America's drive for acreage (Smart Growth not wanted)

The News and Observer (Raleigh NC) ^ | 04/24/02 | Rick Martinez

[Phantom Lord]

America's drive for acreage

By RICK MARTINEZ

RALEIGH - The problem with "Smart Growth" is that it's almost always smart for someone else.

Given a choice, most folks want what Smart Growth denies -- a big house with a big yard and at a bargain price. If they have to drive to a former cow pasture to get their piece of the American dream, so be it.

Espousing this position has earned me the title of urban neanderthal, but it appears I'm not the only member of this new species.

The National Family Opinion organization recently conducted a survey for the National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors. It would be shortsighted to dismiss this poll as providing the industry with preordained answers: the builders and real estate agents I know will build and sell anything anywhere, so long as there's a market.

The survey, conducted in January and released Monday, never mentioned Smart Growth. It simply asked 2,000 respondents who had bought their primary residence in the past four years what they considered important in a home and community.

In nearly every instance, big, roomy and cheap homes -- the upside of urban sprawl -- generally won out over the small, crowded and expensive housing that tends to be the end result of Smart Growth polices.

When asked to rate the importance of 16 aspects of a home and its location, "houses spread out" received top billing from 62 percent of the respondents. Highway access was selected as the top community amenity by 44 percent of the respondents. When asked what single factor they would change in their present home and community, lower taxes was the top choice.

Somebody get this survey down to the General Assembly.

Density lost out big time among these homeowners. Forty seven percent said they looked for a bigger home, and 45 percent wanted a bigger lot. Only a measly 10 percent wanted a smaller house, and 9 percent a smaller lot.

The open space most of these homeowners preferred was out in the country, not in the city. Living in a less-developed area and living away from the city were deemed significant quality of life issues for 40 and 39 percent of the respondents, respectively.

The most damaging survey result for Smart Growth came when respondents were asked to select their favored housing lifestyle option. The anti-sprawl notion of a small single-family home in the city, close to work, public transportation and shopping, was the choice of only 18 percent. Ouch.

Forty percent said they wanted a smaller home in a suburb closer to the city. Forty two percent said housing utopia for them was a large single-family home in an outlying suburban area with longer distances to work, public transportation and shopping. Urban neanderthals unite!

If this consumer survey isn't enough to make our civic leaders and planners take a second look at Smart Growth, I suggest they read a sobering scholarly study by Matthew E. Kahn of Tufts University, published in the Fannie Mae Foundation journal "Housing Policy Debate" (Volume 12, Issue 1).

Kahn's article, "Does Sprawl Reduce the Black/White Housing Consumption Gap?", warns that Smart Growth has the potential to squeeze minorities out of the housing market at a time when they are making their most dramatic gains.

"Affordability is likely to decrease in the presence of more anti-sprawl legislation. Such rules reduce the supply of new housing, which in turn raise the price of homes. This article has documented that such policies will have distributional consequences by limiting progress in minority housing consumption."

In other words, Smart Growth legislation tends to jack up the price of housing, which tends to lock minorities out of housing choices.

Civic leaders and planners need to confront a chilling question -- Is resegregation an ugly, unintended consequence of Smart Growth communities? There is a growing amount of evidence that it is.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Smart Growth. Southern Village in Chapel Hill is a good example of a such development done well. But as the housing survey and Kahn's study demonstrate, Smart Growth works best for everyone when it's a free market option instead of government policy.

Rick Martinez can be reached by e-mail at rickjmartinez@mindspring.com

[Phantom Lord]

We havent tried it in most of the world? What do you call the uncountable UN programs that promote abortion and "family planning" around the globe and the wide distribution of condoms and other birth control devices? Not to mention the steralization of women in many countries by chemical means.

[CJ Wolf]

there is always mars, and the space colonies.

[sphinx]

In fact, if you do some research you'll find that people who live in suburbs are one of the most heavily-subsidized groups in the U.S. Homes can only be big and cheap if someone beside the buyer is picking up the cost of providing road and utility access, etc.

