By Noah Smith | Bloomberg
(Editor’s note: Opinion pieces are published for discussions purposes only.)
I was talking to a friend the other day, a San Francisco anti-eviction activist, and said that allowing more housing construction in the city would be a great way to lower rents. She looked at me in horror, blinked and asked “Market rate?” I nodded. She was speechless.
My experience was far from unusual. To my friend and many others, it has become an article of faith that building market-rate housing raises rents, rather than lowers them. The logic of Econ 101 — that an increase in supply lowers price — is alien to many progressives, both in the Bay Area and around the country. Instead, the theory is that price is something set by the government. If the city government decrees that a new apartment block be affordable, the theory goes, it will be. But since rents for non-rent-controlled apartments are now very high, allowing new market-rate development will simply create more luxury units, whose prices will be out of reach for the average person. The only way to lower the cost of living, according to the progressive canon, is to have the government mandate lower prices.
