内容来源：美国胡佛研究所网站，原文链接见文末
翻译整理：石曼卿，陈杰
*机器翻译未经详细复检，仅供参考
August 20, 2024
By: Lee Ohanian
Kamala Harris announced her proposed housing plan last week. The policy will be expensive – perhaps as much as $500 billion - and will do much less to facilitate home ownership than it could, because it does not address the most important reason why housing is expensive: high construction costs. Instead, the plan significantly subsidizes housing demand, which will put upward pressure on housing costs.
One of the biggest demand subsidizers in the proposal is to provide $25,000 to first-time home buyers, perhaps in the form of a tax credit, though that has not been specified yet. Her proposal states this award will be available to “over 4 million” households. The “over” part of this proposal is what could make it so expensive, because “over” could be “way over.” Let’s take a look at some possibilities.
There are about 44 million US households who rent. The proposal’s eligibility requirements do not appear to be stringent: it requires that someone in the household works and that the household has not been delinquent on rent payments for two years. In 2020, as the economy was suffering from the pandemic, about 18 percent of renters were delinquent. Delinquency dropped to 11.5 percent last year.
You may think that the requirement of being a first-time homebuyer would limit eligibility, but it doesn’t. One reason is because the term “first-time homebuyer” does not mean “first time.” HUD classifies you as a first-time homebuyer if either you or your spouse has not been an owner of your principal residence for the last three years. This includes a married couple in which one person did not have their name on the deed of their home. It also includes people who own property but rent their principal residence. And the three-year requirement will not be an issue in any case, because only 1–2 percent of homeowners each year become renters. If Harris’s plan follows the HUD definition of a first-time homebuyer, then the $25,000 down payment assistance would appear to be accessible to nearly all renters, provided they have been current on their rent for the previous two years—or at least not be shown to be delinquent on a verifiable report or eviction action—and that someone in the household works.
Based on the information Harris provided, I expect about 20 million US renters would be eligible and apply for this program if Harris wins the presidency. This is based on the following set of assumptions: First, I assume that 95 percent of renters will find a way to qualify as a first-time homebuyer per the federal (HUD) definition. Second, I assume that 55 percent of that group of households will satisfy the work requirement and the non-delinquency requirement. This yields about 23 million households who would be eligible. Given that over 80 percent of renters express a preference for becoming a homeowner, I assume that 80 percent of this group would apply. The last assumption may be conservative, given the size of the downpayment subsidy. This calculation yields about 18.5 million current households who would be eligible and apply. Finally, I add 10 percent to account for growth in the number of households over time (5 percent growth over the four years of a hypothetical Harris presidency) and program fraud (5 percent, which is the average rate of fraud within federal programs). This totals about 20 million households.
If the $25,000 down payment were to be awarded to all of these 20 million households, then this would cost about $500 billion. And it would include some households—possibly many—who would be able to purchase a home without taxpayer assistance. And it would include some households—possibly many—who probably shouldn’t have the responsibility of homeownership.
This also raises the question of what types of homes these households would be able to purchase. The answer is: extremely small or low-quality homes. The median household income of renters in 2022 (the last year for which data is available) is only about $42,000. Using a mortgage calculator and assuming a 30-year mortgage rate of 7 percent (and that the household pays 30 percent of their pre-tax income for their mortgage, property taxes, and insurance) yields a home value of about $146,000 for which a median-income renter could qualify for. This is far below the median US home price of about $412,000.
Because renters tend to have low household incomes, Harris also proposes to give tax incentives to builders to construct “starter homes,” provided those new homes are sold to first-time homebuyers. The reason that “starter” (small) homes are in scarce supply is because it isn’t very profitable for builders to develop small homes. The main deficiency with the Harris plan is that it doesn’t address the most important issue facing home affordability: that home construction is very expensive.
