Scott Cox’s four-part series on “What’s Wrong With Housing” struck a chord.
Local control. Property tax policy. Fees, charges, levies, delays, more fees plague more and more land deals. Simply, those who own homes and properties and “the vote” in many of our communities have no interest in encouraging more people to come into those communities, so they crowd the pathways with obstacles and expense.
A licensed architect with broad experience in banking, development and project management, Cox’s analysis hit the nail on the head in many ways, clearly laying out why the free market left to its own devices will never solve for what’s ailing housing, and never change the fact that more than 25 cents of every dollar spent on a new home goes to cover some regulatory cost or other.
Let’s consider, for just a few moments this morning, what’s right with housing.
People
Passion
Data
Capital
Need
Leaders
Teamwork
Purpose
Brilliance
Persistence
I’d stack these forces up against just about any problem any business community faces, cyclical, structural, whatever.
Here’s what supernova inventor and serial innovator Dean Kamen has said when doubters doubted and naysayers naysaid:
“Don’t tell me it’s impossible,” he says, “tell me you can’t do it.” “Tell me it’s never been done. Because the only real laws in this world–the only things we really know–are the two postulates of relativity, the three laws of Newton, the four laws of thermodynamics, and Maxwell’s equation–no, scratch that, the only things we really know are Maxwell’s equations, the three laws of Newton, the two postulates of relativity, and the periodic table. That’s all we know that’s true. All the rest are man’s laws…”
What’s right with housing is that people who are working within its business and development and investment and design and construction and engineering communities wake up in the morning and love their jobs because of why those jobs exist and what they’re for.
This is the super-ordinate motive for why we’re doing Hive, November 28-29, in Austin. What’s wrong with housing is solvable by what’s right with housing. Register now.
