There are a lot of band wagon jumpers calling out costs lately. We’ve been pointing out how costs imposed by regulations, fees, fines, taxes, redundant infrastructure requirements, and myriad other self-imposed barriers to increasing housing supply make housing more expensive for people. What’s fascinating is to watch politicians and think tanks board the band wagon.

In Seattle, many of the people who are now, finally, understanding that more fees, taxes, and charges add to housing prices still stubbornly cling to the “Grand Bargain,” a scheme also known as Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ) or Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) that will simply add to the layer cake of costs passed on to renters. “Why?” you ask. “Well the density increases and money for affordable housing,” they’d say. Sure. Modest density increases subsidized by renters who will struggle to carry that cost with higher rents.

And in San Francisco, newly elected Mayor London Breed has decided to declare war on slow permitting by creating a whole new bureaucracy for reducing permitting times.

All of this would be just amusing if it wasn’t so dangerous.

Lots of people like to be on the “right side” of the math, especially smart people. But when it comes to the politics they start to squirm. I was asked to comment on Mayor Breed’s new Catch-22 creation — a bureaucracy to eliminate bureaucracy — by the San Francisco Business Times, the Puget Sound Business Journal of the Bay Area. I point out how liberals and progressive’s can’t see the irony in hiring more people to work on slow processing of permits. It’s so obvious it’s sad to have to point it out. But what are we for?

So what’s the answer? Cities need to return to first principles: Housing is not an impact, but a social good. If it’s ugly, has no parking and blocks views, too bad. We need it. If a department wants to leverage new construction as a way to build out its infrastructure, the answer is, “No.” Housing first! More housing, even lots of market-rate housing, means more competition between landlords, not between tenants trying to squeeze into units that are more and more expensive.

Housing isn’t a bad thing, unless you are an suspicious and worried single-family homeowner worried about losing value in your home. When something is scarce it has a higher price. Angry neighbors don’t let their anxiety get in the way of their agenda: slowing and stopping new housing supply. And politicians and think tanks don’t mind making speeches and putting out infographics while doing things that are completely inconsistent with the words and images they are touting, like requiring fees for every square foot of new housing. Saying things about what is right is easy. Doing something about it? That’s tough. You can read the whole article at the San Francisco Business Times web site.

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