No government mandates on housing

Patience Milrod’s Aug. 19 op-ed on inclusionary zoning mocked my prior op-ed on the subject, as an inaccurate “sky is falling” lament. I argued that powerful interests were going to use the upcoming debate on the city of Fresno Development Code to try to mandate price controls on home builders, and that this was a dangerous government policy with harmful ramifications for all citizenry.

The current draft Development Code has many policies that will decrease housing affordability for all households. However, I did not argue that the current draft of the Development Code mandates inclusionary zoning price controls. My “sky is falling” lament was that the effort to impose the inclusionary zoning mandatory price controls was coming. Ms. Milrod’s op-ed ended with exactly such a call, thus proving my point.

My argument is not about whether Fresno should have neighborhoods that include all ranges of housing types. However, if there are costs and subsidies required to achieve that, the government should not unfairly impose that burden, through price controls, solely on persons who build houses, who did nothing to harm housing affordability.

This story was originally published August 26, 2015 at 7:55 AM with the headline "No government mandates on housing."