California Insider

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Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub

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November 22, 2004

Does this compute?

I am still trying to wrap my mind around this Sacramento Bee story from Sunday, in which the good people of Davis are reported to be prepared to simultaneously limit building permits to 250 a year while approving "affordable housing" subsidies for people earning $100,000 annually. Something tells me that if they keep this up, those subsidies are going to have to get bigger and bigger. I suppose it's sustainable in a closed loop like Davis as long as everyone is willing to pay more and buyers on the upper end can keep sharing their wealth with those at the lower but still expensive end. But it hardly seems like a model that would work statewide.