Your columnist, Thomas Elias, has a solution for sky-high California
housing prices ("Housing crunch driving young buyers from state,"
Source code: 20050311tza). Grant a five-year reduction in property
taxes for first-time buyers and adjust the home ownership exemption
for inflation from $7,000, set in 1974, to $80,000.
Elias totally misses the forest for the trees. Home prices are
outrageously high in coastal California areas because
environmentalists want them high, existing homeowners want them high,
and politicians want them high. Of the co-conspirators, only
politicians -- through the magic of "wealth zoning" -- have the power
to make them high and keep them high.
Oh yeah, I know, politicians wring their hands and gnash their teeth
over the lack of affordability, but you have to know the First Rule of
Politics: Watch how a politician votes, not what he says. Most
politicians work seven days a week, 24 hours a day to raise the cost
of housing and then spend one day a year (Affordable Housing Hearing
Day) bemoaning the high cost of housing for which they are personally
responsible.
What did 18 city councils and the Board of Supervisors think would
happen to housing prices when they zoned 172,000 acres (by adopting
the Multiple Species Conservation Plan) off limits to home
construction, bringing the total county land owned by the government
to over 61 percent? What do they think will happen when the county's
2020 Plan is implemented, further reducing home sites? They all were
taught the law of supply and demand in school, but do they really
think they can rescind it by passing another law?
They might just as well pass an ordinance that water must run uphill.
Previously, The Daily Transcript reported Santee's Fanita Ranch
was originally planned for 14,000 homes (about the d ensity of west
Clairemont). Last month Fanita was approved for less than 2,000, a
slight reduction of 86 percent, or 12,000 homes. Does anyone believe
that reducing the supply of housing by 12,000 units won't affect the
price of homes?
It seems awfully stupid for politicians to keep raising prices, then
subsidize them.
Mr. Elias, all that's needed to make housing more affordable is to
renounce wealth zoning and reinstate the land use policies in effect
in 1974, when some our most beautiful subdivisions were built.
Fred Schnaubelt
San Diego
It's the Politicians, Stupid!
Fred Schnaubelt