The Affordable Housing Crisis

By Dale Cooper

I’ve always found it ironic when mobs of protestors pack counsel chambers to demand that counsels fix the affordable housing crisis, considering that the counsels themselves have been a major cause of the crisis.

These counsels adopt restrictive zoning codes, limit vertical development, assess a bewildering spectrum of impact fees, collect exorbitant excise taxes and organize LIDs that easily add seventy to $100,000 to the cost of each and every housing unit … which pushes occupancy costs so high that living in a tent starts to make sense.

One consequence of this mind-boggling naiveté is the geometrically increasing cost of ministering to and dealing with those who are priced out of housing and make the live-in-a-tent choice. This then leads to higher and higher property taxes, which in turn create more and more homeless who in turn storm the counsel chambers to demand that the counselors fix the problem.