On her first day in office, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed an executive order calling for the construction of 36,000 new homes per year. She was especially hoping for lots of new apartments because, as everyone knows, driving is evil and people who live in apartments drive less than people who live in single-family homes.
Source: CoStar via Willamette Week.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who understands how well central planning works that apartment construction in Portland, where close to half of Oregonians live, is now at its lowest level in more than a decade. There are several reasons for this, but among them are several idiotic government policies that have discouraged more construction.
For example, Portland passed an inclusionary zoning ordinance requiring that developers of projects with 20 or more apartments set aside at least 20 percent of them for low-income families or 10 percent for very low income families. As a result, developers are building 19-unit apartments on land that could support 20 or more.
Another is that, in 2019, the Oregon legislature — with strong support from Kotek, who was then speaker of the house — passed the nation’s first statewide rent control law. As every economist knows, rent control is one of the best ways to create a housing shortage.
The Atlantic recently cited an economic study that found that when the number of progressive (read: central planning) voters in a city increases, the number of housing permits falls. As another Atlantic article noted, the five states with the highest rates of homelessness are all run by Democrats.
Progressive policies caused the housing crisis. Progressive reactions to the crisis merely make it worse. Oregon legislators who truly want to solve housing problems, and not just control how people live, should take their hands off of the housing market. That means abolishing urban-growth boundaries and other forms of growth management. It means eliminating rent control, inclusionary zoning, and other “affordable” housing policies. Progressive legislators are totally in love with these policies yet they all do more harm than good.
There’s some real in depth analysis going on in the write up. The cited article notes that rising interest rates are the biggest factor behind the slowdown in housing construction, yet the AP conveniently downplays this, merely grouping it under “one of several reasons”