Live by a regulatory environment, perish by a regulatory environment. What might have been solved through free forces of supply and demand is now a political and economic mess.

There are two stories at Walworth County Today that nicely describe, respectively, the defeat of a builder’s request for a zoning change to build student housing, and the builder’s determination to push on with the project through advocacy and subsequent re-submission. See, Proposed student complex halted in Whitewater and Student complex planner says project will return to Whitewater.

I’m sorry the apartment complex wasn’t recommended, and hope that it soon will be.

The Planning Commission’s action is a rebuke to the Whitewater municipal administration’s policies. The administration needs this project. Having abandoned the sensible course of allowing voluntary transactions in the marketplace between buyers and sellers, City Manager Brunner’s administration depends on a series of piecemeal interventions, trying to preserve a balance that only the market can effectively ensure.

The problem with trying to engineer a so-called ‘better community’ — even a small one — is that it’s beyond the ken even of a talented planner. (Needless to say, our municipal bureaucrats are not, one may be sure, talented planners.)

I have embedded the video from the December 13th Planning Commission meeting at which the builder’s request was rejected.

I’ll offer a few remarks —

Consistency.

It makes sense that those favoring a status-quo community would value ‘consistency.’ I don’t begrudge an advocate looking around, sizing up Whitewater’s so-called elite, and deciding that appeals to consistency will be effective. In Whitewater, they certainly will be.

It’s worth noting that consistency — unlike liberty or equality — isn’t a first-order value. In fact, it’s value-neutral. One needs to ask: Consistent with what, when? The consistent application of burdensome restrictions isn’t a social good — it’s a perpetuation of a poorly-ordered economy. Consistency may be a winning argument, but for a restrictive economy like Whitewater’s, it’s merely the continuation of bad policies.

Consistency in this context may be a winning argument for a special-interest advocate, but it’s a losing proposition for the community.

Additional Zoning Restrictions.

Earlier in the evening, the Commission recommended to Council than another section of town be zoned R-O, with a narrow limit of on unrelated adults living in the residence. The area’s close to the Starin neighborhood that previously received this more restrictive zoning classification.

That’s no surprise — Starin was not likely to be the only neighborhood to try to limit student rental space. The Council having opened the door, others were sure to shove their way through.

The Path of Greatest Resistance.

Whitewater’s municipal administration has, however ambling the course, moved in the direction of greater restrictions on student housing, despite Whitewater being a college town. That course: From the pandering, absurd declaration that rental housing (and not poverty!) was Whitewater’s biggest problem, to ineffectual efforts at rental registration, to acknowledgement of the transformation of one neighborhood through voluntary transactions, to greater restrictions on other neighborhoods through R-O zoning.

In the end, it’s now harder — not easier — to be an off-campus renter (or landlord) in Whitewater.

Rather than allow conversions to rental space through voluntary demand — through willing buyers and sellers — City Manager Brunner has variously pandered to those supporting restrictions and otherwise worked to bolster projects (like this one) that are the bane of those supporting restrictions.

Yet, restrictions alone, as a few want, cannot work in a college town — the demand is too great, and attempts to restrict it will fail (and lead to an underground market). More vigorous enforcement, so to speak, is sure to stumble against rights of ordinary people, and only place the city at risk of lawsuits.

Even Brunner must see this — but rather than allow free transactions, he commits himself to interventions variously for, or against, rental properties.

It’s a foolish policy, the product of ignorance and arrogance. Brunner doesn’t understand private enterprise well, but is quite sure that he does. Flare up after flare up, kerfuffle after kerfuffle, he clings to the same failed, meddling approach.

For those who favor government intervention in the market, generally: Would the student housing market in Whitewater possibly be your preferred target? I’m an opponent of intervention, but I know that most advocates would choose something more meaningful than this — poverty, health care, business creation, etc. I just can’t see how it makes sense to pick this issue, in this town.

Without at least a few apartment projects like this, Brunner will preside over a city of nominal restrictions, black markets, and occasional lawsuits for privacy violations from over-zealous enforcement.

Below is a portion — apparently not all of the meeting is online — of the December 13th Planning Commission meeting.