The last mile is complex and expensive; building it from scratch is even more so. So why shouldn't the government get out of the business? This question is increasingly urgent as we face an ongoing housing crisis, the result of bad policy and bad thinking. As the political class debates housing finance reform, let us hope that one point gets through: The more housing the government builds, the higher the costs. As The Wall Street Journal's Jay Hanson has shown, public housing has made it more difficult for developers to build low-cost housing; public-housing authorities charge rents that are a fifth higher than privately built developments. By expanding the use of government to fund or subsidize building, officials ensure that the problem of building new housing never goes away. They make it even more expensive for entrepreneurs to build. But even as officials and public housing supporters in progressive quarters try to justify public housing's expansion, these same leaders should be thinking about alternative approaches, some of which, as I have suggested here, include land value taxation. The last mile is expensive, but so are transit stops and other facilities and infrastructure, which is why cities will continue to build them. And so will states and the federal government. Government buildings, roads, subway lines, power plants, housing projects, even government agencies, all have costs that can and should be reflected in the prices that citizens pay for these things. The lesson is this: When confronted with a problem, we don't want to spend more money; we want to spend less. And while there are plenty of other ways to do that, there's no denying the fact that land is a valuable and finite resource. Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.