http://www.niagara-gazette.com/local/local_story_275204901.html
Published: October 02, 2006 08:49 pm
DAY 3: Stabilizing neighborhoods
Millions of public dollars will be spent in the next three years on Niagara Falls housing
By Denise Jewell
Niagara Gazette
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Public officials are also working on housing plans that would address the lack of private-sector investment into building new housing in Niagara Falls.
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While the HOPE VI project has been hailed by advocates as a key to revitalizing public housing, local landlords have expressed concerned that the proposal will negatively impact private rental units by pulling tenants into newer public housing.
“We’re putting up units at $200,000 for poor people and you wonder what’s wrong?” asked Ken Hamilton, a Niagara Falls citizen who has spoken out against the project. “If there’s a glut, why extend the glut?”
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Ahh, why isn’t there any private sector investment?
For the same reason that there aren’t any parochial schools being built, you can’t compete with he gubamint “giving away” free or below cost stuff!
There is a reason why the free market allocates resources so efficiently and that mechanism is prices. High prices signal entrepreneurs that there is a potential profit. That signal communicates that there is an unmet need that someone is willing to pay to have satisfied.
Milton Freedman did a great exposition on the pencil. No one had to be told to make it. The marketplace energized a whole bunch of greedy people to get together and work cooperatively to satisfy his basic human need for a pencil. It was not a committee. It was not the gubamint. And, it wasn’t funded using “public money”.
So here we have the gubamint manipulating its citizens.
When it puts its “proverbial thumb” on the marketplace scale, it makes everything worse. By depressing the value of a rental property, it signals the marketplace to produce less housing in that area. To invest less money. That there are fewer human needs in that area. Perversely, it makes the problem worse.
And, the media and the intellectuals just don’t get it.
In a marketplace, all needs are addressed. In a gubmint solution, only some needs are met and it’s at a fantastic cost. I bet if we had a forensic accountant look into it, we’d find that the ~200k per unit would translate into ~600k being stolen from taxpayers. And, what about the silent cost of this “housing project” to those silent victims of gubamint taxation? maybe they were ready to buy their first house, but the gubamint taxes took it away from them and gave it to those “poor people” over there.
See that’s what gubamint does, it makes losers of us all!
Note: It’s interesting that the news site bans certain ips from commenting. Oh well, not that they’d listen much.
Reinke Faces Life 