Developments and developers

[kengr]

I had a thought a while back and ysabetwordsmith recent post reminded me of it.

A complaint often seen is the developers keep building stuff for the high end and ignoring stuff for the lower end.

Also, complaints about all the unused business spaces around.

Besides zoning, and the arguments pro and con over it, I think cities and towns need to take different measures.

Get a local "census" of both people and housing/businesses. If there's an oversupply of stuff at one price point, developers trying to get approval for more of that get given a *firm* "No".

They should instead be directed at areas where there are shortfalls. Cheaper housing, smaller businesses and above all refurbishing/repurposing all that unused stuff.

Of course, development for development's sake needs to stop as well.

Which reminds me. It's long past the point where we should have stopped converting farmland to suburbs. Ditto for many kinds of forest.

Our local "urban growth boundaries" annoy the hell out of developers. [playing world's smallest violin] Gee, too bad folks.

We need more greenspace. We fewer mega business centers. We need *lots* more affordable housing.

We also need to do something about buildings and houses sitting empty.

Comments

[acelightning73]

A lot of places - even including cities within the US - have come up with the radical idea that, if people are homeless, giving them homes will cure that problem. They have to keep the places relatively clean and in decent repair. But they have a fixed address to use when applying for a job or any form of public assistance. Most of the people who were given homes this way manage to get jobs, get help for mental health issues (and physical health also), and even get more education. There is very little abuse of the program. Of course, one of the places they do this is in Finland. And I think one is in Salt Lake City, Utah.

[ndrosen]

One thing to do is to replace our current property tax with a land value-only tax (which should also be used to reduce or abolish other taxes, such as sales and wage taxes). Land value taxation would make land speculation unprofitable, so vacant lots in town would be developed first, and there wouldn’t be so much pressure to sprawl out into the countryside. Also, not taxing people for erecting apartment buildings would mean more housing and lower rents.