Mayor of Ft. Lauderdale: Can't buy a house? Just work more!

[An_Arky]

@John Mace

What do you think “the market” is? It’s just people buying and selling things. IOW, what you are calling an interference with the market is the market. BTW, what is the “customary” price of a home?
I don’t think anyone is defending the mayor’s inflamatory remarks. However, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Rich people pay a lot of taxes. Are you saying they don’t deserve to get any services for those taxes? I’m not sure what the point about WalMart is. If you’re serious about that statement, can you clarify what you mean?

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I’m not talking about how buying and selling works and how the market responds, etc. Nor am I talking about the rich paying taxes/receiving services. I’m talking about who’s going to provide the services.

Here’s the deal: A community is more than a market. Excess demand due to a community’s location, etc., while a perfectly logical thing to happen, market-wise, has a major effect on the makeup of the whole community. Think of it like the food pyramid. A ballanced, healthy diet consist of mostly whole grains, fruits and vegetables, some protein, and a wee bit of fat and sugar. Places like Ft. Lauderdale are like having fat and sugar at the bottom of the pyramid.

The customary local needs (please note that I did not say “customary price of homes”) would be in line with the makeup of the normal, healthy food pyramid. The hugely inflated real estate market of Ft. Lauderdale is in line with the “fat and sugar at the bottom of the pyramid” model. (On the other side of the coin, slums are also out-of-kilter with the normal healthy model)

In order for a balanced community to exist, some things have to actually get done by working people. Sure, the rich pay taxes, but they aren’t the ones doing the actual work. To create a situation where ever-increasing real estate prices drive out the people who actually do the work is to interfere with the optimal functional balance of a community. The market might have done it’s job, but it’s effects in areas like this are so undesirable as to render the market to be not the best arbiter of the situation. Having the people doing the work not being able to afford to live near the work is an out-of-balance situation, IMHO.

I’m not suggesting a government-mandated set-aside for working people; I’m not really suggesting anything at all can be done about it; I’m just another person pointing out that saying “supply and demand determine the price”, dusting off your hands and saying your work’s done here is not enough. A community (Government is only part of this) must be able to have some control over it’s makeup, to be able to have resources to draw from other than snowbirds in their condos and boat slips paying taxes. It’s too late for places like Ft. Lauderdale, probably, but maybe other communities can take heed and figure out something before it happens to them.

[John_Mace]

@Evil Captor

You’re not fooling anybody. I don’t think you or Sam Stone hate poor people or take joy in watching them suffer. I just note that, in following the free market absolutist line, you consistently oppose any policies that might help the poor and the middle class, and support policies that help the wealthy.

That’s simply not true, so you’re either not reading my posts or you’re deliberately misrepresenting them. I propose different policies than you do, and I’ve said so in this very thread. If you want to help people who are genuinely poor, then give them direct monetary susbidies and let them find their own solutions to how they want to live. Don’t fuck with the market and assume you know what the solution is.

[Weirddave]

EC, are you going to define what you mean by the terms “help” and “hurt”?

[An_Arky]

Oh, yeah, I meant to say that I agree with you that a direct subsidy would be a good way to do it in a place like Ft. Lauderdale, though that sort of thing hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of passing political muster. One crazy idea I have is to have a “working capital” tax credit, where if you’re say, a teacher, nurse, road worker, power company worker, whatever that provides a service to the community, you get a fairly major tax credit for that, maybe a home buying subsidy, etc…possibly more palatable politically.

[John_Mace]

@An Arky

Oh, yeah, I meant to say that I agree with you that a direct subsidy would be a good way to do it in a place like Ft. Lauderdale, though that sort of thing hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of passing political muster. One crazy idea I have is to have a “working capital” tax credit, where if you’re say, a teacher, nurse, road worker, power company worker, whatever that provides a service to the community, you get a fairly major tax credit for that, maybe a home buying subsidy, etc…possibly more palatable politically.

It’s one thing to want certain critical public functions (like police work) to be done by town residents, and there is a very simple solution-- pay them a salary that allows them to live locally. But the argument seems to be about “poor people” in general. You yourself talked about WalMart workers.

