Quote:
Originally Posted by Bonsai Tree
I hope though, that we all can recognize that the city does in fact have an affordability problem. What I hate hearing (and have heard) is that the city is affordable because of average statistics. Sure, some sections of the city are plenty affordable, but others are definitely not. Our city should be affordable to all people, no matter where in the city. I'd love to see affordable housing in the Gold Coast or in Lincoln park. Moreover, it is the job of everyone involved in housing to help mitigate this. Government, Landlords, developers and tenants need to come to a consensus on what to do. I agree that rent control is a terrible idea, but so is letting developers and landlords off the hook when it comes to solving the problem. Both of these solutions go to the extremes of the spectrum, and fail to reach a logical consensus. The city needs to provide incentives to new developments. Instead of putting money into that stupid "neighborhood" fund the city should trade density for affordable housing. In exchange for higher density, developers would have to include affordable housing (and I mean true affordable housing, not that BS affordable housing in the 78) in their developments. I know this overwrites the Aldermen, but when it comes to affordable housing wealthy ward aldermen can go shove it.
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I couldn’t disagree more.
I don’t accept the argument that 1) Chicago has an affordability problem, 2) that it is a municipality’s responsibility to distort the market unfairly so as to reduce prices for lower income voting blocks, and 3) that landlords and property owners should in any way feel obliged to lower the price of their product because of a mandated “duty”.
There is plenty of affordable housing stock, people just need to move to it. We all move. If I can move countless times in my life (Michigan—Philly—Nashville—Chicago—Washington DC—New York—Wisconsin—Chicagoland) I’m sure others can too. No one group of people can simply claim that an area is theirs in perpetuity, no matter what the market demands, ever. That is a preposterous notion.
The reality is, there is no “problem” that needs solving. This is all about careers. People create “problems” to solve to justify their ongoing employment. Lawyers and their lobbyists pass silly rules so that they have to be hired. Job security. Politicians and Sociologists have fabricated the “problem” of affordable housing and offered their own “solutions” so that they can keep speaking about it on the radio, TV shows, and write articles about it. It’s job security, and it’s disingenuous because they would never have a frank discussion about whether said problem even exists, and whether all options are even on the table to fix it.
If politicians were honest and not so ready to rob people of their livelihood at every chance, they would fix this so-called problem by using tax dollars to build massive amounts of low income housing, like the FHA did decades ago. But they know that this would be expensive and politically untenable, so it’s easier to simply rob a private person’s property and force them to lower their prices instead. Win win for everyone, right?