Thursday, April 06, 2017

Los Angeles's Unfair Housing Policy of Forcing Developers to Make Low Income Housing

One of the least fair housing policies is the mandatory policy requiring developers to set aside a portion of units in a new housing development for 'low income' households. In practical terms, this means that individuals who achieve must subsidize, through higher prices, those who are moochers and are not even paying the cost of constructing such a unit. Even liberals don't like this (at least, when they have to live with the results). After reading many Yelp reviews of luxury apartments, many tenants are shocked that people with very low income are living in the same building as them. Even people who reflexively vote Democrat can feel that there is a sense of injustice that they may have graduated from college, perhaps graduate or professional school, and they end up in the same place as some loser who dropped out of high school, used drugs, etc, etc. When it comes to hotels, we let the free-market prevail. We don't assume that someone who dropped out of high school will be staying at the Ritz Carlton. But in cities like LA, there is an assumption that when it comes to long-term housing, the free-market cannot be trusted.

A politically incorrect view of Hawaii

Here is the politically incorrect viewpoint of the day: Some Hawaiians (mostly activist nuts) are upset with the United States for overturning the monarchy and later turning Hawaii into a territory, and later, a state. Even the U.S. Congress and former President Bill Clinton actually apologized to the Hawaiians for doing so. However, this was unnecessary. Eventually, SOME country would have conquered Hawaii one way or another because it simply lacked the ability to defend itself militarily (what are they going to defend themselves with--coconuts?). Would the Hawaiians have been happier with China or Japan running their island? I doubt it. Hawaiians should be happy that they are a state and have the protections and political and economic stability that comes from being a U.S. state. They have the ability to elect the nutjobs who run the island very badly and they have representation in the U.S. Congress. To the extent that things aren't perfect in the Aloha state, maybe they should question the one-party state instead. ;0