EDITORIAL: Golden State pols ignore solution to the state’s housing predicament

California has a major housing crisis. In response, the state’s progressive ruling class has decided to do everything possible to ignore the solution.

While the booming tech industry in Silicon Valley has filled Sacramento’s coffers and kept the state’s economy on an upward trajectory, California’s worsening housing situation serves as a harbinger of more ominous trends.

In a report compiled earlier this year by Next 10, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, the issue looms large. Titled “Growth Amid Dysfunction: An Analysis of Trends in Housing, Migration and Employment,” the report finds that “the shortage of affordable and accessible housing is restricting growth, inflicting economic and environmental damage and causing many low-income and middle-class residents to seek opportunities elsewhere,” observes Patrick Sisson of Curbed, a housing website.

That may be good news for Nevada, as small-business owners and others leave the Golden State. But it should also serve as a warning to Nevada lawmakers about the dangers of a hyperactive administrative state.

The answer to California’s housing dilemma is, of course, to build more housing and to clear the dense thicket of restrictions that shackle developers and strangle supply. But that would require the state’s politicians to acknowledge the overweening regulatory apparatus they embrace is a large part of the problem — and they aren’t rushing to confess.

Instead, policymakers across California have offered a number of “solutions,” many of which — such as rent control — are flat-out awful and counterproductive. And now, the state’s two U.S. senators want the rest of the nation to ride to the rescue with bushels of cash.

Last week, Sens. Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation that would offer refundable tax credits for tenants who spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. It’s a distraction from the real issue.

“We would be asking the whole United States to subsidize the bad behavior of some locales that are artificially pushing up rents by not allowing more building to happen,” Lynn Fisher, a housing policy analyst with the American Enterprise Association, told Reason.com.

The measure has many problems, not the least of which is that it provides more cover for state and local politicians to ignore the laws of supply and demand. Ms. Fisher also told Reason that the proposal could actually raise rents, particularly in areas where supply remains constricted.

Not surprisingly, Reason reports, “The bill has gotten glowing reviews from local politicians who are only too happy to deflect any blame they might share for the Golden State’s housing woes.”

The tried-and-true observation that every government intervention requires another government intervention to address the unintended consequences of the previous intervention is on full display in terms of California and housing policy. The Harris-Feinstein bill is more evidence that California’s progressive elite would rather run circles than actually solve the state’s housing crisis.