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  • How California Politicians Created a Homelessness Crisis

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    California has more homeless people than any other state, with large homeless tent camps occupying the sidewalks of many of its streets. California also has the second most expensive housing of all states, lagging only behind Hawaii.

    Writing at the Washington Examiner, Timothy P. Carney wonders to what extent the state government’s regulatory environment is contributing to both problems.

    Land-use regulations make housing more expensive. The Los Angeles metro area ranks as the 15th most restrictive in land-use regulation.

    People who own houses in housing-restricted places often don’t want to deregulate. They like the space. They fear the traffic. And they know that adding more housing could harm their home values. Of course, preserving scarcity in housing to keep your housing investments valuable is not really something most people want to admit to, so they make other arguments.

    They suggest that the regulations drive up home values not by curbing supply but by giving people what they want: green buildings, safe buildings, adequate parking, and uncrowded neighborhoods.

    But the one study that has looked into this finds that more than 90% of the price effect of regulation comes not from making the homes more desirable but from limiting supply. So regulation is affecting the market mostly by preventing homes from being built.

    That finding raises a question. How many regulations has California put in the way of building homes?

    According to QuantGov, last year the state government of California imposed on businesses and residents a total of 395,503 restrictions, as defined by the number of times that words like “must”, “shall”, “required”, “prohibited”, and “may not” appear within the online version of the California Code of Regulations (CCR).

    Those regulations haven’t come about by accident—they are the result of years of effort on the part of California politicians and regulators.

    Not only is that number more than any other state, it is nearly 88,000 more than the number of similar government-mandated restrictions imposed by New York’s government agencies, the state that ranks second in this measure.

    Within the CCR, California’s Building Standards Code (Title 24) contains more restrictions than any other section, totaling no fewer than 75,712 restrictions. At the same time, the section for Housing and Community Development (Title 25) contains 12,204 restrictions, the tenth largest of all sections (or titles) contained in the CCR.

    Combined to total 88,186 regulatory restrictions, these two sections that effectively dictate what housing may be built in California account for over 22 percent of the total regulatory burden set by all the state’s government agencies.

    How does that compare with New York? QuantGov’s 2017 report for New York suggests the Empire State imposes far less of a regulatory burden on homebuilders, but since the state’s building code contains fewer than 12,474 restrictions, it doesn’t even make the list of the Top 10 contributors to that state’s regulatory burden.

    It occurred to me that California’s building code might be more restrictive than a state like New York because much of the state is prone to natural disasters like earthquakes, mudslides and wildfires. So I looked at my former home state of Washington, which is prone to similar disasters. Its building code does make the top ten in QuantGov’s list of the state’s biggest contributors of restrictive regulations for 2019, where the state’s Building Code Council (Title 51) ranks ninth by accounting for a total of 4,585 restrictions.

    California has over 19 times that number of restrictions limiting what housing and other structures may be built within the state. Those regulations haven’t come about by accident—they are the result of years of effort on the part of California politicians and regulators.

    If you remember the sky-high oil and fuel prices of a decade ago, the political slogan of many seeking to bring the runaway prices of that day was “Drill, Baby, Drill.”

    These advocates recognized that increasing the supply of oil was the only effective path to bring oil and gas prices back down to more affordable levels, so they worked to remove regulatory barriers to producing more supply. It may sound corny, but it worked.

    If California’s politicians and bureaucrats ever want to get serious about building a larger supply of affordable housing, they need to start demolishing the artificially restrictive environment they have built and that has produced the opposite outcome they claim they want. The right slogan for California to improve the lives of the state’s neediest residents is “Build, Baby, Build.”

    This article has been reprinted with permission from the Independent Institute.


    Craig Eyermann

    Craig Eyermann is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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  • New State Regulations Force a California Charity for the Homeless to Close Shop

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

     

    For the past four years, Deliverance San Diego has been delivering hot meals to the city’s homeless population every Friday, averaging 200 donated meals on any given evening. Now, due to new guidelines passed by the State Legislature of California, the non-profit is ceasing operations and will dissolve by the end of the month.

    Through their existing model, hot meals were prepared in volunteer homes and distributed on the streets.

    “Volunteers from various churches gather at 17th and Commercial downtown to load four food wagons with chili, soup, cornbread, water, and other snacks,” the group’s web site explains. “We offer prayer and spiritual support, but one of the easiest things we do is get someone’s name and remember it.”

    Through the new requirements, set forth by the San Diego Department of Environmental Health, Deliverance would need to use licensed, state-approved kitchens, implement hand-washing stations, and meet a variety of other requirements.

    With a yearly budget of less than $7,000, according to the non-profit’s treasurer, Deliverance determined it can no longer sustain operations without extensive and expensive organizational changes. “We’re on a shoestring budget,” explains volunteer Gary Marttila, “so working out all those logistics became too big of an obstacle to overcome.”

    ABC 10 News in San Diego tells more of their story:

    As the San Diego Union-Tribune explains, several of the law’s backers have expressed surprise at the closure of Deliverance. According to Heather Buonomo, a program coordinator with the Department of Environmental Health, some sort of workaround may have been available or achievable. “We’re happy to work with them to find a solution that works for their charitable organization,” she said. According to Monique Limón, one of the bill’s authors, “The law would encourage more charities to provide food for the needy while also creating a level of oversight to ensure they follow proper health guidelines.”

    Yet it’s unclear what exactly would or could have been done if Deliverance had tried to negotiate with the state and find “a solution that works.” And the fact that it didn’t even try or think it could try says something about the pressure that these policies put on small and vulnerable charities and institutions who don’t feel they have political sway.

    Likewise, one can make any number of arguments about food safety, as Limón does, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which more burdens, more requirements, and tighter regulations will somehow “encourage more charities to provide food for the needy.”

    The reality is that the state’s dream of regulated soup and sandwiches is taking precedence over the bottom-up activity of neighbors who are passionate about loving their neighbors. Is that really an acceptable trade-off, particularly in an area that so desperately needs an intimate and personalized approach?

    “We’ve sought to provide comfort to those who are going through an incredibly difficult time,” says Deliverance’s press release on the closure. “In many situations, they are without a home due to no fault of their own. This action by the state creates significant barriers to those organizations like ours who simply want to show God’s love through a hot meal and some conversation.”

    Given the good—and thus far, safe—work of organizations like Deliverance, such regulations represent a prime example of the “unseen costs” of government action.

    In some cases, well-intended government policies lead to trade imbalances or economic surpluses or corporate cronyism or community inequities—all of which yield their own forms of social corrosion. But in cases such as these, we see the ill effects of these policies on charitable activity, resulting in real and tangible barriers to human love and relationship.

    Is it really worth it?

    This article was reprinted with permission from the Acton Institute.


    Joseph Sunde

    Joseph Sunde is an associate editor and writer for the Acton Institute. His work has appeared in venues such as The Federalist, First Things, Intellectual Takeout, The City, The Christian Post, The Stream, Patheos, LifeSiteNews, Charisma News, The Green Room, Juicy Ecumenism, Ethika Politika, Made to Flourish, and the Center for Faith and Work. Joseph resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife and four children.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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