So what is it? What specific jobs aren’t getting done? And if not having those jobs done is actually “undesireable”, why doesn’t it drive housing prices down? After all, that’s what happens to homes in “undesireable” neighborhoods. AFAICT, this seems to be more about social engineering-- that poor people have some sort of right to live in exensive areas. Or, that there is something unnatural about exclusive communities (your food pyramid analogy). Now, maybe that right does exist or maybe it is unnatural to have exclusive communities, and if that is the case, let’s debate that idea directly.

[Kimstu]

By the way, what is this generally sane, courteous, and interesting discussion still doing in the Pit? “I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out.”

[Voyager]

@John Mace

Of course a shortage results as towns get “built out”. There are lots of things that limit the supply the housing. I just don’t understand why we would purposely want to create yet another supply reducing cause, since the purported reason for this government action is to address the problem of high housing costs. If the government tried to address the high cost of gas by requiring gas stations to sell 10% of their product at “below market rates” to poor people, what would happen to the cost of gas for the rest of us, and would anyone think that was a good way to deal with the problem? I doubt it.

First of all, subsidized housing very likely increases housing stock, since the lots are smaller and more units can be built than for the larger houses and lots that the builder might desire.
I addressed your point already. Government might not be motivated to absolutely increase housing stock, but to increase the distribution of housing stock. Only building million dollar homes does nothing to increase housing stock for the middle class - if smaller cheaper homes get torn down and replaced by these, it might actually decrease it.

Subsidization of necessities for the poor is not unknown. New Jersey limits property taxes for the elderly - this clearly increased taxes for everyone else. If the government increases gas taxes to encourage fuel efficiency some day, some program to subsidize the poor who really need to use cars might be reasonable - it would be hard to manage though.

[John_Mace]

@Voyager

First of all, subsidized housing very likely increases housing stock, since the lots are smaller and more units can be built than for the larger houses and lots that the builder might desire.

Not really. Those new units are not part of the market, since the government fixes the price. For market purposes, you can consider them non-existent since they are not open to everyone, nor are they subjected to market forces. Even if they are higher density, they take the place of a lower density house that would have been part of the market.

[An_Arky]

@John Mace

It’s one thing to want certain critical public functions (like police work) to be done by town residents, and there is a very simple solution-- pay them a salary that allows them to live locally. But the argument seems to be about “poor people” in general. You yourself talked about WalMart workers.

So what is it? What specific jobs aren’t getting done? And if not having those jobs done is actually “undesireable”, why doesn’t it drive housing prices down? After all, that’s what happens to homes in “undesireable” neighborhoods. AFAICT, this seems to be more about social engineering-- that poor people have some sort of right to live in exensive areas. Or, that there is something unnatural about exclusive communities (your food pyramid analogy). Now, maybe that right does exist or maybe it is unnatural to have exclusive communities, and if that is the case, let’s debate that idea directly.

Nope. Jobs are getting done, but at a much greater social cost, IMO. It’s not about “boo hoo, poor people can’t afford condos”. Heck, I don’t want to blather about the poor. They’re poor! Of course it’s gonna suck to be them; it sucks for them no matter how generous and enlightened the goverment policy is. (BTW, I apologize for using WalMart as an example, because they certainly aren’t a necessary part of the food pyramid.)

It’s more about teachers and firemen (but also about the middle class, part-of-the-business-engine folks) not being able to afford to live in, or even near, in a lot of cases, the communities that entrust them to teach their kids and put out their fires (and manage their software projects, etc.). If they live in Hourawaysville, they are less bonded to the communities they serve, and are more dispassionate towards it. I believe we can and should do better than that. If you don’t think that’s important, then it’s a moot point.

I agree this could easily be solved by the local government paying them a “living wage”. Of course, those rich retired millionaires generally don’t have kids in schools and didn’t retire rich from saying OK to more taxes. While I think paying teachers and firemen enough to live there is a good idea, in reality, like the suggestion to increase taxes to subsidize affordable housing, it’s a “let them eat cake” proposition.

