Asheville City Council is attempting to fix the city’s shortage of affordable housing. Council recently held a worksession on the topic. Now, by way of their consent agenda, they will be adopting seven-year goals to address the problem. What is proposed is dedicating city land, paying developers, and using zoning as a force with which to be reckoned. This, of course, follows, council’s attempt to increase the affordable housing stock with a program neither developer nor financial institution could make work. Council counted that a great victory, as they prefer to learn from the school of hard knocks rather than heed warnings with explanations coming out of conservative think tanks.
Of particular note is the tool in the box of mandatory inclusionary zoning. Even mainstream economists are hip to the knowledge that this is a price control, which necessarily distorts the economy, and therefore necessarily introduces inefficiencies that either create more need for housing assistance, induce scarcity by developers choosing to build more economically elsewhere, or reduce the tax base when rent increases push citizens into the county.
I was talking to a lady this morning who thinks it’s a great idea. She is happy to pay her fair share, but I tried to call attention to the working class families falling through the floorboards with snot-nosed raggamuffins running around their feet when somebody kept interrupting. The tools are straws to break the camel’s back. But not to worry. Montgomery County, Maryland has had inclusionary zoning since the 1970s. If the sixth-wealthiest county in the nation can pay for the economic distortions, surely all the waiters, buskers, and other artists in poor little Asheville can shoulder the burden of the subsidies.
