Remember Jimmy McMillan? He’s “the rent is too damn high!” shouting, six-time New York City mayoral candidate with the, er — Rent is Too Damn High Party.
McMillan is at least partly right. It’s no mystery that rents are so high. Government policies are aimed at just that result.
In New York City, rent control discourages new supply as well as maintaining existing supplies — causing shortages leading to higher prices. In many cities, particularly in Blue political metropolises, zoning has pretty much the same effect.
Meanwhile, pumping subsidies into the demand side of the rental housing market doesn’t exactly decrease prices.
Last weekend, the Tyler Morning Telegraph offered up “Housing Choice Voucher program helps families,” reporting on 65-year-old Brinda Meier’s effort to land one of 500 “popular” Housing Choice Vouchers offered with grants of federal tax dollars distributed through Tyler’s Neighborhood Services Department. The voucher goes to help pay the rent.
That’s nice, of course, and no doubt why the program is popular. But the landlord actually cashes the voucher check. Moreover, to the extent these rent subsidies allow folks to afford higher rents, they in turn keep those rents higher — including for folks whose voucher numbers won’t come up in the “please Uncle Sam help pay my rent” lottery.
We discover that Meier, who lives on Social Security and food stamps, is preparing to move across town. She’s found a new place to rent, $200 cheaper than her current place — and in a better neighborhood. She tells the reporter that she’ll move without regard to whether she wins the rent subsidy.
So taxpayers may subsidize someone who doesn’t need it, serving only to keep rents too darn high.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “Rent Too High?”
THat’s because the banks control this country. There is not one single market that is not manipulated by some government agency or another. They are determined to push the day of reckoning into our children’s tomorrow because to not do so, they will all be revealed as an incompetant bunch of college professors hired by crooked bankers to rig markets.
The Fed is supposed to create a climate of price stability. But they choose to prop up markets to protect the banks. But guess what? Look at the recent oil market and see how fast a market can become undone when phoney prices lead businesses to invest in markets where the prices are artificially high due to manipulation.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014 – 12-18/its-huge-crisis-uk-oil-industry-close-collapse-people-are-being-laid
Market manipulation always has consequences which are unintended. All such programs are ill conceived short-sighted and eventually unsustainable.
More do-gooders paving the road to Hell.
Maybe they could do like Seattle, fixing supply by capping the number of dwellings, leaving prices to head into the statosphere, effectively pricing the laborers who would maintain, clean, cook, and repair to where they can no longer afford to live there and must commute from 50 miles away because the city has prevented anyone from building closer.
You CAN get good help but you don’t have to live with them.