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Land is fixed, so the greater ability to pay from the subsidy simply increases the 'rent' earned by landowners. To a great extent, one gets the same house on th

• dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Land is fixed Housing is not land, and quite often in the United States is not provided in a way which makes maximum practical use of land, so land being fixed is pretty much irrelevant to whether housing supply is fixed. > so the greater ability to pay from the subsidy simply increases the 'rent' earned by landowners. If "landowners" were a single monopoly supplier, this, again, would be a reasonable conclusion. The ability to capture value from the subsidy, however, depends on the ability to provide value from housing on that land, something on which landowners naturally compete (qualitatively, even where the do not do so on some quantitative measures, such as floor space, as robustly as would occur in a truly freely competitive market because of, e.g., zoning restrictions.)
• bufordsharkley 10y ago
  > Housing is not land, and quite often in the United States is not provided in a way which makes maximum practical use of land, so land being fixed is pretty much irrelevant to whether housing supply is fixed. It's clearly relevant-- the fixed nature of land makes is what limits the supply of housing. Both due to the obvious situation -- we can't build housing because there's no available land for it-- as well as the more complicated case where the limited supply of land is downzoned to create wealth for landowners. > If "landowners" were a single monopoly supplier, this, again, would be a reasonable conclusion. The ability to capture value from the subsidy, however, depends on the ability to provide value from housing on that land, something on which landowners naturally compete. It is uncommon for them to compete. It is much more common to enact restrictive zoning laws (and other bureaucratic measures) so they do not have to.