In 1991 I sold the Fieldstone Company 13
birds for $4,400,000, $677,000 a pair. Actually, it was the bird's homes,
sometimes called nests, which Fieldstone was buying. Fieldstone was being
required to mitigate the so-called environmental affect of widening a road
for a new subdivision. The escrow fell through after 24 months of studies
that cost over $400,000. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service decided that the
birdhouses should be located in Carlsbad at a cost of $12,000,000 instead
of across from the Wild Animal Park where bird land could be bought for
only $4,400,000. Ask yourself; do you think such requirements might have
something to do with San Diego's high cost of housing?
Fieldstone got off cheap. Also in 1991 CALTRANS was required to spend $9,000,000
to relocate 8 pair of least Bell's Vireos, over one million dollars for each
pair. Last year, it cost another developer $1,750,000 to re-locate from a
planned new road the homes of two Quino checkerspot butterflies, yes I said two.
If you find this hard to believe you're not very sophisticated when it comes to
hardball politics and understanding why homes are so expensive in San Diego.
The fashionable idiocy of habitat mitigation is one of those ideas that George
Orwell said only intellectuals could believe in because no one else could be
such a fool. Well, you might also add affordable housing to the list of
fashionable idiocies. That is, the term "affordable housing" when used in the
sense that people with no money are entitled to live in expensive brand new
housing, at a price the majority of self-supporting people cannot afford.
In March it was reported that in the U.S., the median priced home sold for
$151,100. The median priced house in San Diego County sold for $304,160. These
alarming statistics call for much hand wringing, gnashing of teeth, a spate of
articles about the lack of affordable housing, a call for declaring a state of
emergency in housing and rent controls.
Let's cut through the buffalo chips and go straight to the heart of the issue.
There is no affordable housing because politicians don't want it. Everything
else is lip service. Why, you ask? Because, if they support more housing, they
cannot get elected or re-elected to office. It's that simple! There are enough
activists in local politics, aided by the news media, to determine the outcome
of each election between pro-housing and anti-housing candidates. Since 1970
there have been only 5 candidates, who are unabashed believers in property
rights and the freedom to choose where to live, who have been elected to the
San Diego City Council or the Board of Supervisors.
The production of housing requires land, labor, capital and political approval.
In San Diego, there is no shortage of land, labor or capital so there is little
reason for housing to cost more here than in other parts of the country, except
for political reasons. Of the four factors of production, political approval
adds the greatest increment to the price of housing.
If we use the difference between the median price of a home in the U.S. and the
median price in San Diego County as a rough proxy, we see that political
approval adds about $153,000 to the price of the average home. That's right,
the effect of political decisions, whether they be called phased growth, slow
growth, controlled growth, Tier 1, 2, & 3 growth, directed growth, managed
growth, smart growth, whatever the current fad, government regulations,
planning, and zoning have doubled the price of housing in San Diego. Just the
difference between raw land prices and land with a government approved Tentative
Map (a 2 to 7 year process) is astronomical. In a free market there would be no
difference in the two land values other than filing fees. For confirmation see:
Property
and Freedom, by Bernard Siegan; The Advisory Commission on Regulatory
Barriers to Affordable Housing, by Anthony Downs; Comment on Anthony
Down's Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing, by William Fischel; and
Bernard Frieden's, The Environment Hustle.
Fred
Schnaubelt, City Councilman 1977-81, 2728 Adams Ave., S.D. 92116 (619) 280-2082
Part II
