The Right Answer to Homelessness

The second Atlantic piece I wanted to comment on is “The Obvious Answer to Homelessness” by Jerusalem Demsas. In the piece the author makes a point which should be obvious but, apparently, is not. The cities and states with the highest numbers and rates of homelessness are not those with the highest rates of poverty, mental illness, or drug addiction but those in which there is just not enough “affordable housing” for the people who are trying to live there. The “obvious answer” to which the author refers is to build more affordable housing.

To the author’s credit attention is drawn to the biggest impediment to building more affordable housing, zoning, and its handmaiden, the full-throated support of progressives for building affordable housing in someone else’s neighborhood.

There’s an old daily strip from the Broom-Hilda comic strip in which Broom-Hilda is walking down the street and passes in front of a booth that Irwin the Troll has set up with the banner, “Questions Answered: 5 cents”. Irwin is, of course, providing the most absurd answers imaginable. Broom-Hilda walks a little farther to find another booth, set up by Gaylord the vulture with the banner, “Questions Answered Correctly: $5″.

Building more affordable housing is, of course, one possible solution to the problem of homelessness but there are others and some of them may be more practical and have fewer run-on effects. Is there any amount of money and construction which will build enough housing in San Francisco’s Mission District?

I would argue enthusiastically against higher federal housing subsidies. For an idea of why read up on the history of Pruitt-Igoe or Cabrini Green. The federal government’s track record in affordable housing is, shall we say, blemished.

We might consider the matter a different way: it’s not that there isn’t enough housing but that there are too many people. It’s a truism that you get more of what you subsidize. Do we really need more people who can’t afford to live wherever it is they’re trying to live?

If we want state and local governments to build more affordable housing, I would propose a head tax on businesses, i.e. a fixed fee extracted from businesses for each employee. The fee would be used to defray the costs of supporting these workers, i.e. housing, safety, sanitary, education, etc. You might be amazed at how many businesses are dependent on the present subsidies for their very existence and which ones they are.