If government would get out of the way, housing markets could enrich the poor.
Here’s
how automobile markets enrich the poor. New cars cost more than they’re worth.
Used cars cost less than they’re worth. As cars move down the income ladder,
sales by the rich and purchases by the poor transfer billions of dollars of
value from rich to poor.
No
one set this up. It happens naturally, because government interferes relatively
little with automobile markets.
Given
a chance, real estate markets could do the same. Prosperous people would
overpay to build houses. When they vacate, the less prosperous would underpay
to move in. Billions of dollars of value would transfer from rich to poor.
Government
prevents this, partly because it owns 28 percent of the entire nation, including
85 percent of Nevada and more than half each of Utah, Alaska, and Oregon. Surely
some of this immensity of land could be made available for sale!
Indian
tribes, isolated and unintegrated, live in misery on land equivalent to that of Idaho.
Zoning
thwarts real estate sales. Houston, Texas, gets along fine without zoning. Chemical
plants are not built in residential areas. That land is too expensive.
Land-use
laws, building laws, banking laws, environmental, farming, mining, water, tax, and
who knows what other laws all interfere with real estate sales. Most of those
social and economic needs could be satisfied by the private sector backed by
the courts.
Almost
everywhere it turns, government unintentionally hurts the disadvantaged.
