The way to bring down housing costs is simple: Increase the supply. It’s the most basic lesson in economics – demand for a product increases prices unless supply increases to meet it. If you want to bring prices down, you must increase supply.

There are other factors, but that principle is consistent across the literature on housing. But Michigan’s bureaucrats and elected officials, while occasionally talking the talk, have done very little to increase the supply of housing. Most of their actions have been the opposite – proposing laws that would only make it more expensive to build.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says the right words. She has talked about permitting reform and other obstacles to building housing. “The rent is too damn high, and we don’t have enough damn housing,” the governor said in her January State of the State address. “So our response is simple: build, baby, build – let’s go!”

But no legislation has moved that would help increase the housing supply significantly. And new administrative moves will only make housing more expensive.

Michigan’s licensing agency is proposing statewide building code changes which would mandate new energy efficiency changes as well as mandatory fire sprinklers in new homes. The Home Builders Association of Michigan says this would add $20,000 to the cost of building a house while providing limited benefits. (If builders and buyers thought it was worth the cost, no mandate would be necessary.)

State legislators have also proposed a litany of new costs for housing providers, including rent control, limits on background checks, exposing landlords to more lawsuits, tenants unions, changing liability laws for repair costs, new licensing rules and making it tougher to evict bad renters. This would only raise the cost of providing housing and would not help renters or homebuyers.

It’s true that interest rates, labor costs and material prices are all elevated. State lawmakers and bureaucrats can do little about market fundamentals, especially in the short term. But statewide zoning reform, reviewing permitting requirements and rightsizing regulations are things they can control. These would increase supply and help bring down housing costs.

Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.