Article
Dear 2020 Candidates, Americans Are Worried About Housing
13 February 2020
Article
Letter: No Mystery About Affordable Housing Dearth
NMHC President Doug Bibby writes what needs to be done to address America’s housing affordability crisis in the Wall Street Journal.
Regarding your editorial “Rentals Everywhere, but No Place to Live” (Feb. 6): Anyone who’s paying attention to our national housing-affordability challenges agrees that the most effective way to get costs down for American families is building more housing at a variety of price points, boosting supply to meet demand. But when regulation after regulation is layered on to construction, costs go up and new housing becomes out of reach for too many.
A full 32.1% of multifamily development costs are driven by government regulations—fees, standards, approval requirements, impact studies. Nearly a third of development costs come directly from federal, state and local governments trying to pull the right levers and control production in the perfect way. The result? Places with the heaviest hand of government are hurting hardworking families trying to make ends meet the most. Facts are stubborn things, but that isn’t stopping central planners and rent-control fanatics from pursuing policies that actually hurt the people they’re trying to help. Americans deserve better. We should streamline regulations, give people more housing options and bring costs down.
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