I don’t want to debate the composition of communities thing, because I do realize that there’s going to be Ft. Lauderdales and there’s gonna be Newarks even if you had wealth redistribution. My take on that is if we look at a community as a whole, there’s way more than real estate prices that should define what it is, but in effect, that’s what happens sometimes. Again, dusting your hands and saying “The Market’s done it’s job, we don’t need no stinkin’ nanny state fooling with it” doesn’t cut it, unless all you care about is money.

[John_Mace]

@An Arky

It’s more about teachers and firemen (but also about the middle class, part-of-the-business-engine folks) not being able to afford to live in, or even near, in a lot of cases, the communities that entrust them to teach their kids and put out their fires (and manage their software projects, etc.). If they live in Hourawaysville, they are less bonded to the communities they serve, and are more dispassionate towards it. I believe we can and should do better than that. If you don’t think that’s important, then it’s a moot point.

So, does a person have to be a teacher or a fireman or a cop in order to get one of these below-market housing units? And what if the person stops being a teacher or a fireman or a cop-- does he or she have to move out?

As for people not agreeing to a tax increase to pay higher salaries, I don’t know if I buy that. Put both options on a ballot iniative and see which one wins out.

[An_Arky]

Good question. If I had a good answer to that, I wouldn’t be sitting on my duff posting on a message board, I’d be leading us to great heights and um…stuff.

But workers come and go, and houses are bought and sold. Of course with the “tax credit” option, if they stop being a teacher or fireman, they lose the tax credit. If they choose to stay, they will effectively be paying more to do so, just as the market would dictate. Same would go for subsidies in that regard. Paying them higher salaries doesn’t change anything other than increasing the chance they’ll stay in the job/community, which I’m presuming is desireable in this instance. The “housing set-aside” option would have a problem here, I do agree, which, again, I am not so favorable to.

If I were to gamble on a tax increase of any kind passing, I’d be mighty nervous. It might be possible to pass a modest, narrowly targeted “teacher pay raise tax” or whatever (I’m speaking in fairly general terms with this for brevity’s sake), but I’d sure be shy to bet on it.

[Voyager]

@John Mace

Not really. Those new units are not part of the market, since the government fixes the price. For market purposes, you can consider them non-existent since they are not open to everyone, nor are they subjected to market forces. Even if they are higher density, they take the place of a lower density house that would have been part of the market.

Okay, not at the time of first sale - but they do become part of the market long term, as the original buyers move out and sell them on the open market. As this happens, it increases the pool of potential buyers.

I haven’t heard of restrictions on the sale of these houses. Princeton University actually has a program where they sell houses in Princteon at below market rates to professors, with the requirement that they get right of first refusal on repurchasing them. Woodrow Wilson started it, IIRC. There were a bunch around the corner from where I lived in Princeton.

[John_Mace]

@Voyager

Okay, not at the time of first sale - but they do become part of the market long term, as the original buyers move out and sell them on the open market. As this happens, it increases the pool of potential buyers.

Wait a cotton pickin’ minute. You mean some shlub gets to buy them at below market rates and then sell them later at market rates? If that’s true, then is truly one of the most idiot schemes ever cooked up by nutty politicians

[Weirddave]

@John Mace

Wait a cotton pickin’ minute. You mean some shlub gets to buy them at below market rates and then sell them later at market rates? If that’s true, then is truly one of the most idiot schemes ever cooked up by nutty politicians

Quiet you schlub. It’s helping the poor. To our money apparently.

[Kimstu]

@John Mace

You mean some shlub gets to buy them at below market rates and then sell them later at market rates? If that’s true, then is truly one of the most idiot schemes ever cooked up by nutty politicians

How you figure? If the “shlub” is getting the discount for being a member of one of the comparatively low-paid service professions, how is that substantially different from your preferred method of giving such “shlubs” tax-funded subsidies for their housing costs?

