‘Affordable’ housing

Central planning will make matters worse

Leave it to government to find a reason to look back longingly at the Great Recession. Last month, state Sen. Julia Ratti, D-sparks, chaired the first meeting of the Legislature’s interim Committee on Affordable Housing. The committee’s purpose is to determine “methods to increase the availability of affordable housing.” At its first meeting, the panel heard six hours of testimony. One of the government-produced reports submitted to the members contained this gem.

“Although unemployment sky-rocketed, the Great Recession produced a glut of housing, much of it affordable to middle- and low-income households,” read the Housing Division’s 2017 Annual Housing Progress Report. “Since that time Nevada home prices have been rebounding.”

If only Nevada could return to the glory days of 13 percent unemployment and foreclosures on every street corner.

Are there really people who want to return to the 2010 economy, or is this another case of government looking to stick its nose where it doesn’t belong?

There’s much evidence to support the latter.

It starts with defining how much an individual needs to earn to afford housing. The committee considered a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Its conclusion was that a Nevada household must earn almost $38,000 a year or $18.26 per hour to not be “cost-burdened” by housing.

Really? As many young adults can tell you, there’s a simple way to earn less than $38,000 and not spend more than 30 percent of your income on rent. It’s called roommates.

Rising rental prices are actually the very thing needed to lower prices. Increased home values and rents signal to builders that they should build more housing units. The best way to drive housing prices lower — without sabotaging the economy — is to increase the supply. But the tendency of too many interventionists is to embrace central planning such as mandating rent controls. Those are disastrous in the long run.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a working paper by Stanford economists who studied rent-controlled apartments in San Francisco from 1995 to 2012. Rent control increased the likelihood that tenants would stay put by nearly 20 percent. But it “also found that rent control hurt the city overall by making landlords more likely to convert their apartments to other uses and deplete the housing stock, leading to a permanent citywide rent increase of 5 percent.”

If state Sen. Ratti wants to increase Nevada’s stock of affordable housing, she should direct her committee to identify and remove existing hurdles facing homebuilders. Examining why the federal government needs to “manage” 85 percent of the state’s acreage, artificially boosting the price of undeveloped land, would be a good place to start.

The views expressed above are those of the Las Vegas Review-journal. All other opinions expressed on the Opinion and Commentary pages are those of the individual artist or author indicated.

The Review-journal welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should not exceed 275 words and must include the writer’s name, mailing address and phone number. Submissions may be edited and become the property of the Review-journal.

Email letters@reviewjournal.com Mail Letters to the Editor

P.O. Box 70

Las Vegas, NV 89125

Fax 702-383-4676 quite a way to go before exceeding Mr. Obama’s reckless and wasteful spending spree.

In addition, President Bill Clinton was able to lower the deficit only because of the insistence of a Republican Congress, led by Newt Gingrich, another fact Mr. Winne conveniently omits. It takes both the president and Congress working together to rein in deficits that do not add more to the debt. This sort of bipartisanship did not exist during the Obama administration, with its “my way or the highway” philosophy.

In conclusion, only two things have been proven. First, right wingers can do simple arithmetic, and anyone who thinks the so-called “rich” owe them should not be taken seriously. that.

After all the years of Republican supporters complaining about the nation’s debt, Mr. Headrick doesn’t see anything wrong with this tax expenditure because he was the recipient of the money. I think it would have been more appropriate if Republicans had just left the money on his dresser.