How to solve the "housing crisis"

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Several online commenters have written about the "housing crisis," suggesting off-site, modular building, or reduced regulation, etc., would solve the problem. I'd suggest these amount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

First of all, there's really no shortage of built homes. There are more vacant homes in the US than its current, biggest-since-the-Great-Depression homeless population. San Francisco has five times as many vacant homes as its homeless population, for one.

Is there any suggestion to raise property taxes on vacant properties, as Vancouver did to solve this problem? [Crickets]

Nixon stopped the federal government from building affordable housing, and Reagan--as he lowered taxes on the wealthy roughly 50%, and with his successor raised payroll taxes eightfold--cut HUD's affordable housing budget by 75%. Clinton signed the Faircloth amendment limiting federal affordability support, too, so the attack on the poor is bipartisan.

Setting that history aside, we could build mixed-income (poor among the wealthy), mixed-use (offices and retail among the residences), and remove a regressive tax imposed by sprawl--i.e., having to own a car. People could walk to work, school, or shopping. Four- or Eight-plexes among the mansions would accomplish this, and the poor (more generous, less materialistic) might be a good influence on the wealthy.😊

Build pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use at sufficient densities (11 units per acre and up), and we would have enough customers and transit riders within a walk of those destinations that local commerce and transit would be financially viable.

People often say they don't want denser neighborhoods--something that dramatically lowers land cost per unit--but many people pay premiums to live in NYC or Hong Kong.

The problem with density is that public services are absolutely critical. People are concerned about crime (yet per capita crime rates are lower in densely built NYC than in sprawlified Phoenix, AZ), and need things like parks, museums, etc. As I've pointed out above, the public realm (what's available to everyone) has been aggressively defunded since LBJ left office.

Implementing this would be a bit of a turnaround in a country where people are shocked to hear public enterprises actually beat private ones in providing goods and services. Publicly-owned SMUD is 35% cheaper than privately-owned PG&E, for just one example. Yet gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer somehow thinks "competition" will improve a natural monopoly like an electric utility. Wouldn't public ownership be an option? [again: crickets]

Unfortunately, the US population is eager for a deck chair rearrangement rather than a genuine solution, and kept that way by the massive marketing machine that tells us the post office is bad, and the courts are crooked, etc. And there is no shortage of well-funded saboteurs scheming to make those criticisms come true.