Subsidies won’t make housing affordable

Lack of affordable housing has been a big issue in most growing cities around the country. The Twin Cities is no exception.

So much has been tried to help reduce the cost of housing for low income individuals. And efforts have also been wasted trying to pull people out of homelessness. There is nothing new with the current effort to push for legislation to create a rent subsidy program for low income individuals.  Housing subsidies will not make housing cheaper, but push cost onto tax payers without addressing the root cause of the problem.

Legislators need to understand that in as long as housing supply fails to meet increasing demand, there won’t be affordable housing. Legislators need to focus on policies that will improve housing supply. And this includes loosening regulations and reducing fees.

A lot of cities have built their way out of unaffordable housing by minimizing regulatory burden imposed on commercial housing providers. Big cities with low housing price, like Tokyo, have lowly-regulated housing markets that allow for housing supply to keep up with demand.

And that is what the Twin Cities need, not more subsidies.