Sen. Angus King thinks that the solution to the country’s housing shortage is more tax credits for developers and more subsidies for buyers and renters (“Bipartisan solutions key to tackling affordable housing shortfall,” Sept. 10). In other words, more of the same expensive and ineffective policies that we have now. More subsidies would increase demand and raise prices, more tax credits would do little to increase supply, but both would increase the already huge federal budget deficit.

If rents and home prices are rising faster than inflation and incomes, the solution is more supply. But increasing the housing supply is made difficult by a morass of regulatory impediments, each of which has its own well-intended rationalization, but also contributes to a shortage in the housing stock. These impediments include zoning restrictions; multiple environmental reviews and restrictions; demands for inclusion of affordable housing in every large development; insistence on green energy usage; a slow permitting process; and calls for rent controls that may seem compassionate, but which seriously impede the development of new rental properties and discourage the upkeep of existing units.

Curbing impediments to housing development is harder than throwing more borrowed federal money at the problem and isn’t a priority for politicians who get more credit for government largess. The housing market doesn’t need more tax credits and subsidies. What it needs is less micromanagement and more freedom for developers to produce the kinds of properties buyers and renters want.

Martin Jones
Freeport