Or would you attach riders to your tax-funded subsidies to ensure that the “shlubs” who received them would not be allowed to sell their houses at market rates later on? How come? Wouldn’t you consider such riders to be a further distortion of the market?

[John_Mace]

@Kimstu

How you figure? If the “shlub” is getting the discount for being a member of one of the comparatively low-paid service professions, how is that substantially different from your preferred method of giving such “shlubs” tax-funded subsidies for their housing costs?

Or would you attach riders to your tax-funded subsidies to ensure that the “shlubs” who received them would not be allowed to sell their houses at market rates later on? How come? Wouldn’t you consider such riders to be a further distortion of the market?

Well, the tax funded income subsidies would be available to all low income people, not just the few who were lucky enough to win the housing unit lottery. Also, you know exactly how much these guys are getting when we give them a subsidy, whereas if they’re given a below market housing unit, you have no idea how much profit they’re gonig to make off it. I have no problem helping out poor people to live decent lives, but I don’t we have an obligation to make them rich (which is precisely what would happen in many real estaet markets). Now, if the “shlub” was given a salary subsidy and he was smart enough to risk it in the housing market on his own, I have no problem with him making a nice little profit. He risked his capital and he got a return.

It also points to the deceptive motives of those who support these below market housing units. If they’re supposed to be there to help poor people, won’t they also be need to help poor people 10 years from now?

As for market distortions, what you’ve done is taken the risk out ownership for a certain class of people by allowing them to sell later at market rates. Believe it or not, even people well off people can lose their shirts in the real estate market. It happens here in Silicon Valley (one of the hottest housing markets in the country). Most housing markets don’t just go staright up-- they often suffer setbacks. Just ask people here who sold homes in 1991 that the bought in 1988. Home prices in my area dropped as much as 20% around that time.

[Kimstu]

@John Mace

Also, you know exactly how much these guys are getting when we give them a subsidy, whereas if they’re given a below market housing unit, you have no idea how much profit they’re gonig to make off it.

Still don’t get you, sorry. If we sell somebody a housing unit below market value, presumably we know how much below market value it is and can adjust the discount so it isn’t too big a giveaway. Of course, we have no control over what will happen in the housing market in future or how big a profit the discount recipient may be able to make ten years down the line.

But exactly the same holds true if we give somebody a tax-funded subsidy that enables them to buy a housing unit at market value. We still have no control over how big a profit the subsidy recipient may be able to make ten years down the line.

I really don’t see how it makes that much practical difference whether we’re giving low-income homebuyers a subsidy or a discount.

@John Mace

Well, the tax funded income subsidies would be available to all low income people, not just the few who were lucky enough to win the housing unit lottery.

Well yes, that part would make a difference, but actually I thought what we were talking about at this point was targeted affordable housing/subsidies specifically for middle-class people in comparatively low-paying service professions. You’re right that the problem of affordable housing for all low-income people needs to be solved too, but I don’t think that’s what An Arky and Voyager have been talking about.

[Voyager]

@John Mace

Wait a cotton pickin’ minute. You mean some shlub gets to buy them at below market rates and then sell them later at market rates? If that’s true, then is truly one of the most idiot schemes ever cooked up by nutty politicians

I believe someone said that the deal required the buyer to keep the house some minimum amount of time. If not, I’d assume that they’d have to sell it back to the government to resell to another qualified buyer.

But you’re still not getting the real reason behind this - to increase the diversity of housing stock. Builders, especially in conditions of build-out, have every reason to build high margin high price luxury homes exclusively. If a town wants a larger range of homes ( and if you think this is improper, you should be against zoning and the like also) it must mandate some level of affordable housing.

I can see that you are outraged that someone who is not wealthy might make some money, but is it any different from subsidizing them to buy a house and them making the same money based on leveraging the state’s money? If all new stock was million dollar homes, exactly what would these people buy? (Existing stock - maybe, but they may get outbid for it. And is it fair for someone who does not qualify to lose out to someone who does?) Injecting money in the market like this will raise prices for everyone, which is exactly opposite of what is desired. No - the city does not want to lower prices for eveyone, they want to lower the median price, though the average will likely not change much.

