by Kevin Scully |
There were two front-page articles in the Sunday, July 27, 2019, Manchester Union leader that I just couldn’t let pass without comment: “Caught in the Housing Squeeze” and “Faces of Affordable Housing.” The subtitle for “Faces” is “Government funds can help keep a lid on rising rents.”
Don’t you love that sub-title? Has anyone explained to Michael Cousineau, the article’s author, that the government has no funds? Does he understand that everything the government spends is taken from a taxpayer?
When it comes to public policy, listen carefully, and understand what is being proposed. Then always, always, ask two simple questions:
1) Who benefits?
2) Who Pays?
Who benefits from “affordable” (taxpayer-subsidized) housing?
Answer: Democrat politicians, Big Business, Public Sector Unions, and the winners of the affordable housing lottery.
Who Pays?
Answer: You.
How do Democrat Politicians benefit? The lower the income and the more government subsidies a person receives, the more likely a person is to vote Democrat. Your local Democrat wants to cement their voting majority by importing more dependent Democrat voters into your community at your expense.
Big Business wants subsidized housing because it means they can pay workers lower wages. After all, you are subsidizing the cost of living of others. Couldn’t the Chamber of Commerce companies use their own money to subsidize housing for their workers?
Why do that when they can get you to pay?
Companies such as supermarkets make out because these imported dependents are spending their WIC and EBT money in the local businesses. Big Business doesn’t care if you foot that bill, if their revenues and profits go up.
Teacher’s unions love affordable housing because it means more kids in the seats and jobs for them. Never mind that you must pay even more for the families whose rent you are already subsidizing; the Educational Industrial Complex is doing OK.
And don’t forget the other government workers that provide social services. The more high-maintenance people you import, the more jobs and work for the Government, for which (do I need to say it?) you pay.
Of course, the people that you are paying to live in those affordable housing units also benefit.
Let’s meet one couple described in the Union Leader story. She’s on SSI, and he’s driving a forklift. The woman said they “can’t” afford to make more than $42K per year or they’d have to move out of the apartment you are subsidizing.
Can’t or won’t?
Think about this for a second. The woke and caring Democrats have set up a perverse system that both creates an incentive to be poor and then creates a disincentive to get out of poverty!
But let’s not absolve those paragons of virtue living in that apartment. It appears they don’t want to make more and become self-sufficient because it’s easier to keep their hands in your pocket. Sorry, I’m just not feeling very sympathetic towards them and that problem.
What do you get out of it? Crime, traffic congestion, more shoppers in the grocery stores, more kids in your child’s classroom, higher property taxes … you know, the hassle and the bill.
But there’s hope for taxpayers, at least for some of you.
Elissa Margolin, the Director of Housing Action NH, says:
“New Hampshire communities are held back by lack of resources, costly regulations, and lack of municipal support or NIMBYISM.”
Let me translate: some of you have been successful in protecting your communities from being flooded and fundamentally transformed at your expense. Good for you, keep it that way.
Self-sufficient, contributing members of society are always welcome to NH. If you need to be paid to live somewhere, may I suggest Massachusetts?
