Connecticut is experiencing, the “experts” tell us, an “affordable” housing shortage. This is simply another way of saying too few housing opportunities are being offered in Connecticut to middle income people. The problem is not a lack of properties. There are in Connecticut post-industrial properties that may be converted into affordable rents for – to choose but one group, young Connecticut residents who graduate from Connecticut colleges with degrees that may earn them a spot in a vibrant Connecticut company.
The supply-side answer to a lack of housing is to increase the
supply of housing. Easier said than done, say progressive politicians who favor
replacing supply-side measures with the centralization of governmental
force. The state should, progressive minded experts tell us, seize unproductive
properties, rehabilitate them, and market them to productive landlords.
The problem, in many cases, is that the owners of such
properties cannot sell them to prospective buyers because their property is
dilapidated and encumbered with state-imposed costs and arcane regulations that
discourage buyers from purchasing the property. Any new buyer would soon
experience the same dispiriting conditions that had impoverished, relatively
speaking, the original owner, who has reluctantly concluded that it is more cost
effective to avoid all supply side solutions and hang onto his property until
it is condemned.
Here in Connecticut – largely because the state has been directed
for three decades and more by a progressive, supply-side intolerant Democrat
Party majority – state government favors grand statewide rather than municipal solutions
to problems identified by progressives as having been caused by the free
market. Property has been removed from the free market, they claim, because
landlords and land owners are greedy. If both were less rapacious – more like
St. Francis than Mr. Scrooge -- there would be an abundance of housing. It is
the business of progressive states to correct the immoral leanings of greedy
landlords through the application of statewide solutions. True, not every
landlord is a Simon Legree, but the state must of necessity paint with a broad
brush, and no property owner in Connecticut may be permitted to place himself
above the law. There is no practical difference between a law and a stated
enforced regulation. The operative principle of socialist progressivism is that
the availability of low cost public housing will increase only if the state
“invests” in low-cost public housing. There is a corollary principle: The free
enterprise system is broken and must be managed by progressive political
“experts” through the use of suffocating regulations.
Connecticut is famous for “investing” in problem causing statewide
solutions. According to sober environmental politicians, the solution to high energy
prices should involve a massive investment in clean energy provided by wind
turbines, whose massive blades are non-biodegradable.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “In 2023, natural gas
fueled 60% of Connecticut's total electricity net generation. The state's
natural gas-fired generation has more than doubled since 2010, as about 2,000
megawatts of natural gas-fired generating units came online since then. Seven
of the state's 10 largest power plants by annual generation are natural
gas-fired. Nuclear power provided 33% of in-state generation in 2023, the
seventh-largest share of any state. Connecticut has one nuclear power plant
with two reactors, the 2,081-megawatt Millstone nuclear power station located
in Waterford. Solar power provides the largest amount of Connecticut's
remaining in-state electricity, accounting for about 4% of net generation in
2023. Biomass, hydroelectric, and petroleum power plants provided almost 3% of
the state's net generation. Connecticut also has a minor amount of generation
from wind energy.”
State “investment” involves moving tax money from hard pressed middleclass taxpayers to state-favored projects, none of which will assure a profitable return on the investment. One of the projects favored by Governor Ned Lamont was Connecticut’s beefed-up Public Utility Regulatory Authority (PURA), whose hand-selected Chairwoman was regulatory czar Marissa Gillett, not a shrinking violet. For Gillett, regulation authority involved setting wage and price controls for Connecticut’s two major energy distributors. The energy distributors sued PURA. A superior court Judge in the case found that czar Gillett, according to one news account, had “violated the law under her leadership.” As gracefully as possible, Gillett left her position, Lamont’s praise still ringing in her ears. The judge also referred an assistant attorney general defending Gillett to a Connecticut agency that disciplines lawyers, according to a Hartford Courant story.
Arrogance of this kind is not at
all unusual in one-party political structures. A famous caricaturist was once
approached by one of his victims who asked how he could in good conscience
distort the victim’s features so horrifyingly. Answer: “What’s the point of
having absolute power if you are not prepared to abuse it?”
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