The July 24 story on EngineHouse leasing (“Park City housing development finishes income-restricted leasing well ahead of schedule”) frames a rapid lease-up as evidence of overwhelming demand for income-restricted housing. It’s worth pausing on what a fast lease-up actually demonstrates becau se the answer is less remarkable than it sounds. When any good or service, housing included, is priced below what the market would otherwise charge, basic economics tells us demand will exceed supply. This is one of the most basic propositions in introductory economics. If income-restricted units at EngineHouse rent for $1,781 to $2,452 a month while comparable market-rate units in Park City lease well above that, then more people will want the discounted units than there are units to go around. Fast lease-up under those conditions is the expected outcome, not a special finding about the depth of need. It is evidence that a price has been set below equilibrium. Show me one city where people are not attracted to a chance to pay lower rents. The clearest illustration of this principle has nothing to do with housing at all. When the United States imposed price ceilings on gasoline in the 1970s, the predictable result was not abundance but scarcity: long lines at the pump, gas stations running dry, and rationing by wait time rather than by price. Economists still use that experience to teach the same lesson, that holding a price below its market-clearing level does not make a good more available. It makes it harder to get, and it disguises a shortage as popularity. The mechanics are identical whether the good in question is gasoline or a one-bedroom apartment. None of this means income-restricted housing serves no purpose, or that EngineHouse is a failure on its own terms. It means we should be careful about the inferences drawn from a quick lease-up. The article notes that roughly 100 additional people were in a “pre-application stage” as of March. We have no way of knowing how many of them were drawn simply by a below-market rent rather than being genuinely unable to find housing at any price. Before the city cites projects like EngineHouse as proof it must build more subsidized units, including the 5-acre site at Kearns and Bonanza, it owes residents a clearer accounting of actual unmet housing need versus the predictable response to any subsidized price. Larry Alleva Park City The post Not necessarily evidence appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less