An important reason why construction costs are high is because most homes are built the same way they usually have been: on site, by specialized construction workers. It makes little sense to try to put low-income households into new, traditionally built homes. But there is a better way: manufactured housing, which are homes built from start to finish within a factory, which are thus able to leverage the efficiencies of modern, mass-production technologies. Traditionally built homes are more than twice as expensive to build per square foot than manufactured homes. Moreover, manufactured-home technology is exceptionally efficient for small homes. With building costs of only about $82 per square foot, this technology can deliver a 1,000-square-foot “starter home” at a cost of about $100,000, which would be affordable for many renters, and without an expensive taxpayer subsidy.
Before 1974, manufactured homes accounted for about one in three single-family homes in the US. At that time, these homes were shipped to a property site, placed on a foundation, and connected to utilities. But beginning in 1974, Congress required manufactured homes to be permanently attached to a rolling trailer, which effectively turned them into mobile homes. And with an unsightly permanent trailer, these homes became regulated out of existence in nearly all neighborhoods outside of trailer parks and very rural areas. They now account for only about 10 percent of single-family homes.
Increasing the adoption of manufactured housing can be accomplished by eliminating the permanent trailer requirement, which serves no useful purpose. This could be a game changer for many low-income families and essentially is costless to do.
Harris also calls for $40 billion in taxpayer funding for an “innovation fund” to “empower local governments to fund local solutions to build housing.” I have concerns about this proposal, because what we have learned is that government interventions in the housing market—whether federal, state, or local—have often backfired, as they have driven up costs.
California’s experience is the poster child for this failure. Between 2017 and 2022, California passed nearly 100 new housing laws, yet California homebuilding remains severely depressed. Moreover, the cost of building “affordable” housing in California, which includes substantial government involvement, can surpass $1 million per apartment unit.
