As we have regularly editorialized for years, our region — and the U.S. as a whole — needs more housing. A bottle neck in the construction of additional housing is leading housing expenses higher and higher, straining working families’ budgets.

An article by Christian Britschgi for Reason.com details how the latest changes to an effort for broad federal reforms for the housing market are concerning — both as a matter of principle and for the most likely practical effects.

The intent of the changes is to limit corporate ownership of rental housing, which Britschgi describes as “an effective ban on build-to-rent housing, which could reduce single-family home construction by as much as 10 percent each year.”

But blocking or limiting corporate ownership of rental housing will not incentivize or motivate other developers to build more housing, no matter how convenient a scapegoat “corporations” might be — leaving the potential homeowners to bring ever-greater demand to a market in which supply is being severely out-paced.

“If the goal of the legislation is to increase home production,” Britschgi writes, “its current form would do the opposite.”

Beyond the practical impact of higher costs of housing eating greater and greater percentages of household’s budget — or trigger an inflationary spiral as wages and salaries try to keep pace — there is the matter of principle to consider.

Our country prides itself, we tell each subsequent generation, for its respect for individual rights and free enterprise. And, when truly practiced, that respect for individual rights and free enterprise has led to the vibrant health of many communities and neighborhoods.

Limitations on liberty and free enterprise should be as tightly focused in scope as possible and allow for as much individual, decentralized innovation as possible.

An arbitrary cap on how landlords can structure their relationship to tenants, for no other purpose than to vilify a corporate model that has created millions of jobs in many industries and allowed pricing that made America’s quality of life the envy of the world, is not tightly focused in scope.

It instead is a mockery of property rights and the ability of free people to structure their own lives without paternalistic, condescending government nannying the housing market.