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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 problems 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 middle class 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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