Bezos: If Gov’t Subsidizes Demand and Constrains Supply, It Will Raise Housing Prices

EXCERPT:

BEZOS: “You know, housing is a good example because it’s a very important example, but it’s a place where a lot of the government intervention that’s happened has been counterproductive. And instead of work on the real solution, it’s very common for, you know, in the case of housing, for certain politicians to point at landlords and say, 'This is the fault of greedy landlords.' This isn’t what’s going on. Housing is a simple supply and demand situation, it’s Econ 101. And if you put in place government programs that subsidize demand and constrain supply, you are going to get high prices. And that’s what many municipalities do. If you can look at a counterexample, which is Austin, where over the last ten years they’ve implemented many policies designed to make it easier to build houses, and they have housing prices going down in Austin. So, some politicians are governing correctly on this issue, but many are not."