Monday, October 8, 2007

Housing Grants

From what I've read about the proposed housing grants, I'm not too thrilled about them. The proposal states whoever wrote it up has absolutely no idea whether or not it will induce people to buy rental housing and convert it back to single family housing. Much like the $20 million donation to SIUC (yeah I'm back on that again), we have no idea what the outcome will be and those proposing either haven't shown any figures indicating what the results will be. This sounds to me similar to offering a tax break to a business in the hope it will locate in your community. The research shows in general, the business would have located there anyhow without the subsidy. I fear this is what will happen with these grant. People who would have bought the houses anyhow are getting taxpayer subsidies to get them to make a decision they would have made anyhow. Plus aren't we having tax shortfalls anyhow? I thought that was why we got a sales tax increase?

I'd like to see this put into place as a pilot program for 2 years and see how it works before fully enacting it into law.

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