News Miner 55
Housing economics, transgender care rules, guns, schools, corporal punishment, and more.
More Housing Lowers Housing Prices (Duh)
Noah Smith has out an article that I hope Colorado legislators read as they work through legislation on land use. Here’s part of what he writes:
[W]e don’t think the new construction actually causes rents to go up, right? Because we know that the actual cause of rising rents is the underlying increase in demand. We know that the high-earning people are moving in and pushing up rents because there are economic opportunities to be had in Austin. And we know that the new market-rate housing construction is a response to that rise in demand, rather than the cause, just like umbrellas are a response to rain . . . right??
Except that a number of people do think that building market-rate housing makes rents go up. This idea is a darling of left-NIMBY activists, for whom ideology and online turf wars generally trump hard-headed empirical evidence. . . .
Academics, developers and people in their 20s and 30s—particularly those most active on social media—have reached an unusual level of consensus. Their solution, supported by a wealth of scholarly research, is simple and elegant: Loosen regulations, such as zoning, and build more homes of any kind—cheap, modest and palatial.
Read the entire piece.
I do want to emphasize, though, that lower housing costs are not the only value. If they were, we could just jack up marginal tax rates until a third of the population moved out of the state, and then—voilà!—housing prices would crash. Of course that also would destroy the state’s economy.
If more people move to our state because we manage to unleash the housing market, great! Sure, that will keep housing prices somewhat higher than they would be otherwise, but that added population also brings enormous benefits. A free(er) market in housing still would drive down housing prices for people already living here, relative to where prices would be otherwise. As State Senator Dominick Moreno writes, “there simply aren’t enough homes to meet demand.”
In other housing news . . . apparently they’re shutting down Bandimere Speedway to make way for more housing.
Running Down Claims about Colorado’s Trans Protection Law
Someone named Oli London, who apparently has a book coming out called Gender Madness, Tweeted the following on April 18:
Colorado becomes TRANS TOURIST safe haven.
New laws signed by the states democrat Governor Jared Polis mean that teens under the age of 18 from across the U.S. can travel to the state and undergo gender reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy without their parents or state being able to stop them.
Colorado law will now override the laws in a child’s home state meaning their parents or their home state will have no legal option to sue or file a lawsuit to prevent them from changing gender.
Source: Daily Mail
To this, arch-skeptic Michael Shermer Tweeted:
Dear@GovofCO [Governor Polis] Will you explain to minor girls that after you cut off their breasts & pump them full of testosterone that the "gender reassignment" process cannot be reversed? Teenagers do not know what they want, which is why parental consent for medical procedures is standard practice.
I wish that Shermer would be a bit more . . . what’s the word I’m looking for . . . skeptical. I mean, might we wonder whether an obvious partisan in the gender wars and a tabloid publication might not be getting all of the relevant facts straight?
An immediate problem is that the article in question does not mention anything about parental consent. So if London is claiming the Mail as his source, he’s just Making Stuff Up.
Another problem is that the author of the Mail article obviously doesn’t know Colorado politics. The following line is just wrong; the relevant change was statutory, not constitutional:
Fully expecting the Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 decision that guaranteed a right to abortion last spring, Polis and the Democratic-majority state legislature codified the right to the procedure into the state constitution, meaning any Coloradan who wants an abortion could get one regardless of the SCOTUS ruling.
Still, let’s try to run down the details about parental consent. A serious CPR news article on the matter points us to the relevant bill, 188, which the governor signed on April 14. Unsurprisingly, London’s claims about the bill are wrong. The thrust of the relevant part of the bill is to protect Colorado providers of abortions and gender-affirming care from legal actions originating in other states. This bill simply does not address parental consent; we have to look elsewhere for those policies.
I did make several calls in an attempt to track down the rules for transgender care for minors in Colorado but so far have not discovered additional details. I’ll report back if I find out more.
Quick Takes
Crime: Someone murdered a young woman by heaving large rocks onto cars. I sincerely hope authorities catch the perpetrator(s) and put them in prison for many years.
AI: Corey Hutchins has the rundown on the use (or nonuse) of AI in Colorado newsrooms.
Guns: As expected, a legislative committee voted down the so-called “assault” gun ban (on sales and transfers). See Dave Kopel’s written testimony against the bill, 1230. Unfortunately, unless Republicans can get their act together, once a new Democrat becomes governor, the ban will probably pass.
Guns II: Here’s a question I recently posted to Twitter: We have a “red flag” law in Colorado. Do we have something like a program that lets people voluntarily hand over their guns to authorities for safe keeping, no questions asked, say if a person is suffering severe depression?
Beatings: The legislature banned corporal punishment in schools. Good job! See bill 1191. Predictably, a number of Republicans voted against the bill.
Criminal Justice: “HB23-1151 clarifies a 2021 law that requires courts to hold bond hearings for arrestees within 48 hours of them being taken into custody,” reports the Denver Post.
Criminal Justice II: “Francine Martinez was convicted of failure to intervene [to stop another officer’s wrongdoing]—the first law enforcement officer to be convicted by a jury of the charge created under the landmark police accountability bill passed after the 2020 George Floyd protests,” reports the Denver Post.
Schools: The Aurora Sentinel reviews teen mental health in Colorado. It’s not good! Part of the problem is the school environment; one girl ‘has also faced bullying, toxic friendships, and menacing threats from a boy at school who said she ‘deserved to be raped.’” Terrible!
Schools II: 9News discovered photos of many confiscated weapons—guns and knives—from Denver-area schools. This is crazy. Those who think that just passing more gun restrictions is going to solve such problems are delusional. Meanwhile, Denver schools have been going out of their way to allow students known to be violent to remain in school.
Schools III: A presentation by Rep. Lauren Boebert became “somewhat political,” reports the Denver Post. Shocker.
Republicans: “The newly-elected chair of the Rio Grande County Republican Party Carol Riggenbach” send out a social media post alleging the existence of “chem trails,” Colorado Pols reports. Sheesh.
Westminster: Here is a picture of Westminster I took before last night’s snow storm. Colorado is pretty nice!