On May 1, St. Paul’s draconian rent control ordinance took effect. The law caps rent increases to 3 percent, though property owners can appeal to government officials for a higher increase. In June, Dominium, a local housing producer, notified tenants in one of its apartment buildings that rents would be increasing by 7.97 percent. Tenants…
In late March, the Montclair (New Jersey) Property Owners Association reached a compromise with city officials over a rent control ordinance the city passed in 2020. Landlords had petitioned for a referendum on the ordinance. As a part of the compromise, landlords agreed to withdraw their petition. Landlords may think that the compromise serves their…
Political pundit Adam Johnson takes issue with a trend among landlords to “rebrand” themselves as “housing providers” because “landlord” is a feudal term. He writes, But landlords do not comprise a vulnerable or protected class; they are not dispossessed, historically marginalized, or a minority group in urgent need of reclaiming their humanity. Conveniently, Johnson ignores…
Barry Fagin, a Senior Fellow at the Independence Institute in Denver, correctly notes that conservatives are very confused about the meaning of property rights. As examples, he cites Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis’ ban of “vaccine passports” and conservative calls to regulate social media companies like Facebook and Twitter. Fagin concludes that property rights have fallen…
If we truly want to solve the affordable housing crisis, then we cannot look at each issue in isolation. We must consider the full context. The affordability of housing involves more than simply the cost of housing. It also includes an individual’s income. And, just as there are many restrictions on housing producers to build…
As rents soar in many parts of the country, government officials and housing advocates are increasingly looking to rent control—caps on what landlords may charge—to moderate prices. However, rent control ignores a basic principle of economics. One of the fundamental principles of economics is the law of supply and demand. This principle holds that if…
Across the nation, individuals want to live closer to the central city. They want easy access to restaurants, retail stores, and entertainment. They want shorter commutes to work and “walkable” communities. In response to this growing demand, developers and entrepreneurs are investing in neighborhoods, many of them impoverished, near the central city. As these investments…
For a century, zoning has been used to segregate “incompatible” land uses. In most cities, each area of the city mandates that land be used for residential, commercial, or industrial purposes. And in most cities, much of the land (often over 60 percent) is zoned for single-family homes. Defenders of segregating land uses have long…
Across the nation, low-income families face a severe shortage of affordable housing. (Housing is considered affordable if it consumes 30 percent of less of a family’s income.) While there is widespread agreement that a problem exists, there is little agreement on the proper solution. Indeed, many of the proposed solutions conflict with one another and…
Progressives are particularly adept at presenting proposals with lofty goals. And those proposals almost never work out as promised. To Progressives, good intentions are more important than good results. A recent article on CNN’s website illustrates this point. The article notes that the nation has a severe shortage of housing for low-income families. This, the…
Throughout the pandemic, government officials have made policy decisions founded on short-term thinking. They have made decisions to solve an immediate problem while failing to consider the full context. It was inevitable that eventually the chickens would come home to roost. For example, when government forced businesses to close, tens of millions lost their jobs…
Like many cities across the nation, Olympia, Washington is facing a shortage of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income families. The city council is currently trying to figure out how much money it can extort from developers before it kills the golden goose. Of course, the city council isn’t wording it quite that way. In…