5 Reasons Why Trayon’s Senior Storage Bill is dumb.

Trayon White recently introduced B25-0943 – Senior Citizens’ Storage Facility Subsidy Act of 2024, which creates a program to give money to seniors for storage fees who spend more than 35% of their income on housing costs. This is why this is poor policy:

1. It’s not the role of local government to take money from the taxpayer so certain people can store their stuff. This is a special interest, not a public good.
2. This is, like most programs, is really corporate welfare for a few business while it’s advertised as assisting a needy population. There will probably be another 3% for the little guy (like his Violence Interrupters partner).
3. This creates more bureaucracy, since it is an addition program that will require more time to administrate, more effort for oversight, and quarterly reports are required in the current legislation.
4. Storage as a concept decreases utilization of assets, which is important for a productive society. If a senior has a bicycle clogging their living room, putting it in storage lets it remain unutilized. If the senior sold it, the buyer could use it instead of buying a newly manufactured bike or another used bike. Besides bikes, this program could keep hundreds of pieces of furniture, work equipment, books, or other useful items out of circulation. Many successful business models rely on having a low inventory because of the costs associated with it.
5. Storage is expensive, and can quickly cost more than the value of the goods. If a senior has stored $700 worth of goods (some furniture, art, junk that no one else wants), and the monthly storage fee is $60 for a 5’x10′ unit, the cost to store their $700 of goods will cost about the value of the goods, $700, in 12 months. After storing their stuff for 3 years, it would cost them $2,160 to hold onto their $700 assets. They might as well sell their stuff, and buy substitutes when they want it back. But with this legislation, we the taxed people pay the storage companies to hold others’ junk.

Regrettably, many of DC’s programs encourage people to be bad with money, since the programs will cover for their poor financial judgement. If people want to buy stuff, and stick it storage and pay someone else to hold it while no one uses it with their own money, that’s fine with me. Just don’t have Trayon take my taxpayer dollars so he can appeal to senior voters before his goes to jail on bribery charges.