Affordable housing is a current mantra of the Left. Housing is too expensive, liberals tell us, so we need more and more subsidies. Never mind that, far from addressing the underlying causes of high prices, subsidies generally make the thing subsidized more expensive.
The Twin Cities present an interesting case, because housing here is more costly than anywhere else in the Midwest or most other regions of the country. Why is that? It can’t be blamed on the weather, which we share with Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Detroit, all of which have much cheaper housing costs. Tomorrow, Jeff Johnson will answer that question in the fifth and final installment of Center of the American Experiment’s Master Class In Public Policy series. While his presentation will focus on extraordinary housing costs in the Twin Cities, the phenomenon of liberal policies driving up costs–which then become an excuse for more liberal policies–has universal application.
Jeff is a member of the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners, and as such has wrestled with housing issues for years. He was the Republican nominee for Governor of Minnesota in both 2014 and 2018, when he received more votes than any previous gubernatorial nominee in our state. (Not as many as his opponent, unfortunately.) Jeff is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center, and his presentation will be based on a paper he has written for the Center that will be published in a couple of weeks. He previews it here:
To register for tomorrow’s Zoom presentation, go here. The prior four webinars in this series are available in archived form here.
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