To the editor:
Recently in the Item there have been four very long articles about a new affordable housing plan.
I read them looking for specifics such as: How much will this plan cost? Who is going to pay for it? Who is going to administer it? If any people need to be hired, who is going to pay for their salaries, benefits, and pensions? Last but not least, who is going to pay the mountain of property taxes every year for all those affordable homes?
In the several thousand words describing this Plan, I found no answers to any of these basic questions. However, I do applaud all those who want to do something about the extremely high and growing cost of housing because it is a huge problem for more and more people.
When trying to solve a social problem, a logical place to begin is to identify the main causes of the problem which, in this case, is easy to do. The taxes on homes have grown so high, they have doubled the cost of owning or renting a home. The mountain of housing regulations have also doubled the cost.
At the very least, taxes and regulations have quadrupled the cost of housing and the politicians who benefit from all these taxes are still not satisfied. In Lynn, the mayors and city councillors continue to raise the property tax on homes. It seems that every time I read the Item, the mayor is increasing the payroll by hiring more public servants.
The situation has gotten so bad that nobody in the former land of the free is allowed to own their home. You can work and save your money for decades in order to buy a home or pay off your mortgage, and you still won’t own it and never will because you will be forced to pay thousands of dollars every year for the property tax.
By the way, the abolishment of home ownership is communism. In any case, the obvious solution to un-affordable housing is to forbid government from taxing and regulating homes.
Since housing is a basic necessity, it should not be taxed and anyone who buys a home should be allowed to own it. There needs to be a free market in housing. Note: the word free means free from government control.
The alternative to government control is Freedom and Free Markets which do not need a plan. Free markets provide goods and services with no help from any mayors, councillors, committees, forums, meetings or thousands of pages of laws, rules, and regulations.
They regulate themselves with only two rules, no force and no fraud. Centralized control is not needed because the vast, vast majority of human beings want to earn an honest living by peacefully supplying goods and services to those who are willing to pay for them. No one needs to be forced, directed, asked, or told what to do.
Free markets supply the goods and services that people want at competitive prices as if, as someone once noted, they are directed by an “invisible hand.” The only way to gain wealth in a free market is to provide wealth to others. That is the reason why free markets produce wealth for everyone who participates.
The three physical necessities for human survival are food, clothing, and shelter. The markets for food and clothing are essentially free. People are free to produce, buy, sell, and consume food and clothing without paying thousands of dollars for taxes, regulations, licences, fees, etc.
Those markets run themselves without armies of government bureaucrats and enforcers. What is the result of all that freedom? Food and clothing are affordable and available to everyone. Shelter or housing is heavily taxed and regulated. What is the result? Un-affordable housing for many.
For another example, there is a free market in computers. People are free to produce, buy, and sell computers without a mountain of taxes and regulations. What is the result? Every year, computers get better and more affordable. Thirty years ago, computers were expensive, slow, and not user friendly. Today, they are much faster, easy to use, and affordable for everyone as a result of freedom and competition, not government. And, when you buy a computer, you own it and are not forced to pay taxes on it every year, forever.
If you honestly want to help those who cannot afford to pay the current cost of housing, then stop forcing them to pay thousands of dollars every year for services that they don’t want or need and never asked for. Stop forcing them to pay for services that are only wanted by the wealthy. Requiring the wealthy to pay their own bills would reduce the cost of housing by at least 75 percent. And, everyone will still be free to pay as much as they want for whatever services they want.
For example, suppose that Lynn’s elite want the services of a diversity expert or an arts and culture expert. Fine. Let them hire whomever they want and pay them with their own money. Every time the mayor and councillors hire more employees, they are making houses less affordable for more people because the money to pay for those salaries, benefits, and pensions comes from the property tax on homes and apartments.
I like diversity. I would love it if Lynn had a mayor and councillors who value affordable housing more than they value spending other people’s money. That would be some real diversity. I also love culture, the culture of liberty, not the current culture of government control, taxation, and spending.
Richard G. Eramian
Lynn
