sowell on housing

Housing issues are one of Thomas Sowell's favorite topics from what I can tell and this week he's running a multi-part column on the subject called, "Time and money and housing". Part I ran the on August 30th and today is part II. Sowell cogently points out:

What developers want means absolutely nothing economically unless other people are prepared to pay for what they offer. In other words, developers are just intermediaries who represent the demand for housing by vastly larger numbers of other people.

Contrast that with how leftists see things, that developers act without constraint and consumers are mindless followers of whatever is offered. Leftists insist that the government step in and counteract "powerful" actors like developers in order to protect a beleaguered community, but the reality is that new home buyers pay the price to protect the entrenched interests of current homeowners and the price is very high indeed.