Here’s a little more news from California, this time over a ballot measure that will install rent control.
The only honest assertion that proponents of a rent control initiative make in their campaign ads is the fact that rent is too high in California. But rent control will make things even worse. As it is, most developers will not do business in California. Why try to build a subdivision in Silicon Valley, where the permits may take 10-20 years to get approved, when they can go to Texas and get plans approved in 10-20 weeks? Why build anything in a state where at any moment another environmentalist organization can file a lawsuit that will take millions of dollars and several years to resolve?
I have a clear and simple philosophy in terms of anything to do with the Golden Shower State and its doings: California’s example in the “laboratory of the states” is where we learn precisely what not to do — i.e. when California does some thing or other, the best policy is to do the polar opposite.
Rent control is just the latest in a long, long line of stupid policies from the Left.
And yes, we all know (or should) that rent control eventually causes a shortage of housing — we’ve already seen that on Planet Manhattan — but hey; if California wants to compound their stupidity (e.g. as in the above, of making new home builds almost impossible) with still further stupidity (rent control of existing homes), why should the rest of the states with a cumulative IQ above room temperature not just sit back, point and giggle when the whole state blows up?
Sorry, I just had a vision of California blowing up cataclysmically. So please forgive me while I go off to that warm, wonderful place created by the prospect.