An appropriate approach? #housing #policy #urbanplanning
Rental Housing Economist (Apartments, SFR), Speaker and Author
Here's an interesting idea from a living legend in modern economics, Harvard professor Dr. Ed Glaeser. To help solve the housing crisis, Dr. Glaeser suggests borrowing a tactic from 1984 -- back when Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. Why would a law on booze be relevant to housing construction? Like housing policy, drinking ages are highly local. The federal government could do unilaterally raise the minimum age itself. It had to incentivize states to do it. So they did: Dr. Glaeser notes that the 1984 law "demanded states raise the minimum age to buy or publicly possess alcohol to 21 — or face a reduction in federal highway funds." "It will take a forceful solution to address such a big problem," Dr. Glaeser writes in a guest commentary in The New York Times, reminding us that housing affordability/accessibility is all about SUPPLY, so therefore local resistance to new housing is the single biggest cause of the housing crisis. That's why, Dr. Glaeser notes, Vice President Kamala Harris is correct to identify a housing shortage, but... "Unfortunately, her proposed solutions seem too small and too poorly targeted to generate enough housing to make America’s most productive places more affordable." It may seem extreme, but Dr. Glaeser makes the case based on the merits: -- "Per capita, there was less than half as much permitting in 2023 as in 2003 or 1973." -- Decades ago when construction boomed, "existing residents didn’t control the permitting process, and zoning still accommodated growth." -- "Residents have made it particularly difficult to build in the most productive parts of America, such as Silicon Valley, which means that America’s GDP is much lower than it would be if people could move to where the jobs pay the most." -- "Areas with the most upward mobility limit building the most, which makes America more permanently unequal." Dr. Glaeser's proposal primarily targets major coastal cities, which just might be enough to ward off right-wing cries of "big government" overreach. (And worth noting to that argument, this is an incentive -- not a mandate.) The legislation could be narrowly targeted to problematic offenders. "States with high-price, low-construction counties would have to figure out how to overrule local zoning codes themselves or lose federal transportation funding," he writes. Dr. Glaeser closes with this: "America’s housing crisis is a deep, self-inflicted wound." Big problems require big solutions. I don't know if this is the right one, but it's an interesting model. Thoughts? #housing #construction #affordablehousing https://lnkd.in/gjYW7D55