Some very good sentences from Devon Watson, a Douglas councillor, on how building homes – any homes – help to make all housing more affordable. This is obviously a recurring theme on my website.
The fact that building new homes makes homes more accessible in general is, of course, an entirely obvious and uncontested fact that can be understood by anyone who thinks about this issue for even a few minutes – but it is rare for a politician to express this openly. We see this in other areas of life as well: when fancy new cars become more expensive, used cars become more expensive.
So we recently have an MDC development in central Douglas. And what that’ll do is for absolutely zero cost on the taxpayer, add 133 homes, to the housing supply, and that will reduce pressure, even if these were all mansions, high quality luxury flats, that reduces pressure on on high influx from mid rent flats. And these effects do eventually end up trickling down. Japan is the only society in the world that has falling housing prices, because they’ve got a pro building approach.
But then what happens is when we move toward this approach of building more housing that will eventually be sold on the private market, a lot of politicians have a direct electoral incentive to oppose it, right? Because existing residents have concerns about parking, direct residents just don’t want additional people living near them. So you end up having this perverse incentive in which because you’re elected by homeowners, you have no accountability to the potential residents who could live in your area. So our direct electoral incentives mean as though every individual MHK and Commissioner and Councillor has an incentive to prevent housing from being built near them.
Devon Watson on Perspective 5.2.23 – is government doing enough to address the Island’s Housing Crisis? – on 5 February. Transcript by Otter.ai, lightly edited for clarity
And further:
And I think that when you build houses, in towns, and in city centres and in town centres, you end up having these really positive spillover effects, such as the first one being that it’s a lot more affordable to fund services, they support a lot more businesses, businesses near them. So three apartment blocks, for example, that can sustain a shop that can sustain like a hair salon. So if you want to sort of improve hospitality, brownfield development in towns has these sort of positive knock on benefits that would otherwise not exist.
Devon Watson on Perspective 5.2.23 – is government doing enough to address the Island’s Housing Crisis? – on 5 February. Transcript by Otter.ai, lightly edited for clarity
You can listen to the whole thing here. The quotes above are from just after the 30 minutes mark.
9 February 2023 Update: Removed the words “and available” from the quoted sentence, “Japan is the only society in the world that has falling housing prices, because they’ve got a pro building approach.”