You beat me to it. Reinforcement bump. We have socialized the infrastructure costs of sprawl. Take the subsidies away and the financial incentives would tend to shift toward more intensive development and redevelopment of the existing infrastructure base. There would still be 'burbs, just not as many, for those who want them and are prepared to pay the freight, while the cities would be healthier.

[Wright is right!]

"Homes can only be big and cheap if someone beside the buyer is picking up the cost of providing road and utility access, etc."

Here in TN, the developer and the home buyer pay the freight. You want water? Okey dokey, Smokey. That'll be $1500 hook 'em up fee. Sewer? Same story. Roads? For the most part, the developer builds them and rolls the $$ into each house. Gas? The gas company will only lay mains if enough people on each road or street sign up to pay the aggregate cost. We couldn't get natural gas here until just a few years ago, and we're right in the middle of town. Finally, six homeowners on the block signed up, and that was enough to cover laying the mains.

Michael

[Right Wing Professor]

While the points raised in this article were good ones, it should be noted that in most parts of the U.S. a "big, roomy, and cheap" home is an oxymoron. In fact, if you do some research you'll find that people who live in suburbs are one of the most heavily-subsidized groups in the U.S. Homes can only be big and cheap if someone beside the buyer is picking up the cost of providing road and utility access, etc.

I'd like to see the numbers on this one. I live on 8 acres about 20 miles from a small city. I pay for maintenance of my own well and my own sewage treatment system; I live on a gravel section road whose maintenance costs amount to a grader driving down it twice a year. I pay extra for insurance because we don't have a regular fire department. My 'phone rates are substantially higher than city residents. We still pay county property tax at a rate very similar to that of city residents (who live in the same county). Almost all my neighbors live the same.

I'm not complaining; I chose to live here, love it, and knew the costs when I moved. But if we're getting subsidized services, I'd like to know how.

[Right Wing Professor]

I don't believe it. Let's see the numbers.

[Alberta's Child]

I live on 8 acres about 20 miles from a small city.

There's your answer. I know you don't drive all the way to work on your gravel road! If you look at the cost of building and maintaining interstate highways over a long period of time, you'll find that the road users themselves only pay about 30%-35% of the cost.

Do you carry a mortgage on your home? Do you deduct the interest on your taxes?

[Alberta's Child]

Developers may pay the cost of building roads to specific subdivisions, but the construction of these subdivisions is only feasible because they are readily accesible to a larger network of limited-access highways. Developers pay $0 for that benefit.

[Right Wing Professor]

You're claiming that highway 77, which existed long before my house was built and connects two major towns, is a subsidy to me, rather than to the folks who live in those towns? That's voodoo economics. And gosh, Free Republic is te last place I thought I'd read that paying less tax is a 'subsidy'. In any case, folks who live in the city, whose mortgages are just as high as mine, get the same deduction.

Like I said, let's see a citation to a real breakdown of costs.

[Alberta's Child]

Here's my question, which is important because most of my remarks are based on my experiences in the Northeast (where most cities and major towns existed long before the roads were built) -- Did those towns exist before Highway 77 was built?

Also: While paying less taxes is not a "subsidy" in and of itself, it sure is a subsidy when a tax deduction applies to specific people. People who own their homes can deduct their mortgage interest and local property taxes, but people who rent cannot even though they pay these costs indirectly as part of their rent.

[elephantlips]

Tell it to the Israelis, they seem to have taken sand, several hundred thousand acres of it, and made it into one of the most productive farming areas in the world.

[Phantom Lord]

If you look at the cost of building and maintaining interstate highways over a long period of time, you'll find that the road users themselves only pay about 30%-35% of the cost.

If the billions upon billions of taxes collected on gasoline, registration fees, inspection fees and other items that were originally instituted to pay for roads were actually dedicated to the building of and maintaining of roads and not lumped into the general fund and spent on every budget item the taxes collected would more than pay for the roads.

