San Francisco elected official Hillary Ronen blames the city’s homeless problem on “Republican ideology.” She is wrong. Here are six reasons why “progressive ideology” is the real cause of the city’s homeless problem.
Hillary Ronen is an elected government official who gets paid
$140,148 per year to work as a member of the legislative body for San Francisco.
In this video, Ronen blames San Francisco’s homeless problem on “Republican ideology.” (Skip to 8:52 in the video).
Ronen is wrong.
“Republican ideology” is not the cause of San Francisco’s homeless problem.
Here six are reasons why “progressive ideology” is the real cause of San Francisco’s homeless problem.
First of all,
here is a link to an article that was published by the Atlantic in 2007.
When a developer builds housing, there are three separate and distinct costs: the cost of land, the cost of construction, and the cost of getting a building permit (which the
article refers to as the “right to build”).
The
article includes this chart:
So in San Francisco, getting a building permit (which the
article refers to as the “right to build”) adds approximately $700,000 to the cost of a new home.
And please remember, this cost for the “right to build” is completely separate from the cost of the land, and the cost of construction.
The cost for the “right to build” is determined entirely, 100% by zoning laws, density restrictions, and other local government policies.
Since Hillary Ronen is an elected government official who works as a member of the legislative body of San Francisco, she is one of the people who is responsible for the city’s zoning laws, density restrictions, and other local government policies.
Secondly, here’s another example of how hard it is to get a building permit in California:
Texas, the 'great American job machine,' is largely responsible for the +1.2M net US job increase since 2007 | American Enterprise Institute - AEI
January 23, 2015
… there were more permits for single-family homes issued last year through November in just one Texas city Houston (34,566) than in the entire state of California (34,035) over the same period.
Let’s put this into perspective.
Houston is
628 square miles.
California is
163,696 square miles.
So even though California is
260 times as big as Houston, Houston actually issued more new building permits for single family homes in 2014 than did the entire state of California.
Just think about that for a minute.
Those numbers show just how incredibly, ridiculously hard California makes it to build new housing.
Anyone who has ever bought or sold anything at eBay understands that, all else being equal, the bigger the supply of something, the lower price, and the lower the supply, the higher the price.
By making it so difficult to get a building permit in California, the government is causing housing to be far, far more expensive than it would otherwise be.
Third,
here is a great article by Thomas Sowell about how the politicians in California have waged war against the construction of new housing.
Fourth, this video also explains San Francisco’s war against the construction of new housing. And please note that it is progressives, social justice warriors, and other left wing activists who are the ones that are most opposed to building this new housing:
Fifth, in the video with Ronen that I included at the beginning of this blog post, she brags about creating a new government program that gives free illegal drugs to homeless people. (Skip to 7:56 in the video.)
Being high on illegal drugs makes the problem of homelessness bigger, not smaller.
And sixth, the Washington Post published
this article, which is called:
“Rand Paul is right: The most economically unequal states are Democratic”
The article includes this chart, which ranks the states by their levels of inequality based on their Gini coefficients.
You can see a bigger version of the chart at this link:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-a...aws.com/public/NJ6UOCWVE426LBX7NOQN6ECZVU.jpg
The information in the chart verifies the title of the Washington Post article. Blue states have more inequality than red states.
So that’s six different reasons why Hillary Ronen is wrong to blame San Francisco’s homeless problem on “Republican ideology.”
In each and every one of those six cases, it is actually “progressive ideology” that is causing San Francisco’s homeless problem.
San Francisco is waging a very strong, major war against the constriction of new housing.
For Hillary Ronen to blame this on “Republican ideology” is a huge lie.
On the contrary, since Ronen is one of the left wing, progressive, elected government officials responsible for San Francisco’s housing policies, it is Ronen’s own fault that San Francisco has such a big homeless problem.