It strikes me that a big difference between the conservative and liberal view of this kind of thing is that conservatives look at the average and liberals look at the median and the distribution. This explains why conservatives don’t get why the public is not happy with the current economy, where average salaries (but not median ones) are rising.

[want2know]

Just my $ .02 (adjusted for inflation, of course):

As fascinating as this whole debate on the free market and economic realities is (with good points being made on both sides of the issue), I think we’ve deviated from the whole point of the OP. It is the utterly contemptuous tone this so-called “mayor” is taking with the people of his city who do the actual work to keep his precious municipality functioning! Working a 40-hr week isn’t enough to entitle you to decent housing? Gee, I guess all those labor laws we passed in the early 20th century were just some commie welfare plot, huh?

I have a question for Mayor Naugle–How many hours a week do you actually fucking work?

We are having much the same problem here in Las Vegas. The median price for a home has nearly tripled in the past 8-10 years; meanwhile, the service workers (who are the majority of the work force here) have essentially been priced out of the market. Every year, our population increases, necessitating the construction of new schools. Unfortunately, every September, we end up short a couple of hundred teachers because when the applicants start analyzing housing prices, they realize they cant afford to live here. UNLV can’t even attract professors for the same reason. I ask you, what good is a free market if it disenfranchises the most necessary workers? Who’s going to provide the vital services that any well-run municipality requires?

Hey, here’s an idea: They can live outside the city! Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, maybe in South Florida with its flat terrain it’s not so much of a problem. However, let’s cite the example of Aspen, Colorado:

http://www.aspenchamber.org/Community-Demographics-pl1034.cfm

"A 30-40 minute commute when the roads are dry ". And up to 90 minutes in the winter! So let me get this straight–I, as a working person serving the needs of the community, have to live 30 or so miles from my job? With gas now topping $3 a gallon? While the people I serve, who can afford the gas, get to live close to everything the city I serve has to offer?

Not everyone can be rich. It is economically unfeasible. Someone has to do the actual work. Someone has to be middle class. Doesn’t the working class deserve a little consideration from our precious “free market”? They certainly don’t deserve to be insulted and belittled by someone like Naugle!

[Grossbottom]

“Fort Lauderdale,” which I believe is the exclusive turf over which Naugle presides, can be escaped by driving five minutes in any direction. The county is a single urban landscape with alot of “cities,” but they’re really just one big one. King Shit’s particular Turd Hill is crowded, but there’s plenty of lebensraum outside of it and much of it is close at hand.

For years my mailing address has been Fort Lauderdale, but my mayors have been mayors of Fort Lauderdale, Oakland Park, Hallandale Beach…the list goes on and on. Some “cities” are so small they have like one dumb police car. Naugle’s shortcomings notwithstanding, this looks like a hatchet job, and it sounds like the other cities & Miami were trying to dump their low income people into Naugle’s turf, which has plenty of them already, thanks much. His response is certainly pitworthy but there’s no crisis other than lazy people who can’t drive another two minutes because they live in the “City” of Lauderhill.

Which is about twenty blocks from here.

Why doesn’t the Sentinel do a story on the jackass responsible for driving a fucking ten mile-long freight train through the city, at two miles an hour, every fucking day at rush hour? And likes to bring it to a dead stop when it intersects ten or twenty streets, in a city with lots of drawbridge chokepoints? AND THEN HE DRIVES IT IN REVERSE FOR AWHILE, AND THEN FORWARD AGAIN. Maybe a historical retrospective on whatever idiot shitbag who sold the hundred year leases to the railroads so now we’re stuck with it. Last week I watched some dude get out of his car and just stand there, alone, holding his middle finger up in a silent and defiant fuck you to the train as it went baaaack and forth. I’ve seen donuts and coffee mugs thrown at conductors. Every day with these trains, and I hate them and their hobo friends.

WE ALL DO SO PLEASE SEND RPGS AND FRAG MINES TO HELP US IN OUR STRUGGLE.