The problem isnt that we arent paying enough in taxes to build and maintain roads, the problem is the taxes levied to pay for these items are NOT spent on roads.

I do not know the answer to this question, maybe you or someone else could find the answer or already know it. How much in taxes has been collected over the past 20 years from gasoline taxes, registration and inspection fees, toll booths, and other taxes that were instituted to pay for roads? And then lets compare that with the amount spent on "roads" and see what number is bigger.

I am safely betting that the taxes collected exceed expenses, and at worst are approaching 100%. Not the 30% to 35% that you are claiming.

[stainlessbanner]

Dear Lord,

Good Post! Our problem in central florida is two-fold: we have horrible urban planners who are too focused on tourism instead of locals. the second problem, i am convinced is yanks move down here and think a 1/4 acre lot is a yard.

It's sad, but people are paying lots of money for a small house that looks like everyone else's and a small strip of grass that hardly merits owning a Snapper. The developers keep building, people keep buying.

[Alberta's Child]

You have to remember that gasoline taxes are generally used for major capital expenses, not roadway maintenance. The cost of building a road, therefore, is covered by the users, but the cost of plowing it or resurfacing it are not. Many states lump their registration fees and gas tax revenue in their general funds because these maintenance costs are paid out of those general funds.

[Phantom Lord]

Lets make one thing clear. EVERYTHING is paid out of the general fund. I can not think of a single tax (and fees are taxes) that was instituted to pay for a specific thing (social security as a prime example) that 100% of the funds are actually dedicated to said item. It just doesnt happen. And that is big problem.

Now I would like for someone to find out the answers to the questions about taxes collected and costs that I asked above.

[Right Wing Professor]

The way most of the Midwest was laid out was in sections, with section roads along the boundaries. The towns grew up first along rail lines, which were the fastest means of transportation in the late 19th century. Most of our roads are improvements of the original section roads. The major roads are connectors between towns which (before the automobile) were often a day's travel apart by road. We only have one interstate and a bit of a second, and it connects Denver and Chicago. I refuse to accept that it's a subsidy of the rural residents of Nebraska; it would be there even if we were a desert.

I think the problem is that a lot of the folks doing the theorizing are East and Wast Coast residents and think that what's true for Boston and San Francisco must be true for Omaha and Denver. 'Tain't necessarily so.

[Alberta's Child]

Good points. My point about the subsidy was not that it was directly intended to benefit certain people, but that certain people (including those who live near interstate highways that would have been there anyway) derive a substantial benefit from something that was built at an enormous cost to the U.S. taxpayer. Even though the interstate was built to connect Denver and Chicago, you have access to the road via a local interchange. In the days when the railroads were being built across the U.S., many railroads would not have a local station stop unless the local citizens or merchants paid for the station and guaranteed a certain number of carloads of freight per year.

[Right Wing Professor]

Even though the interstate was built to connect Denver and Chicago, you have access to the road via a local interchange

True.

When I first moved to Nebraska, after having lived entirely on the east coast, I was amused to find that a mere ten miles from Lincoln, a city of 1/4 million people, there are full highway exit ramps which immediately turn into gravel roads. The interchange probably cost more to build and maintain than the entire length of highway beyond it.

[glory]

This exact thing is happening in the community next to ours(incidentally, thier community is in the same county as the city and is as far as public transit reaches). Rather the businesses being shut down though, they are choosing to move up to our community where I am guessing the majority of thier profits are coming from and where they encounter less theft, better clientele, less taxes(we are in another county, considered rural--boy was that lovely when we moved here(OH) from Phoenix--our car insurance dropped 66%!!). I am wary of some of the growth here and although we love our home now, we are looking ourselves a few more miles out to a bigger peice of land and newly built house in a few years--btw, that would still be a shorter commute in both mileage and time than from our commute in Phoenix where we still were considered inside city limits and lived in a cookie cutter house on a teensie bit of land!

[delphine]

Hmm...and I suppose that an acre of land can produce enough food for four people? People need vastly more space to survive than just what they live in. That being said, smaller government is a good idea, too.