I previously wrote that in 2024 voters in Los Angeles will decide whether the city should force hotel owners to rent vacant rooms to homeless people. This, the advocates of the initiative want us to believe, is the solution to homelessness in Los Angeles. If that is true, why delay the solution for more than two years? (This is a rhetorical question, but I will provide an answer.)
The fact is, the only thing that this proposal will do is reduce the profit margin of hotel owners. And when profit margins are arbitrarily reduced by government officials, guess what happens? (This too is a rhetorical question to which I will provide an answer.)
This initiative is the epitome of the Progressive framework. It looks at an issue in isolation, completely divorced from the full context. The advocates see people living on the street, empty hotel rooms, and by their simplistic math, zero plus one equals force hotels to do their bidding.
When hotel owners are forced to rent their rooms to the homeless, they will soon abandon their hotel. Few paying guests will want to stay at the Homeless Hotel. No rational person will continue to operate a business when the government is forcing him to operate it in an irrational manner. But this doesn’t concern the advocates of the initiative.
The advocates are allegedly doing something today to deal with today’s problem. Their “solution” won’t even begin to be made manifest for years into the future, but in the meantime, they can proclaim how much they care about the homeless. Truth be told, they don’t care about the homelessness problem in Los Angeles. They are concerned about getting votes, and the way to achieve that is by pretending that they care.
The housing crisis is a supply problem. The supply of housing, particularly for low-income individuals, is far less than the demand. Every supply shortage problem, including affordable housing for low-income individuals requires freedom—the freedom to produce and trade. Freedom, not mandates and controls, is the solution to the housing problem.