Pittsburgh City Council has “advanced a massive zoning package that aims to spur the creation of more affordable housing,” the Tribune-Review reports.
“It’s a compromise, and no one’s really happy,” Councilwoman Deb Gross, D-Highland Park said. “That’s a good compromise, when everybody has had to give up something.”
Sorry, councilor, but government-sanctioned bribery and government-mandated extortion is no “compromise.” And that’s the exact opposite of “good.”
This carnival began two years ago when the former Gainey administration proposed citywide “inclusionary zoning,” a concept that excludes rational thought.
Under the original proposal, the Trib notes that all new housing developments with 20 or more units had to earmark at least 10 percent of units affordable for low-income residents.
But that scheme bordered on unlawful taking and would have encouraged developers to look outside the city for their projects. It was a wholly onerous plan that would have resulted in less housing for everyone.
Now come the geniuses on City Council with their “compromise” plan.
As the Trib reports it:
“The iteration [the] council backed in a preliminary vote [last] Wednesday includes … sweeping revisions, which scrapped the mandatory inclusionary zoning and replaced it with a voluntary program that would offer developers incentives to include housing designated for low-income residents.”
“Incentives” and “bribes” are interchangeable in this instance.
Further from the Trib:
Another “of the changes they approved would require affordable housing units to remain affordable for at least 35 years — rather than the 20 years previously proposed in the bill — in order to qualify for incentives.
“Participating developers would be allowed to build taller structures and avoid some building requirements in an effort to incentivize them to build affordable housing.
“The measure also includes an option to pay a $25-per-square-foot fee to get those benefits, in lieu of building affordable housing,” the Trib notes.
“Incentives” and “extortion” are synonymous in this instance.
Never mind that the key to truly “affordable” housing is letting the marketplace work.
As Manhattan Institute fellow Connor Harris concluded in a 2021 essay for Governing magazine:
“Inclusionary zoning (IZ) may seem costless and politically convenient for local politicians, but its costs are quite real — and many of them, such as forgone property tax revenue and economic distortions resulting from high housing prices, ultimately harm the public treasury.
“And in any case, IZ produces too few units to be more than a minor part of an affordable housing strategy. There is no substitute for broad liberalization of zoning policy to lower market rents and housing prices, with all of the compromises and political fights that this inevitably entails.”
Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute, the better term for this City Council nonsense is “exclusionary zoning.”
“It excludes all semblance of logical thinking and respect for property rights,” he says. “[It’s] a showcase of poor public policy.”
And as the think tank’s executive director, Frank Gamrat, laments: “The lack of economic acumen among city and county officials is astounding and disappointing.”
A final vote on this spurious “affordable housing comprise” is expected this week. But at an astounding 176 pages, it’s easy to see that Pittsburgh City Council doesn’t have clue about how markets do work and should be allowed to work.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghnyinstitute.org).
