Outstater
Because We Live Here . . .
INDEPENDENTLY, a friend and I like to design thought experiments to test public-policy conception. He, an economist with a construction background, is working on one that challenges the “affordable” housing narrative. I am working on a model for crime-plagued retail.
The friend’s idea is that affordable housing is what you can afford, not what someone will give you. He would build a house on the specifications and floor plan of a 1950s middle-class home — think “Leave It to Beaver.” That would be without the air-tight windows and heavy wall-to-wall insulation, without advanced construction materials, pickleball court, mood lighting, steam shower, attached garage, wine cooler, walk-in pantry, rooms for every activity, and so forth. His premise is these are mere affectations added by succeeding generations able to afford what their parents could not.
He contends that if the basic 1950s house could be built today it would cost $100,000 less than today’s average starter house — a fine and “affordable” home by most standards and available to anyone on the free market. He is working with a developer on the exact numbers but repealing senseless permit and code requirements might cut the cost by $50,000.
Interesting, huh?
My own idea is to identify a stretch of retail that nobody has been able to make work because . . . well, because it’s in the wrong part of town. Customers venturing into my test retail market must have at least a 1-in-34 chance of being criminally victimized in some way and at least moderate prospects of being assaulted or killed.
There’s a place in my city that meets my requirements. It is called “the Corridor,” struggling retail frontage stretching from downtown south toward what were once in-demand family neighborhoods. Although now under demographic stress, the area contains some of the best housing stock in the city, inviting gentrification.
The ruling elite is sensitive to the implication that the retail failure may be somehow racist. My AI assistant tells me that in recent years more than $1 million has been dumped into these few blocks in the form of grants and subsidies of one sort or another. That does not include private philanthropy, indirect citywide assistance, basic infrastructure, connecting walking trails or a half dozen consulting studies.
A boosterish local media, announcing the other day that yet another consultant was coming to town, says success is finally at hand. It lists several new businesses opening along the corridor: a tattoo parlor, a record shop and something called an “art and awakening” center, all said to be part of “a slow but steady transformation.”
Hmmm.
My alternate plan, stolen from dramatically successful Hong Kong, is to stop the subsidies cold and let the property fall to its true market value. Create a nonprofit, tax-exempt foundation to buy it up cheap and offer frontage at cost to investors who have lived in the neighborhood for at least a decade. Buyers would have to submit to these stipulations:
To be on-site proprietors or limited partners, not controlled by distant corporations, and agree that the property could be resold only to the same.
Join a municipally chartered association that places respect for private property above any aspirations of social justice. That would require maintaining a security force guided by top-drawer legal counsel with a goal of reducing crime to near zero regardless of a perpetrator’s root cause or social grievance. The late Tom Bethell argued compellingly that private property is the Golden Rule in action, that is, you have reason to treat the property of others as you would have them treat your own. That means no rioting, no looting. no loitering.
Most important, the charter would exempt the merchants from affirmative-action fol-de-rol. Property owners could hire whomever they believe would make their operation more efficient, regardless of the employee’s race, sex or ethnic background. Likewise, they could expel anyone from their property or their employ whom they deemed likely to be a threat, an irritant or however offensive to the base of paying customers. Stereotypes, positive or negative, would be assumed valid unless proven otherwise.
Finally, lest someone raise concern about any hint of discrimination or unfairness, the association would call attention to the life work of the economist Thomas Sowell. He has argued without refutation that prejudice carries its own punishment in the constriction of the pool of customers and labor as well as in the opening of prosperous niches for competing businesses. (Michael Jordan: “Republicans buy sneakers too.”)
William Rockhill Nelson, the Fort Wayne native who moved west to become the guiding entrepreneur of Kansas City, was asked why he put so much energy into designing parkways, attractive neighborhoods and retail space. “Because I live here, damn it,” was his answer.
Anyway, that’s what I’d call my little thought experiment. Maybe you have your own. Don’t keep it to yourself, send it to your city councilmen. Theirs aren’t working — tcl
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