattered development, i.e., suburban sprawl. In tandem with zoning, the taxing of buildings rather than land itself promotes such wasteful practices as putting up cheap one-story burger joints in huge parking lots on prime city land. It is one of the biggest impediments to the free market creation of affordable housing."
The entire chapter is posted online at http://www.earthrights.net/docs/kunstler.html
An essay, "The Single Tax" by the 19th century economist Henry George: http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/singletax/
Ease health and safety codes to allow more people to live in attic, basement and garage apartments, industrial areas, offices, etc. While these codes do usually serve the public health, what if the savings in rent allowed people to spend money on health care, or better nutrition?
Build more mixed use, new urbanist developments. While new buildings are not likely to be affordable without subsidy, overtime they will become affordable, if we build enough of the right kinds. The city of Minneapolis, like most American cities, is still suffering from decades of monolithic single use zoning run amok. Again, from "Home from Nowhere" : "Under zoning, it became necessary to create 'affordable housing' artificially because the rules of zoning zoned out the very conditions that formerly made housing available to all income groups and integrated it into the civic fabric. Accessory apartments became illegal in most neighborhoods.. In many localities apartments over stores also were outlawed under zoning.... By zoning these things out, we've zoned out Main Street USA."
Many of the proponents of government created "affordable housing" live in first-ring neighborhoods that when built were at the outskirts of town. Now these neighborhoods sit at the center of a metropolis of millions. While I recognize the need for historic preservation, it seems unreasonable that these areas should remain predominately single family homes forever. This too, is an impediment to affordable housing.
Mike Jensvold East Isles
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