SF Chron: $20 billion housing tax won’t make Bay Area more affordable. How about a new approach?
Word is starting to spread across the whole Bay Area about the misguided and mammoth regional housing tax that will be on the November ballot. And the initiative's deep flaws are getting daylighted in city after city. The result? New, unexpected ideas are getting voiced. Thomas Busse writes in the SF Chron.
An obscure special district called the Bay Area Housing Financing Authority is proposing a $20 billion bond measure to build affordable housing. Meanwhile, San Francisco has passed numerous affordable housing bonds, and the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.
Recent population declines in several areas of California are simultaneous with housing cost increases — an indicator that housing affordability might not be a supply-and-demand issue.
Perhaps it’s time to rethink strategy. How about replacing property taxes with land-value taxes, bringing back savings and loan banks, repealing inclusionary zoning, repealing development impact fees, limiting real estate investment trusts and corporate housing ownership or chartering public housing development banks?
Moreover, so-called “affordable housing” programs use creative definitions of “affordable.” A 2016 report from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office found that affordable housing locks people into situations that force them to make life choices that are not always optimal.
It’s not hard to imagine an Orwellian situation where in exchange for your “affordable” unit, you have to comply with another government interest such as taking an injection or signing up for the draft.
Read the whole thing here.
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