Expanding housing affordability, particularly for low-income households, requires reducing construction costs. There is a simple and virtually costless way of doing this by removing one regulation that significantly limits the use of manufactured housing, and manufactured housing is realistically the only way for low-income households to afford to purchase a home. But the Harris plan focuses on subsidizing demand, not improving the efficiency of supply. Hers is a potentially very expensive program that moves us away from legitimately increasing affordability.
卡玛拉·哈里斯住房计划中令人不快的算术问题
2024年8月20日
作者：李·奥哈尼安
卡玛拉·哈里斯上周宣布了她的住房计划。该政策的花费可能高达5000亿美元，但它对促进购房的作用可能远不及预期，因为它并未解决导致住房昂贵的最重要原因：高昂的建筑成本。相反，该计划显著补贴了住房需求，这将推高房价。
提案中最大的需求补贴之一是为首次购房者提供2.5万美元的补助，可能以税收抵免的形式发放，尽管这一点尚未明确。她的提案表示，这项奖励将提供给“超过400万”户家庭。这一提案中的“超过”可能会使该计划变得非常昂贵，因为“超过”可能意味着“远远超过”。让我们来看看一些可能的情况。
美国大约有4400万户家庭租房。提案的资格要求似乎并不严格：要求家庭中至少有人工作，并且该家庭在过去两年内未曾拖欠房租。2020年，当经济因疫情受挫时，大约18%的租户有拖欠租金的情况。去年，拖欠比例降至11.5%。
您可能认为首次购房者的要求会限制资格，但实际上并不会。原因之一是“首次购房者”这个术语并不意味着“第一次”。美国住房与城市发展部（HUD）将首次购房者定义为在过去三年中，你或你的配偶未曾拥有主要住所的人。这包括一方未在房屋契约上签名的已婚夫妇，也包括拥有房产但租房作为主要住所的人。而三年期限也不会成为问题，因为每年只有1%到2%的房主变为租房者。如果哈里斯的计划遵循HUD对首次购房者的定义，那么这2.5万美元的首付款援助似乎对几乎所有租房者都是可得的，只要他们在过去两年中保持了租金的按时支付——或至少在可验证的报告或驱逐行动中未被显示为拖欠——并且家庭中有人工作。
根据哈里斯提供的信息，我预计如果哈里斯当选总统，大约2000万美国租房者将有资格申请这一计划。这基于以下假设：首先，我假设95%的租房者会找到符合HUD定义的首次购房者资格的方法。其次，我假设这一群体中有55%的家庭将满足工作和无拖欠的要求。这大约有2300万户家庭符合资格。鉴于超过80%的租房者表示有成为房主的意愿，我假设其中80%的人会申请。考虑到首付款补贴的规模，最后一个假设可能还显得保守。这个计算得出大约1850万现有家庭将符合条件并申请。最后，我增加了10%以考虑家庭数量随时间增长（假设哈里斯任期四年内家庭数量增长5%）和计划中的欺诈行为（5%，这是联邦计划中的平均欺诈率）。这总计约2000万户家庭。
如果这些2000万户家庭都能获得2.5万美元的首付款援助，那么这将花费约5000亿美元。其中一些家庭——可能还有许多家庭——即使没有纳税人的帮助也能够买房。而且，其中一些家庭——可能还有许多家庭——可能不应该承担购房的责任。
这也引发了一个问题：这些家庭能够购买什么样的房屋？答案是：非常小或质量低劣的房屋。2022年（有数据的最后一年）租房家庭的中位收入只有大约4.2万美元。使用抵押贷款计算器并假设30年期抵押贷款利率为7%（且家庭用于抵押贷款、房产税和保险的支出占税前收入的30%），计算出的房屋价值大约为14.6万美元，这是中等收入租户可以负担的房价。这远低于美国房价中位数大约41.2万美元。
由于租房者的家庭收入通常较低，哈里斯还提议为建筑商提供税收激励，以建造“起步房”，前提是这些新房将出售给首次购房者。“起步房”（小型房屋）供应稀缺的原因是开发小型房屋对建筑商来说利润不大。哈里斯计划的主要缺陷在于，它未能解决住房负担能力面临的最重要问题：住房建设成本非常高。
建筑成本高昂的一个重要原因是大多数房屋仍以传统方式建造：在现场，由专业建筑工人完成。试图让低收入家庭住进新建的传统房屋是没有意义的。但有一种更好的方式：预制房屋，这些房屋从头到尾在工厂内建造，能够利用现代化大规模生产技术的效率。传统建造的房屋每平方英尺的建造成本是预制房屋的两倍多。而且，预制房屋技术在小型房屋上特别有效率。每平方英尺仅82美元的建造成本，这项技术可以以大约10万美元的成本提供一套1000平方英尺的“起步房”，这对于许多租房者来说是负担得起的，而且无需昂贵的纳税人补贴。
1974年之前，预制房屋约占美国单户住宅的三分之一。当时，这些房屋被运输到物业地点，放置在地基上，并接通了水电。然而从1974年开始，国会要求预制房屋永久性地固定在拖车上，这实际上将它们变成了移动房屋。由于带有难看的永久性拖车，这些房屋几乎在拖车公园和非常偏远的地区之外被禁止存在。它们现在仅占单户住宅的约10%。
通过取消永久拖车的要求，可以增加预制房屋的采用率，这一要求并无实际用途。这可能对许多低收入家庭来说是一个重大转变，而且几乎是无成本的。
哈里斯还呼吁提供400亿美元的纳税人资金设立“创新基金”，以“赋权地方政府资助地方住房解决方案”。我对这一提议持有疑虑，因为我们了解到，政府对住房市场的干预——无论是联邦、州还是地方层面——往往适得其反，因为它们抬高了成本。
加利福尼亚的经历就是这种失败的典型例子。2017年至2022年期间，加利福尼亚通过了近100项新的住房法律，但加州的房屋建设仍然严重萎缩。此外，包含大量政府参与的加州“可支付”住房建设成本可能超过每套公寓100万美元。
扩大住房负担能力，尤其是对低收入家庭来说，需要降低建筑成本。通过取消一项显著限制预制房屋使用的规定，可以简单且几乎无成本地做到这一点。而预制房屋实际上是低收入家庭唯一能负担得起购房的方式。但哈里斯的计划侧重于补贴需求，而不是提高供给效率。她的计划可能会非常昂贵，并且使我们远离真正增加负担能力的方向。
