According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Texas has a shortage of about 600,000 rental homes that are affordable and available to extremely low-income renters. Across the state, there are just 29 affordable and available housing units for every 100 extremely low-income families. The shortage is slightly more than 170,000 for the Houston-Woodlands-Sugar Land…
An opinion piece in the Santa Fe New Mexican argues that affordable housing really means subsidized housing. The author correctly notes that government housing programs are subsidized by taxpayers, and below market-rate housing (often extorted from developers for permission to build) is subsidized by other home buyers and renters. The author then asks, who is…
After throwing millions of Americans out of work with lockdowns, the government discovered that many of those individuals could not pay their rent. The government responded with a moratorium on evictions. And then, when landlords began to face economic hardship, the government responded with rent assistance. But according to CNBC, only $5 billion of the…
In a court trial, specific rules govern what evidence is admissible. According to Wikipedia The law of evidence, also known as the rules of evidence, encompasses the rules and legal principles that govern the proof of facts in a legal proceeding. The purpose of these principles is to assure a fair and impartial trial. However,…
James R. Taylor, the President of The Heartland Institute, writes that Big Tech is hypocritical for using property rights claims to argue against government intervention in their businesses. Those same companies, he writes, have previously pressured government to intervene in the affairs of other businesses. Certainly, Big Tech is hypocritical in its application of property…
The Biden Administration has announced plans to build or restore 2 million homes to address the housing shortage. This is a very grand plan, and it is receiving praise from many advocates for low-income housing. However, it is more than likely that the number of homes built or restored will fall far short of the…
Last Thursday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill that prohibits large social media companies from blocking content or removing users because of their political views. In a video posted on Facebook, Abbott said, “There is a dangerous movement by some social media companies to silence conservative ideas and values.” Apparently, conservative ideas and values…
In October 2020, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, city council enacted a citywide 100 percent affordable housing overly (AHO). The AHO allows apartment buildings up to four stories in all neighborhoods in the city. However, all units must be permanently affordable to households earning up to 100% of area median income. The standard for affordability is paying…
On September 8, 2021 the Pacific Legal Foundation hosted a webinar titled “Can Free Markets Solve America’s Housing Crisis?” The panel members were Jim Burling from the Pacific Legal Foundation, Judge Glock from The Cicero Institute, Nolan Gray from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and Patrick Tuohey from the Better Cities Project.
In April, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act. The bill would “invest” $172 billion over 10 years to upgrade over 950,000 public housing units. When the bill was announced, Sanders said, “It is unacceptable that our nation’s public housing is in a state of chronic disrepair and…
Housing advocates frequently claim that the housing crisis represents a market failure, which Investopedia defines as an inefficient distribution of goods and services in the free market. In market failure, the individual incentives for rational behavior do not lead to rational outcomes for the group. In other words, each individual makes the correct decision for…
About 24 hours after the Supreme Court struck down the CDC’s latest eviction moratorium, housing advocates assembled in at least twenty cities to protest. The protests were organized by Cancel the Rents for the purpose of demanding that Congress enact an eviction moratorium for the duration of the pandemic. Cancel the Rents (CTR) called for…