Another example of how regulations work against the people:
The housing farce
Thomas Sowell
A recently published housing study says: "San Francisco is one
of the densest large cities in the U.S." That is true in both
senses of the word "dense." Nowhere are San Franciscans more
dense than when talking about housing -- especially that
perennial will o' the wisp, "affordable housing." Tight rent
control laws in San Francisco are supposed to help the poor.
But the recent housing study shows that 26 percent of the
households living in rent-controlled apartments have incomes
of $100,000 or more.
At the other end of the economic scale, people who might be
expected to have budget problems are leaving the city.
Although San Francisco's total population is growing, the
number of children in the city has declined absolutely. More
than three-quarters of the households in rent-controlled
apartments have no children at all. The black population of
San Francisco has also declined -- by 23 percent -- in just
one decade.
Nearly half the working population still remaining in the city
are in professional or managerial occupations. It is tough to
live in San Francisco if you have jobs paying ordinary
salaries.
Rent control laws are supposed to keep down rents. But rents
today are more than five times what they were in 1979, when
such laws were passed in San Francisco. The average apartment
rent in the city today is $2,100 a month. Even for a studio
apartment, the average rent is $1,500 a month.
In short, the goals of rent control and its actual
consequences are at opposite poles. Nor is this peculiar to
San Francisco. Studies show that rents are usually higher and
homelessness is greater in cities with rent control. How can
this be? Partly it is because the only housing that repays the
cost of building under rent control is usually luxury housing,
which is often exempt.
When renting apartments becomes a losing proposition, that
drastically reduces the prospects of anyone's building new
rental housing, either to replace the housing that is wearing
out or to accommodate a growing population. Three quarters of
the rent-controlled housing in San Francisco was built before
1950. Again, this is not peculiar to San Francisco. Nothing
brings private building to a halt like rent control. Housing
shortages have followed rent control in cities across the
United States, as well as in Europe, Asia and Australia.
What makes all this a complete farce is that the very people
who push such notions as rent control and drastic restrictions
on building are forever wringing their hands about a need for
"affordable housing" and deploring homelessness. Yet the very
word "builder" is anathema to such people. But where is any
housing to come from if it cannot be built? And who is to
build it, if not builders?
San Francisco compounds the problem by having restrictions on
how tall they will allow buildings to be built. They don't
want their skyline to look like Manhattan's skyline. But the
fundamental problem is not what they want or don't want. The
real problem is that those who make these decisions do not
have to pay the costs.
All sorts of notions and fashions can be indulged when you
don't pay the costs. Arbitrary zoning, "open space" and other
restrictive laws escalate the cost of building housing, often
to the point where numerous people cannot afford it. All the
while, the plaintive cry of "affordable housing" goes up from
the very people who are making housing unaffordable.
To make the farce truly monumental, there is now a proposal
for a bond issue to get money to allow the city government to
build the low-income housing that it has made impossible for
private developers to build.
Meanwhile, vast tracts of unused land in prime locations with
magnificent views remain idle in a city with a severe housing
shortage. This land is in military and naval bases that the
federal government has turned over to local authorities. If
this land were sold in the open market, it would probably
bring in more money than a bond issue -- and this would be
income to the city, not debt to be repaid by the taxpayers.
But that would not cater to the fashionable notions among the
politically correct in San Francisco, so such land will remain
largely unused while the hand-wringing about "affordable
housing" goes on and on.
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