NYT: "Slumurbia" GREAT commentary on foreclosures and planning/tax issues. INTERESTING

[Captain Hilts]

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/slumburbia/?hp

One is that, at least here in California, the outlying cities themselves encouraged the boom, spurred by the state’s broken tax system. Hemmed in by property tax limitations, cities were compelled to increase revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries. They let developers plow up walnut groves and vineyards and places that were supposed to be strawberry fields forever to pay for services demanded by new school parents and park users.

Second, look at the cities with stable and recovering home markets. On this coast, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego come to mind. All of these cities have fairly strict development codes, trying to hem in their excess sprawl. Developers, many of them, hate these restrictions. They said the coastal cities would eventually price the middle class out, and start to empty.

It hasn’t happened. Just the opposite. The developers’ favorite role models, the laissez faire free-for-alls — Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley — are the most troubled, the suburban slums.

MORE AT LINK:

Hilts here. I know that the suburbia I lived in - Virginia Beach - development was fueled by the fact that the City Council and planning boards were full of business types and, most importantly, developers or their toadies like Ken Barefoot and R.G. Moore. Until very, very recently, Virginia Beach's - and Norfolk's - City Council election systems were voted 'at large' to ensure that military carpetbaggers and blacks did not get on the councils. The side effect was that only developers, etc. had the money to launch city-wide campaigns, so, guess what, a bunch of developers controlled the City Council and Planning boards. At least Norfolk had less land to ruin and is, today, a much better place to live than Va. Beach

[KittyWampus]

1. I could swallow the bitter pill of development if it had been done with more enlightened planning

off to read the whole thing.

[asjr]

2. I read that first thing this morning and it

enforced my view that we are in deep deep trouble. I don't see an out in the near future. Frightening!

[tabatha]

3. Once more, free market capitalism fails.

[Alcibiades]

4. Great article

As a bit of a side note, this touches upon the convenient nexus between real estate developers and politicians. Because of zoning laws and other local ordinances, there is a natural impetus for real estate developers to be involved in politics, and the high profits that have often been associated with this industry gives them serious pull. There are many ex-politicians and members of political families who are employed by this industry, probably more so than any other line of work except law.

Real estate developers are big political movers and shakers in every area of the country where I've lived. It's a classic example of the "iron triangle," and it's a completely bipartisan phenomenon. Not happy with the perpetual mutual aid that politicians and developers provide, many, many times their relationship turns criminal. Just google "real estate developer sentenced" and you get some idea of what I mean. And for every one of those stories, you won't see a dozen wherein well-connected insiders were able to break the law without being caught. And in many areas of the country, organized crime also has a role in all of this.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. A number of falsehoods in the article which are unnecessary to it main point

For example "On this coast, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego come to mind. All of these cities have fairly strict development codes, trying to hem in their excess sprawl." Is utter tripe. Those municipalities were already bordered by other municipalities and were as guilty of doing all the sprawl they could at the time.

[Captain Hilts]

6. As I pointed out with Va. Beach and Norfolk. But they're all line drives in the

box score. SF, Portland, SD, are in better circumstances for the times. If your money is on the line it doesn't matter how they get there.

[jobendorfer]

14. I'm not sure what you mean with regard to Portland

Cases in point:

San Diego/LA. I can cross the line at San Ysidro and head up the coast. I will be in endless city until I get somewhere to the north
of Santa Barbara. I think that is at least 200 miles, possibly more. (This is where I grew up. It doesn't look ANYTHING like it did
in 1965.)

Seattle. If I'm driving north on I-5, I hit the south end of the Seattle conurbanation at milepost 100 (Olympia-Tumwater) and I remain
in city until I clear Everett, over 100 miles further north.

Now we come to Oregon. Portland and the two neighboring counties, hold the overwhelming majority of the state's residents ( the only
other cities in Oregon with populations over 100,000 are Eugene and Salem. ) The bottom edge of the Portland area is at Wilsonville, and it
runs north to the Columbia, about 25 miles. In good traffic conditions ( increasingly rare these days ), a long-haul trucker could
get through Portland on a single mug of coffee. Even along the Eugene - Portland axis, one will spend a great deal of time gazing
at pastures and farmland as you drive.

