Land Use Regulation Harms the Poor; B. Siegan

The two positions are totally in compatible, and one begins to won der how genuine their commitment Copyright 1975 Bernard H. Siegan Mr. Siegan is the author of Land Use Without Zoning and many articles on the subject. He practiced law for 20 years in Chicago before moving in 1973 to La Jolla, California where he is professor of law at the University of San Diego Law School. - and to whom or to what. The answer may lie, of course, in the working of both sides of the polit ical street, plying the rich and young with "no growth" promises and the poor with lots of rhetoric. Plainly, these politicians are not heeding the advice of the bumper stickers that urge us to "eschew obfuscation." Friends of the poor should be working hard to overcome govern mental restrictions that curtail production; and some are. One public body that recently adopted a clear position on the issue is the San Diego County Board of Public Welfare. On May 2, in a written re commendation to the county's Board of Supervisors, it said the 557 558 THE FREEMAN September slow growth policies of the city and county were "at cross purposes with the goals and objectives of the Board of Public Welfare."

Its statement continues: "The elimination of poor or substandard housing accomodations demands an immediate change in the county's growth policy. This policy is acting to restrict the supply of housing available to poor people." Regarding the means for achiev ing satisfactory housing for the poor, the statement discussed both subsidized and privately financed housing and concluded that the former has not been particularly successful: "It is very expensive and has served only a small pro portion of those in need." The Board referred to a report made by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Develop ment that the average subsidized apartment unit cost 20 per cent more to construct than a compar able unit privately financed. This meant, the Welfare Board rea soned, that 20 per cent fewer dwellings could be built by the gov ernment than if the same amount of money had been invested in the private market.

It concluded that: "The greatest hope for improving the living con ditions of the ill-housed poor in our community, and at the same time substantially relieving the financial burden placed on the Board of Supervisor's budget (and the taxpayers of San Diego) ap pears to be through the private market; specifically through the filtering process." Filtering is the chain of moves to new or different living quarters triggered by the construction and occupancy of a new unit. The lead ing source available on this process is the study conducted by the Sur vey Research Center at the Uni versity of Michigan, published as a monograph, New Homes and Poor People. This study, conducted in 17 metropolitan areas in the mid 1960's, determined that for every 1000 new housing units built, there are over 3500 relocations, of which an average of 330 are by families defined as poor and 950 by mode rate income families, the next low est economic category. The moves will be made to presumably better housing on the assumption that "if they move, they benefit." The Wel fare Board considers the filtering process "the only proven viable provider of low cost housing for low and moderate income fami lies."

According to the Board, the number of building permits issued in San Diego County in 1974 was 24,000 fewer than in 1972. Of the reasons cited for the decrease, one was the restricted growth policy.

1975 LAND USE REGULATION HARMS THE POOR 559 Using the statistics provided in the Michigan Study, the Board fig ured that, had this amount of new construction occurred, better hous ing would have been available for over 31,000 poor and moderate in come families. By contrast, it pointed out, local government was pursuing the idea of building only 600 homes for the needy. The statement added that a great deal of pressure for sub sidized housing arose from the notion that "for some reason, poor people should live in brand new houses. The emphasis instead, should be on enabling poor people The Need for Freedom to exercise upward mobility by re moving the barriers to improved housing." The Board described these bar riers as forms of land use and building regulation, specifically im pediments to new construction set up by the California Coastal Com mission, Environmental Quality Act, zoning regulations, construc tion processing delays and the sub stantial fees demanded of builders to obtain permits.

The Board's analysis powerfully illustrates how harmful land use regulation is to the well-being of lower income people. ~ IDEAS ON LIBERTY To HAVE lived in some remote "native" village long enough to know how their social curbs on progress operate is to understand why the best laid plans of economic development schemes have a way of failing utterly. Without freedom to achieve and without a measure of security for life and property, aid is useless; and with freedom, it is unnecessary. Any enterprising investor is happy to put his money into a going concern and nothing succeeds like success. But the rigidities of a managed economy stifle initiative and scare off venture capital, keeping the depressed area stagnant and backward. Only a rich country can afford the economic inter ventions of socialism - and they can't afford it for long. EDWARD P. COLESON Blue Eagles and Deja Vu WALTER B. WRISTON As WE APPROACH the bicentennial of our republic, it is useful to re member that our founding fathers faced hard times - much harder than those which are with us to day. They, too, had to make some tough choices. Thomas Jefferson expressed the problem in a nut shell: "Weare not to expect to be translated from despotism to lib erty in a featherbed."