Re:SF YIMBY Platform
by smallnamespace on Friday August 19, 2016 @01:39AM
(#12318171)
I think it's wise to distinguish between efficiency and fairness.
The SF real estate market right now is quite efficient; houses and condos sell quickly at the going market rate, but you might find the effect on the allocation of housing to be very unfair in that some people have much easier access to housing than others.
Price controls favor fairness over efficiency; e.g. selling bread below market price means everyone waits in line, which is by definition inefficient. It is fair, however, in that both rich and poor wait equally.
> They want the market to clear
That's what I mean by compulsion begetting compulsion -- the market clears just fine right now, but price and/or rent controls will probably make it not clear, at which point you need to add other taxes to force it to clear again.
The interesting thing here, to me, is that the government wouldn't want to control allocation as in a command economy; instead, they merely want to punish people for making the market inefficient. They want the market to clear, so that they don't have to figure out how to centrally allocate anything. We already have a lot of government regulations with this explicit goal. I'd be shocked if we couldn't work one out for real estate.