It's one of those ideas that sounds good on the surface until you dig deeper. If this program is passed into law, not only will it cost the taxpayer an arm-and-a-leg, it will also end up artificially driving up the cost of home ownership in those very same areas Cardin is trying to help. Any time the government gets involved in "solving" a problem, the net result is that the cost of the services surrounding the problem go up. Think "Medicare" in 1964 and how it transitioned into "Medicare" today.

This idea doesn't even look good to me on the surface. it looks horrible. and the deeper I dig the more disgusted I am.

Not convinced giving the state gov'ts any tax credits is the smartest move. Me thinks it wouldn't end up benefiting the people who need it.

However...the exorbitant housing prices in some parts of the country is a worry. I'm wondering what, if anything, LP supporters would do about it. Short of letting the "bubble burst", resulting in lots of not-so-nice negative equity mortages. 60, 100 year mortgages anyone?

The idea is a great idea; however the method of action is deplorable. The fact is that we cannot, as a federal govt. spend any more money that we don't have, especially for new programs.

kp

Maybe if the Feds didn't take so much money away from us, some private citizens could build affordable housing, with - get this - codes of conduct so that criminals don't screw the place up.

Building affordable housing is not the government's job. I believe that those in the private sector and in private charities should take up that task. I been to public housing and low income housing projects, and it is not a pretty picture. Crime and drugs are rampant there. People are afraid that they will be attacked, raped, mugged or get robbed. It is a cesspool of criminality with the government as landlord and slumlord.

Private organizations such as Habitat For Humanity and other religious, secular, and business organizations can do a way better job and provide a great deal more in services than government can. Better and cheaper and a benefit to individuals. With government, all you get is more money thrown, and what happens afterwards nobody wants to know. That is sad.

I really don't think the LP needs to "do" anything about it in a government sense. Like Alex suggests, our solution should be to trumpet the work of organizations like Habitats for Humanity. If an opponent counters that Habitats doesn't do enough, we should reply that his volunteer help is needed in his local Habitats chapter.

But I still think the most important point is that each new government program to "help" people ends up hurting them even more in the long run.

I agree that building subsidized housing is not the government's job. Housing that is subsidized and cheap by market standards ends up with long waiting lists, so the solution doesn't even really work well.

Beyond that, this highlights a problem with the federalist system. Regardless of if one is a libertarian or not, the point of the American system is supposed to give different states the abilities to try different solutions and compete against each other to see what works. If the bulk of the tax system is in state hands instead of federal hands, then Maryland can increase taxes and build affordable housing with it and the people of Maryland and other states can decide with their feet and wallets if that makes Maryland a better or worse place to live than other states.

The Federal government owns huge tracts of land throughout the US, especially in the West. Uncle Sam owns nearly half of all acreage in California. If the government opened up even 1% of those holdings for private purchase in California the effect on the superhot speculator's market there would be profound. Perhaps the long-inflating California real-estate/housing bubble might finally burst. This wouldn't "cost" anything to the taxpayers, and would potentially attract billions of voluntarily offered dollars to the government coffers.

Why is nobody talking about the "asset liquidation" option? That would seem to be something that every libertarian -- and millions of ordinary citizens looking for affordable housing -- could support.

Like welfare, this is just another idea that will make up for lost ground in the the tax brackets. People are often fooled by things such as this. We need to stop Robin Hood before it really starts to have a negative impact on local economies.

Here's an idea...

IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT, MOVE.

Wealth cannot be measured in terms the number of dollar bills we have, but rather what we can afford with those dollars. There is a fine line amount of land within reasonable commute distant of major locations of employement in the US. The demand for living space is elastic to some extent, but each of us requires a minimum space in order to sleep, eat, bathe, etc. While we can share such facilities, to do so represents a significant degredation in quality of life and must be recognized as such. Who out there wants to have to sleep in a "hot-bunk" or share acommunal kitchen or bath? Ask an ex-navy vet if you have doubts. In many major metro areas, a leading example of which is So Cal, demand for housing space is beginning to exceed the space available under a traditional single family home format. So Cal has an extremely large population of illegal immigrant workers (and illegal immigrant non-workers, e.g., wives, kids). A not too atypical setup for such people is to use a single family home as a communal one. This permits such individuals to complete for single family homes, thus driving up the demand for such, and therefore the price. So, one clear way to reduce demand pull price increases is to enforce the law. While reduction of the illegal labor would no doubt raise wages and job opportunities for legal workers, is that such a bad thing overall? There is such a huge gap between labor driven home contruction cost and demand pull sales price that it is not necessarily true that increased labor costs must inevitably result in sales price increases. After all, we are not dealing with a theoretical market in which there is an infinite supply of homes. Nothing even close.

Hey, my wife and I live in a thirty-year-old mobile home, and it's a complete and total PILE.

I *demand* that the government do something to fix this problem. (Or at least fix our poorly-functioning toilet!)

Then again, maybe if everything we buy didn't cost so much because of insane taxes and regulation, and if our personal taxes weren't so utterly ridiculous for two working-class wage-earners, we could afford a modest house.

Thanks for the help, Uncle Sam!

James anderson is exactly right. The government can help by liquidating their land holdings and giving the publics land back to the public. The U.S government now owns well over 70% of the entire land mass in the state of nevada and 60% of the state of utah as well as huge sections of montana and many other states. If they want to help, then give american public lands back to the american people and butt out of their lives.