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“ what is the role of HUD these days anyway?” would be a great future topic for a newsletter!

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I agree!

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Sep 20Liked by Diana Lind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h46WVCr4zk0

Really interesting video about a CLT in Toronto

My main worry with a lot of the shared equity movement type programs (especially CLTs) is that they’ll just become another cudgel of NIMBYism. (Though this time more likely from lower income residents instead of higher income ones).

In effect I worry that if a community directly owns most of its buildings (homes, shops, etc) in such a way that established tenets / businesses have stable rents no matter market conditions then the innate human dislike of change will prevail and the community will end up frozen in time, slowly aging and closed to outsiders.

This might be fine for a lot of communities, but for the places where our housing crisis really exists (downtowns and rapidly gentrifying inner cities with good transit links) these policies would likely exacerbate the problem as they would freeze (often well below required density) neighborhoods in place with no incentive to expand housing supply; similar to the effect of historic preservation districts.

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I hope Harris embraces the AOC approach outlined here. Definitely a smart game changer.

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“The authority AOC envisions would require a $30 billion budget…It would also entail a parallel loan fund. The 1.25 million housing units anticipated to be built by the authority would have their rent pegged to 25 percent of a household’s income, thus preserving affordability.

It would be hard for YIMBYs to argue with the idea of spending $30 billion to increase housing supply.”

I don’t believe the YIMBY movement will like this at all. All this does is create more waste. When the government builds something, especially as described here requiring “union jobs” everything costs more….a lot more.

To fund the housing, we have to take tax money from someone else to build homes at inflated prices. Further, since we are controlling the mortgage price, there will inevitably be a chronic shortage of these homes. And what happens when the household income drops to zero? Does the mortgage fall to zero? What happens if the owners take part-time jobs, secure in the comfort that the government (other taxpayers) will always foot the difference?

I realize I haven’t read the bill, but ideas like this are littered with minefields and opportunities for waste. Better just make it easier to build housing and allow the problem to solve itself.

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