Realty411 Magazine A Spotlight on Charles and Lena Sells | Page 34
Stop Dissin' the Housing Market
—Set it Free!
By: Christopher Thornberg, PhD
Editors Note: This posting was originally published on the Opinion Page of the Los Angeles Daily News.
H
igh housing costs
continue to be at the
center of policy
debates in Los
Angeles—and across much of the
state. This intensifying focus is
warranted now more than ever
given how the crisis has moved
from simply eating up the
disposable income of residents to
slowing overall employment
growth in coastal economies –
something driven by a lack of
available workers, which in turn is
driven by the housing shortage.
Sadly, the many proffered
solutions to the problem remain
wildly off base and are not likely
to accomplish much of anything.
Take the City of Los Angeles’s
proposed linkage fee, a fee to be
paid by developers of marketrate
properties to fund more affordable
housing – and something that has
been endorsed by many prominent
voices in the community in recent
weeks. That support has been
motivated in part by the results of
a recent homeless count done in
Los Angeles County, which
suggested that there was a 20%
increase in the County’s homeless
population over the last year. This
is a total red herring when it comes
to addressing the lack of new
housing supply.
The recent homeless census
count indicates that the total
number of homeless in Los Angeles
34
County is 53,000—a minuscule
fraction of the 10 million plus
people who call the County home.
Moreover, a clear majority of these
folks are homeless not because of
the high cost of housing but because
of mental and/or substance abuse
problems, serious issues that would
leave them homeless regardless of
the current market price of housing.
These people desperately need
help—but a different kind of help
than the linkage fee would provide.
And the few who are helped
represent the proverbial tip of the
iceberg—for every family that
receives support there are another
thousand that continue to struggle
as rising rents eat into their incomes.
Conservatively, the County would