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Jul 12 2022

Liberal Lunacy Drives Up Cost of Housing

Biden’s maniacal War on Energy and commitment to massive wasteful spending are not the only reasons inflation won’t be easy to get under control. There is also the rising price of housing. As always, liberal policies are making matters worse.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Climbing housing costs are set to keep inflation elevated this year, creating another challenge for Federal Reserve officials who want to see signs that price pressures are easing before slowing their interest-rate increases.

These interest rate increases are likely to trigger a recession — assuming we aren’t already in one. But even that would be better than runaway inflation.

If you want housing to be prohibitively expensive, a tried and true tactic is rent control. St Paul demonstrates. As of May, it caps rent increases at 3% per year, about one third of the current inflation rate:

This strict new rent control is hitting while building costs have soared. Between the first quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, construction costs rose 18.2% in nearby Minneapolis…

The effect this will have on the construction of new housing should be obvious. Who is going to build if they cannot turn a profit?

Citing rent control, investors recently paused development on the 3,800-unit Highland Bridge project. Its builders would have set aside 20% of units for affordable housing, with 10% going to those earning 30% or less of area median income.

Democrats squawk that they want affordable housing. What they actually want is Americans living in tents, dependent on handouts. This was proven after Democrats took total control of California.

The best way cities can make housing affordable is to have policies that increase the housing supply. Rent control restricts supply and is economic madness, as St. Paul is proving.

Many voters appear to be so cognitively dysfunctional that they honestly cannot see the inevitable outcome of policies like rent control. Those running the Democratic Party don’t have that excuse. They know they are putting people out on the streets by preventing the construction of new housing, whether through rent control or through excessive regulation as in California.

Misery is not a bug of liberal policy; it is a feature. As Founding Father of progressivism Vladimir Lenin put it, “Worse is better.” The more desperate people there are, the easier it is to impose communism. That’s why the Democratic Party is waging a war of extermination against the middle class.

On a tip from Varla.


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