Letter to the Editor, Seattle Weekly
Mar. 31st, 2005 07:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoKnute Berger, in "Village Idiots" (March 30 - April 5, 2005), doesn't seem to have a good handle on supply and demand. The reason houses cost so much in Seattle (or San Francisco, or Manhattan, or Portland) is because there's a helluva lot of demand for those houses.
There are only two ways to do much about the situation -- put more houses in to increase supply (which means higher density), or pay a subsidy (thereby artifically reducing the net price). Of the two, increased density is the more sustainable in the long run, both for fewer resources consumed by building greener houses, and because sooner or later any subsidy will come to an end (jacking the price right back up to where it would've been in the first place).
He's absolutely right about education. As Warren and Tyagi show in their book, The Two-Income Trap, people are literally bankrupting themselves to pay for mortages in places they feel have better education. But that only shows how a slight increase in taxes for education not only gets you better schools, but also a more stable financial environment for families, far outweighing the costs of those bankruptcies.
Sincerely,
Hal O'Brien
There are only two ways to do much about the situation -- put more houses in to increase supply (which means higher density), or pay a subsidy (thereby artifically reducing the net price). Of the two, increased density is the more sustainable in the long run, both for fewer resources consumed by building greener houses, and because sooner or later any subsidy will come to an end (jacking the price right back up to where it would've been in the first place).
He's absolutely right about education. As Warren and Tyagi show in their book, The Two-Income Trap, people are literally bankrupting themselves to pay for mortages in places they feel have better education. But that only shows how a slight increase in taxes for education not only gets you better schools, but also a more stable financial environment for families, far outweighing the costs of those bankruptcies.
Sincerely,
Hal O'Brien
