I really should clean my desk more often.
This morning, while shoveling out a patch to put my mouse on, I ran across a small news clipping. For the life of me, I can't remember where I got it, or when. Based on the paper and color, it seems to have come out of a Sunday newspaper supplement, but otherwise there's no such evidence on the clipping itself. Anyway, the content is fascinating. It really is brief, so here it is in full, with apologies to whomever actually owns the thing:
The $90,000 Question
Disparity between rents and debt may inhibit midrange housing.
With so many new residential buildings under construction in Chicago, why are so few units available for rent in the middle price range? A recent report from the Woodstock Institute—a 31-year-old Chicago nonprofit that promotes economic development in low-income and minority communities—argued that median-priced apartments simply cannot support their own construction and operation costs. These days, according to the report, the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Chicago is $700, which covers about $60,000 in debt service—but the cost of building that apartment entails $150,000 in debt. That's a $90,000 mismatch. “This is irrefutable evidence that the market on its own cannot provide housing for low-income people,” says Malcolm Bush, the institute's president. “Significant government subsidy is needed.”
Now, I have a theory: government subsidies, in the form of minimum wage laws and political support for trade unions as well as direct subsidies for low-income renters, are responsible for this $90,000 “mismatch.” How so? Because such forces constrain the ability of the free market to respond to demand. If that's the case—and it wouldn't be an isolated one—then I hardly see how even more subsidies are going to help.
Anyway, I'm interested enough that I'd like to read and digest this report so that I can respond in depth... and, thanks to the magic of Google, I can do that, and so can you: here it is. I'll have more to say in the topic in a few days.
Incidentally, it's worth noting that the Woodstock Institute published this report in February 2004. Now, you might be tempted to tease me about the archeological depth of the pile on my desk, but in my defense I have to point out that I've only had this desk for a month: we just moved into our new office space in December. So this thing must be fairly recent.
Get it? This item isn't news, any more than it's news when jouralists regurgitate pre-war UNICEF reports—without date stamps, thank you very much—to show us how much Iraqi children are suffering currently under the thumb of U.S. oppression. It is, in fact, a clumsily crafted, highly partisan lie, since the implication is that a politically-charged, non-peer-reviewed opinion piece, cherry-picked out of history, reflects the truth on the ground now.
Moreover, a quick search in the report for the direct quotes from my newspaper clip produces no results. Therefore, I must conclude that the journalist who wrote the piece contacted Malcolm Bush directly for comment, and that Bush didn't bother to caution the reporter regarding the age and shelf-life of this particular economic report. This tactic smacks of intellectual dishonesty, doesn't it? Echo answereth not.
Still, that's a hefty charge to level against a man I've never met. So, to be fair, I dropped Dr. Bush an e-mail from his bio page and invited him to join the discussion. Let's see what he has to say.