HOW CoMo CONTRIBUTES: To the crazy cost of rental housing

Every player shooting at once

COLUMBIA, Mo 1/31/25 (Op-Ed) -- The high cost of housing is both a menace and a mystery. How did the biggest staple of everyday life get so out of reach for so many? 

National causes, including inflation and Covid, are well known in the rental market that is so important in a college town. But local irritants such as the impact of student apartments and higher property taxes are not on many radars, in part because the public officials behind them are expert blame shifters.  

Per unit to per bedroom

Before student apartments became a big part of Columbia's housing inventory, per unit pricing dominated the rental market. A nine hundred dollar per month rent on a three-bedroom house paid for the whole house, the entire unit.

But once student apartments renting by the bedroom flooded Columbia, pricing changed. Housing providers in every sector -- single family, multifamily, five bedrooms or two -- followed suit. That three bedroom house now rented for $400 per bedroom. Doing the math, that's a thirty three percent (33%) rent increase almost overnight, from $900 to $1,200 for the same house.

People adopt new ideas and technologies usually when they lower costs. Look at the hoopla over DeepSeek vs Nvidia. But per bedroom pricing in Columbia did just the opposite, helping rents soar.  

MatthesIronically, student apartment cheerleaders assured residents that such a large increase in housing supply would keep rents down. But savvy citizens with common sense questions figured otherwise. How can apartments marketed as "luxury" reduce rents? Won't four people sharing one apartment expect to pay higher rent?  Four incomes, four sets of parents, four student loans or financial aid packages. And renting by the bedroom. How can these dynamics do anything but raise rents? 

A long, loud citizen outcry that included a class action lawsuit begged City Hall to stop the student apartment invasion. But our city council ignored constituents, even meeting illegally to approve more student apartments. Too much money at stake. Too many powerful town bosses salivating over construction contracts. Too many lawyers representing out-of-state corporations like Opus, the object of the class action suit. Too much pressure for our spineless city council.  

Matthes madness

The brainchild of then city manager Mike Matthes, the two illegal Council meetings capped a tenure packed with devious ways to make money for City Hall.

City government owns every utility but gas, and during his seven-year reign, Matthes brought over two hundred utility rate hikes to the city council, which approved the increases unanimously almost every time. Matthes raised every fee and fine he could find, even beating the bushes of obscure city ordinances. He boosted rental unit inspection fees by fifty to one hundred percent. He ended lower rates for heat pumps and other energy conservation tools.  Under the Matthes administration, electric, water, sewer, stormwater, trash hauling, and metered parking costs increased so dramatically, our cost of living became the highest in Missouri.

Bad for Budgets

Joining Matthes in the Bad for Your Budget Hall of Fame: Boone County Assessor Tom Schauwecker, who ended his 30-year reign after bragging in the media about hiking property taxes on older properties in central Columbia.

Many of those properties are rentals. And many are -- or were -- affordable. Post-Schauwecker assessments have kept up the pace, increasing property taxes by roughly seven percent per year, or thirty percent since Schauwecker left office in 2020.

SchauweckerRenters don't see these costs directly and with media hype fueled by officials lying and deflecting, tend to blame "greedy landlords" and capitalist pigs for higher rents. Costs are rising on that blame game, too.

As small business people say goodbye and good riddance to their decades old residential rental companies, out-of-state corporations take their places with new charges, like $50-$100 to view a property and higher amounts to apply.  Then again, high prices for gas, car repairs, and staff wages, background and credit checks make no-shows, tire kicking, and unqualified applicants costlier than ever.

Housing has long been a court of players with a single ball. Only that ball -- the house -- can deliver the bucks. Today, each player has his or her own ball, his or her own contribution to the exorbitant cost of housing. Teamwork -- players working together to lower their costs -- is a forgotten virtue. With still only one basket and every player shooting at once, the odds of everyone losing far exceed anyone winning.