This letter deals with government involvement in the housing sector. The federal government oversees the Community Development Block Grant or CDBG program, a part of which is used by local governments to rehabilitate or replace decrepit housing. Thats a noble goal, although its not a Constitutional function of the federal government.

Back in October 2011, I wrote about a CDBG project to replace a mobile home with a site-built home that had an initial projected cost of about $64,000 (and how my efforts to privately fund repairing the home were rejected). By the time all was said and done, the cost for that home was around $73,000, a 14% increase. Converting these amounts to 2020 dollars equates to $72,400 and $82,600 respectively.

Now in July 2020, the county is being asked to approve three change orders- in each case the original estimate to rehabilitate or replace a home has been insufficient for various reasons. The State Housing Initiative Program (SHIP) is the state layer of this bureaucracy and caps each project at $75,000. Gone are the days of $72K or even $83K projects. The first has a total cost (with the $3,000 change order) of $109,981. The second is $137,524 (with $22,524 change order), and the third is $114,982 (with $13,900 change order).

If you take the time to read through the change orders, you see where some of this originates. For one home, there is a cost of $4,800 for 2 towel bars, a toilet paper holder, a shower bar, two 5 x 5 concrete pads, 9-1-1 addressing, and exterior paint.

Ron Paul said it in 2012 about government involvement in health care and I still agree with him- We dump it on the government, they create a bureaucracy, and the cost goes up.

Since so much time has passed, its worthwhile to note that according to the US Treasury as of October 2011 (in 2020 dollars) our national debt was only $17 trillion. The government overspends so much they have to publish this data in thousands of millions. As of June 2020, its now over $26 trillion, a 52% increase. For the partisan crowd, this is neither a democrat nor a republican issue as huge increases have happened under both Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump.

In my opinion, these United States as originally configured are in an unrecoverable downward financial (among other things) spiral. With so much reliance upon government, socialism is a path seen by too many as a solution, which opens up an entirely new box of problems.

Paul Henry

More:

CDBG- The "Gift" that continues to take - ECB Publishing