COPA defeat takeaway #1: What matters most is (lots more) housing
On March 27, SJ's Community and Economic Development Committee voted 3-2 to reject the Housing Dept's report on their COPA proposal. The most compelling argument that surfaced during the meeting was simple: What SJ residents need—especially lower income residents—is an abundance of new (hence more affordable) housing. And that hyper-complex, Rubik's cube proposals like COPA are misguided, as they do nothing to create new housing, and in fact constrain it. Roger Valdez, director at the Center for Housing Economics, explains in Forbes.
The urge to focus attention on trying to stop eviction and change is understandable. But people struggling to make ends meet in the United States would benefit from more housing, not more measurement of marginal problems. Who gets evicted? Poor people. And when a neighborhood changes because property values rise who faces the greatest challenge when housing is scarce? Poor people.
But there is in most quarters of the country a desire to regulate eviction and change out of existence rather than increase the production of housing.
But the solution is not more money but more housing, not more limits and rules and fees and fines, but maximum production. For very poor people on fixed incomes or facing other challenges that are permanent or transitory, subsidized housing makes sense. Otherwise, if unconstrained, housing production can meet most of the demand and direct cash subsidies can help with cost burden.
Money isn’t the problem, it is the fact that housing production is constrained, putting even more pressure on families with less money and resources – so much pressure many give up, expecting eviction and housing problems. Eviction, displacement, gentrification are all terms being used to push for policies that make producing and operating housing more risky and expensive; we simply need more housing of all kinds everywhere for people of all levels of income.
This article originally appeared in Forbes. Read the whole thing here.
This article is part of an Opp Now series on COPA defeat takeaways:
Roger Valdez, director at the Center for Housing Economics, explains that what SJ residents need the most is an abundance of new (hence more affordable) housing.
Building Salt Lake debunks common assumptions about the connections between displacement, gentrification, and new, high-density, high-rent development.
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