Two recent op-eds illustrate the dilemmas lawmakers face when dealing with unaffordable housing. The first explains to readers on Capitol Hill how Oregon is pretending to make housing more affordable when in fact almost everything it does makes it less affordable.
The article points out that in 1971 Oregon’s then-governor Tom McCall told a national group, “We want you to visit our state, but for heaven’s sake, don’t move here!” To make sure they didn’t, the Oregon legislature passed and McCall signed a 1973 land-use law that ended up limiting all urban growth to less than 1.2 percent of the land in the state. Naturally, developable land has become expensive and housing has become unaffordable, which helps keep people from moving to the state.
The article suggests, however, the state officials must be disappointed that Washington has made itself even less affordable despite not passing a similar law until 1990. As a result, many of the efforts made to provide “affordable housing” must be viewed as ways “to prevent a flood of Washingtonians from moving into more affordable Oregon.” Rent control, which every economist agrees makes housing less affordable, is only one of the ways the state is doing that.
Generally, people are obliged to select neither buying pills nor 100mg viagra for sale buying their other needs. Key ingredients of Shilajit ES capsule include improved physical performance, viagra online shop unica-web.com normal functioning of lungs and kidneys. In cheapest cialis uk the end it all comes to personal choice. In rare cases, uterine fibroids may turn into cancers. cialis generico canada The Orange County Register published the second article, which argues that California must grow out, not up, to make its housing more affordable. Written in response to an article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the op-ed argues that growing denser “exactly the wrong prescription for a state whose urban areas are already the densest in the nation.”
As the Antiplanner has previously pointed out, denser housing costs a lot more to build than low-density housing, and urban land is a lot more expensive if developers can’t use land on the urban fringe. Thus, California proposals to deregulate urban zoning without deregulating rural zoning won’d make housing more affordable. Although the article appeared on the Register‘s web site on April 3, it also appeared in the newspaper’s April 6 edition.
Oregon elected officials seem to think they can make the state more affordable by regulating affordability. California legislators want to achieve affordability through deregulation of urban zoning, but that won’t work either. In both cases, the cause of affordability problems is rural land-use regulation, and those who sincerely want to make housing more affordable can only do so by abolishing that regulation.
“Expensive” is a very subjective term. A lot of people CAN actually afford DC or LA or NYC, but they don’t want to live with roommates or in a studio apartment. They want a one bedroom penthouse downtown or they want to buy a property so they can be like the baby boomer generation with kids and a dog; only urban. When this is not possible with their income, they claim it is “too expensive”. If something you want is too expensive for you in a given area, that means you should do one of two things; Move or focus your energy on making more money. Getting rid of the UGB in Oregon wouldn’t deflate the prices, it’d collapse the artificially inflated real estate prices that major real estate corporations and lobbyists have fought TOOTH and Nail to keep that way, THEIR Equity is tied into this. You think the government who depends on the tax money from this is gonna say “Meh, we’ll shutdown UGB’s”
California and Oregon are expensive, it’s urban growth boundaries are not solely government based they’re demand based; like everyone wanting to be near the coast and foremost of all Geography based………… Mountains and agriculture to the north and East, Pacific ocean to the west, Scorching desert to the East and that shithole called Mexico to the South. You wanna live in the desert; so does Oregon have arid regions past the Cascades. You wanna live there, that’s fine, but this delusion you can take with you the East Coast vegetation and style of housing. Get used to water restrictions, driving 200 miles to go somewhere interesting, spending a lot of your time indoors with the AC on cause it’s Hot.
Lennar corporation has shitloads of money, they should build artificial islands off the California coast like Florida did in the 1920’s. Beverly hills has a population density of 33,000 per sq mile, so a 10 sq mi island can host over 300,000 or basically every rich A-hole in Los Angeles. 90210………… 2.0
And free up real estate for average folks to afford again.
The Soviet Union had affordable housing. If you were lucky, you had a family of 5 living in a 1200 sq ft. 3 bedroom flat on the 8th floor. Realizing that grass is a weed that hides the true beauty of natural dirt, they’d throw a handful of these by each other. This would ensure that every day thousands of feet would be killing all the grass, giving the dirt the ability to show it’s full beauty. 😉
Colorado’s new Democratic Senate majority along with the Democratic House are proposing allowing cities to impose rent control:
CONCERNING THE ABILITY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS TO STABILIZE RENTS ON PRIVATE RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY
From the sponsor:
The bill wants to repeal a prohibition that doesn’t allow local governments to control rent prices. It gives the power back to local communities, so they can decide what is best for them. The market right now has led to one-bedroom apartment going for upwards of $2,000 a month here in Denver. We should be doing better than that. We should give our cities and our counties the tools to address the affordable housing crisis because right now our situation is unattainable.
Senator Julie Gonzales (D-Denver)
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