‘Good Intentions, Bad Policies’

“Good Intentions, Bad Policies” served as the foundation for UC Santa Barbara economics professor Peter Rupert’s talk at Wylde Works on Thursday night. Beer always in hand, Rupert held an engaging and occasionally comical discussion with faculty, alumni, and community members regarding everything from rent control to a rumored high-speed rail from Bakersfield to Merced.

Rent control was the hot “Bad Policy” topic of the evening, raising the most questions from the crowd. Rupert currently serves as the director of the Economic Forecast Project at UCSB, and thus he has lots of experience in viewing and interpreting large sets of rental data. However, his sharp answers to most other questions were followed by a struggle to come up with a practical and affordable solution for Santa Barbara’s housing troubles.

“I try not to diss things without having a better idea, but I really have no better idea,” he said after putting down Santa Monica’s attempted rent control policies. In every city that implemented such policies since 1942, the results were all decreased available housing — “a disaster,” he emphasized. Rupert added that the many ways homeowners can sneak around these regulations, like subletting, can create negative impacts on housing goals.

Santa Barbara County’s portion of the Housing Element update calls for about 4,000 more housing units in the unincorporated South County, many for low-income individuals, to be built in the next eight years. Rupert calls this unrealistic, as the number of units hasn’t increased anywhere close to this number in the past 30 years. How to comply with such an expansive request is still the question, he added.

When asked about what community members can do, Rupert said, “I don’t want to be negative. I just want people to understand the data, understand the incentives, and vote accordingly.”

In terms of the high-speed rail, Rupert simply said, “We do crazy things.”