realestatefreedomDurham’s city officials are nonplussed that their fetish for housing “diversity” has not produced the desired results. For years they, and their neighbors in the Triangle, have tried to bribe, extort, or otherwise bend the arms of developers to make them include some percentage of “affordable” housing in their developments along with (using their logic) “unaffordable” housing.

The incentives they have offered have not been attractive enough to developers, they lament, so they’re trying to find a way to replace their list of incentives with something new. I have an idea: Instead of trying to replace this failed intrusion into the housing market, why not just let people build what they know the market likes? There’s a thought.

Developers and housing providers understand the free market. If you build what people like, they will come. If government makes them build something that bureaucrats think people SHOULD like, they will not come (does Rolling Hills ring a bell?). Why is this so hard to understand? Let builders build whole developments of “affordable” housing. Let other developers build nice, full-feature homes in whole developments among other nice, full-feature homes. That way, everybody wins.

Where did we ever get the notion that someone in an inexpensive house has to live among others with expensive houses in order to be happy? No, if we strip it to its core, the “affordable” housing movement is simply a way to stick it to people who can afford, er, “unaffordable” housing.

Our politically correct bureaucrats and elected officials feel that every development must include some divined ratio of “affordable” housing or else it’s not “fair.” What nonsense. This kind of meddling only stymies the developers’ attempts to build what will sell. Don’t replace anything. Just stay out of it.

Note: Graphic courtesy of the Real Estate Freedom Podcast.