EDITORIAL: Lombardo ramps up drumbeat on housing policy

Gov. Joe Lombardo is again tangling with the White House over housing. And once again he has the upper hand.

This month, President Joe Biden embraced a national rent control scheme in a desperate attempt to appear as if he were doing something to address soaring housing prices. The president proposed punishing large landlords with depreciation penalties unless they cap rent hikes at 5 percent annually.

It’s an awful idea. While capping rent increases may provide a short-term benefit to some Americans, such a drastic intervention would restrict the supply of housing in the long run, making the problem even worse. “Economists of various ideological leanings cite years of research,” The New York Times reported last week, “showing that aggressive rent control policies have often backfired, protecting renters from being displaced but failing to reduce overall prices in many cases for new tenants.

Gov. Lombardo recognizes this. During the 2023 legislative session, he wisely rejected an effort by progressive Democrats to similarly disrupt Nevada’s housing market. In March, he wrote to the Biden administration, calling on officials to release more federal land in the Silver State for housing.

On Tuesday, the governor reiterated those pleas in a second missive to the White House. He asked officials to “cut bureaucratic barriers” that make it more cumbersome for the federal government to release public lands to state and local officials.

“Housing developers throughout the state,” he wrote, “are poised to add to Nevada’s housing inventory, but we need a streamlined approach to the disposal of federal lands so they can get to work.”

Washington bureaucrats control nearly 85 percent of Nevada’s land. That includes property in the Las Vegas Valley already surrounded by development that in no way could be considered “sensitive.” But overcoming the government’s inherent inertia remains a challenge. A bipartisan 1998 public lands bill provided an avenue for the local acquisition of federal lands and has been a success. But as housing prices soar, more must be done.

The most promising road to lowering housing prices isn’t to punish landlords with heavy-handed edicts limiting rent hikes or to create more taxpayer subsidies for builders and renters alike. Such policies undermine the market incentives necessary for boosting supply. Instead, policymakers should focus on promoting housing construction by removing the hurdles — locally, statewide and nationally — that discourage developers from creating additional units, driving up costs. That includes a lack of available private land.

If the Biden administration is truly concerned about high housing costs, the president would heed Gov. Lombardo’s calls rather than resort to the folly of rent control.