The electorate rewards politicians with solutions. The grander, the better. Be it the Green New Deal or Project 2025, thousands of words are spilled with the goal of convincing voters their side has the solutions to all their problems.

When it comes to making progress on the issue of housing supply in Colorado, I sure would like to see the real answer printed on a sign hanging upon a press conference podium: “Sorry, we’re the problem.” That may not be a winning bumper-sticker slogan, but the truth rarely is.

“Affordable housing” used to mean just that: privately owned housing accessible to those earning lower incomes. These were, and still are, usually apartments or condominiums. Contemporarily, the phrase has morphed into a category of socialized, semi-socialized, or highly regulated housing units partially or completely subsidized or owned by governing bodies. Despite years of failure to effectively control housing prices via an army of city inspectors, fines and penalties, politicians continue to double down.

Johnston proposal empowers Denverites to manifest more housing | POINT

In Denver, Mayor Mike Johnston’s most recent proposal to increase the sales tax by half-a-cent is unfortunately more of the same. Government takes your money to partially fund or perhaps partially own “affordable housing” units that will be provided to those who need housing the most. Dubbed the “Affordable Denver Fund,” it seems likely to go before Denverites this November for a vote.

Though I appreciate the proposal, as it currently stands, is probably as market-friendly as a Democratic mayor could viably offer given the political reality, Denver (and many other municipalities) have failed to recognize, let alone fix, their past failures. There has been no effort to fix the regulatory regime that has landed the city in the predicament it is in today.

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Unfortunately, admitting the past failures of government requires angering many folks who helped pour the foundation and frame the walls of our current housing hellscape. It requires reversing course, standing up to an ever-powerful bureaucracy, and spending previous political capital, perhaps to the last drop. It requires an acknowledgement local government has been one of the most significant hindrances to new development.

The answer is not to pump more dollars into the same bureaucracies that can’t approve a building permit without first taking a core sample from every two-by-four to check the tree’s emotional state at the time of felling and executing a study on the impact a new apartment building may have on an endangered fish in a distant body of water. I am exaggerating, of course, but probably not by much. To my knowledge, there haven’t been any recent studies on the regulatory cost for developers wanting to build in Denver. For most municipalities in the nation, that can range from 20% to 50% of the total build cost.

Understandably, Denver has “missed the boat” when it comes to cheap money. Higher interest rates mean even if they were to address land use and zoning, course correction would be slower than had they done so just a few years ago. With that said, if your mayor or city council is asking for more money to tackle affordable housing, you should first ask to see what efforts they’ve made to scale back the bureaucracy, fast track permits and address restrictive land use regulations.

Until they’ve done so, they probably shouldn’t get another dime.

Sage Naumann is a conservative commentator and strategist. He operates Anthem Communications and was previously the spokesman for the Colorado Senate Republicans. Follow him on Twitter @SageNaumann.