October82
Well-Known Member
I try to be a practical person, so I don't think I'd put it quite like that. Governments sometimes do good things and sometimes bad. Building codes are great for creating uniform standards that can lower construction costs, and environmental regulations that require clean up of industrial sites before adaptive reuse are probably something we all want government to do.
The thing that is important here is that it's really local government, not federal, or even state that is the barrier to lower housing and development costs. It's almost never out of a desire for government to control the market - rent control is not the dominant issue, and the economic impacts of those can be quite subtle too - but rather it's people who say things like "I don't want to live next to apartments", "I don't want to deal with more traffic in the resort area", or "I want parking to be free" and use local government rules to prioritize those concerns over that of new development and housing affordability.
And while it's similar all throughout California, the CA legislature (not traditionally known for its small government mindset) has passed a number of bills exempting some developments from state level regulations and incentivizing local governments to make changes that lower development and therefore housing costs. In LA and the IE, housing and development costs are starting to stabilize in real terms. Orange County (and San Diego), by contrast, has some of the worst increases in housing costs of any major area in the country. That's not driven by 'big government' types - it's driven at the local level.
IMO, we should spend more time talking about how big developments are financed and approved and less time on the ideological battles. That's the way to solve homelessness and lower housing costs for everyone.
