Photos: 1930 vintage Val D’Amour Apartments, 854 South Oxford Avenue, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, CA (LOC); 2007 Van Nuys apartment, VanOwen/Kester.
Developers and the City of LA are battling over city regulations that mandate private development set aside a percentage of units for “affordable” housing. This article in the LA TIMES goes into detail on it.
My opinion on this subject can be summed up by these points:
1. Developers for profit should not be forced to provide affordability any more than restaurants, automakers, grocers, or cruise lines should.
2. When the city regulates and creates thousands of laws and fees on development it discourages building and makes everything more expensive for buyer and builder alike.
3. Los Angeles should be loosening, not tightening, zoning to make it possible to build higher and denser housing near bus and train lines.
4. The more “affordable” housing is mandated, the less it will exist.
5. NYC, with its 60 year-old rent control laws, is a perfect example of tight regulation and the unintended effect of causing an entire city to be unaffordable.
This argument could go on and on, but the way to make a market work better is to let it work.
Here in Van Nuys 
I have never had a good view of the private sector. I use the current housing problem as a reality check. Developers built lots of high cost housing that wages could not support. Now the banks are getting taxpayer dollars to bail out the builders. No the real solution is that private sector has to come up with a real wage probably $20.00 an hour in LA county to be the minimum if you can’t afford it then your company is out of here. Your company is not needed if it is to survive on the impoverishment of the people. Then the rents can be let to rise at there current unaffordable rates and soon no one will want to live in this city. We all live on the backs of people making less than $2,000.00 a month and its time the ones that can afford it pay more. The BIG LIE that government is free look for no new taxes, business can do it better is DEAD.
LikeLike
Developers for profit should not be forced to provide affordability any more than restaurants, automakers, grocers, or cruise lines should.
Generally, I agree with you. But you have to realize that housing is a different animal altogether. Many years ago, national policy dictated that decent, affordable housing was a “right” and it has “emotional” connotations, as Theorris pointed out.
When it comes to grocers, the government may not regulate pricing, but if you can’t afford food, it will subsidize the grocers through food stamps, WIC, etc. The reason being that a person cannot live well without food, just as he or she cannot live well without a home.
It comes down to “the safety net,” which has to exist on some level if we are going to protect the most vulnerable members of our society. Rent control in its current form goes beyond “the safety net” and must be reformed. However, it cannot simply be abolished, as “the market” will not house the most vulnerable members of our society because it will never be profitable.
As you point out, building housing is probably the most expensive and government restricted activity a capitalist can undertake, yet housing continues to be built becuase it remains profitable. Zoning and other government restrictions can be loosened (at great political peril), but new housing will sell at the top of the market, shutting out seniors, low-income workers, etc.
If the government decides that the private sector has no responsibility for providing affordable housing at some level (e.g. rent control, inclusionary zoning, Section 8 subsidies), the only alternative that would maintain “the safety net” would be for government to get back into the housing development business. However, the history of “public housing” shows that such an alternative has dubious value.
LikeLike
Oh and one point you neglected that I think needs to be considered: allowing for low-cost housing brings in a different racial mix given that some racial groups have been traditionally discriminated against and excluded from living in hoity-toity developments and good, well-paying jobs. The notion is that if you force a developer to set aside certain units for low income folks, a measurable percentage of them will be from traditionally marginalized groups.
Perhaps having a more diverse and less racist community is worth the price of setting aside a few low income units.
LikeLike
The intention of rent control or subsidized housing is to allow people who do not make a lot of money or the elderly to maintain their housing and not have to move constantly at the whim of the market, right? Ultimately “rent control” isn’t so much about the market as it is about human emotion. People in New York get to live in the same building for a lifetime, even though there was never an option for them to buy their residence (the landlords weren’t selling, so they had no opportunity to buy.) Manhattan is definitely the most unlivable city on the planet (well not considering Tokyo which is a strong contender.) I was just in Manhattan and noted how pretty much all the street folks are gone now, and there is not a sketch of poverty or homeless folks like I remember from the 80s.
Now I’m not really getting to a point, but your idea is persuasive: ultimately rent control might allow cheap, money grubbing employers to continue to pay crap wages since their workers can afford to live nearby.
It is definitely a complex issue.
LikeLike
3. Los Angeles should be loosening, not tightening, zoning to make it possible to build higher and denser housing near bus and train lines.
That’s an oxymoron. More density especially near near transit requires more public participation in private development.
LikeLike