All three of these cities were confronted with the same market forces back in the late 1960s, and had to make choices about how to
(or if) to manage their growth.

Oregon chose a very different route.

I'll leave the question of "which route worked" for anyone who reads this to judge for themselves.

Interestingly enough, the guy who ramrodded Oregon's land-use planning system into law was a Republican.

Believe it or not.

J.

[Gormy Cuss]

7. It's not the tax limitations that caused this in the Bay area --it's restrictive zoning.

Too much land is dedicated to zoning allowing only single family detached housing and it takes an enormous effort to switch to higher density zoning. That constrains the number of available units and puts upward pressure on prices. It boggles my mind that so few of the suburban BART stations have high-density developments, and so few higher density developments like townhouses near village centers. Developers found welcome mats out in the far flung reaches of the area, places like the San Joaquin Valley, and they built. As high as the prices were at the peak they were still substantially cheaper per square foot than buying closer in where the jobs were. Now you can buy that much house 45 minutes closer to the city, so why be out in Tracy?

There would never have been this wild development spree in the San Joaquin Valley if closer in communities had welcomed high density development because there would have been much more money to be made selling at the inflated prices of closer-in suburbia.

[Captain Hilts]

9. that's a constant everywhere. Cal's tax structure is uniquely restrictive

and encourages building to "expand the tax base" to a degree greater than other areas - like Va. Beach.

[Gormy Cuss]

10. In what way is it uniquely restrictive?

Most areas have strong incentives to expand the tax base. How is it different here? Lathrop may have been looking for expansion because of Prop. 13 constraints but there would be never have been a market for 400K houses in Lathrop if not for the exclusionary zoning in closer in communities. Lathrop probably is a place for 100K houses but not so many of them.

[Captain Hilts]

11. Calif. has made it VERY difficult to raise taxes. More than most states. nt

[formercia]

8. It's going to be a lot of fun driving to work

when the cities and towns can't afford the road maintenance costs.

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. Of the 3 cities with limited sprawl cited, above,

I know that Seattle and SF are geographically limited. Water and mountains have contained the growth. THAT is what kept "sprawl" of the city proper confined.
AND "sprawl" exists beyond the limits of those cities. That is why the areas are called
"Metro complexes"..wall to wall roads and houses far south of SF, and an almost solid wall of growth
south and north of Seattle.
I suspect Portland is the same, have not lived in that city.
I disagree with his statement that that development has not priced out the middle class.
Wanna bet? Until recently, housing prices in Seattle were almost as obscenely high as in SF.
relative to income.


The high cost of buying in those cities is what caused the search for cheaper housing beyond city limits,
actually. Build it and they will come.

[Xithras]

13. They should have written it on Mountain House.

These towns are all within 30 minutes of me. These towns are all in real danger of becoming suburban slums, but at least they WERE built around previously existing town centers with established populations, as well as retail, industrial, and agricultural job markets. More importantly, there is a previously existing sense of community in these towns that can help to blunt some of the worst effects of the severe downturns on the town fringes.

The real disasters are places like Mountain House, just up the road from Tracy, where the developers literally bought some farms in the middle of nowhere and built a "new" town from nothing. These "towns" are simply subdivision after subdivision of identical stucco houses punctuated by the occasional school or park. There is no sense of community, no business or job base, and no unifying local government to try and keep the place livable. They only have "government" in the sense that their HOA's cooperate with each other, and that the local sherriff sends patrols through every now and then. The place is dotted by abandoned developments on what was once fertile land, which now sprout only tumbleweeds which roll eerily through the streets lined with abandoned houses and For Sale signs. These are the real ghost towns of the modern age. Most of the houses are still occupied, but without growth, they have little point in existing and almost no chance of becoming anything more than a collection of ugly homes out in the countryside. Once those homes cease being "new", the stucco starts cracking, and the homes are handed off to their second or third generation owners in another 20-odd years, towns like these will become true slums.