INC NEWS - Letter: effort to "streamline" development process

Tue May 13 18:38:15 EDT 2008

I believe the official NC population forecast is for about 50% more people in Durham County (250,000 --> nearly 400,000) and about 1M more in the 8-county RTP area, in next 20 years or so.  I'm inclined to accept these as working assumptions.

The long-term transportation plan has an approximation of where we will fit them all in (way too many of them at the edges of the county, in my opinion, if we are going to reduce our dependence on imported oil and cut down on greenhouse gases), but no-one has taken a crack at figuring out a more sane scenario.

The comprehensive plan, which was produced with broad community input and includes a land-use plan, is built to support this kind of growth.  I'm not a fan of making it easy to change the land use plan.  Especially if it drives our urban form in unsustainable directions.  

I think this is a particularly dangerous time for having dumb-assed growth.  Our market is relatively stable so we could have a flood of desperate players from across the country slapping together proposals to have something happening.  Someone told me that when the market went bust in Texas in the 1980's, their developers (a kind of carpetbagger???) all came here to try to do deals, overbuilding and driving up the cost on construction.

Regards, pat

> Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 12:42:48 -0400
> From: bragin at nc.rr.com
> To: inc-list at durhaminc.org
> Subject: Re: INC NEWS - Letter: effort to "streamline" development process
> 
> Randy is arguing against straw men again.
> 
> "I beg to differ with the opinion that all developers have bottomless pockets. Many developers are your neighbors, not some national-publicly-traded-stock-selling group trying to make investors happy. They do not have all of the resources you might think. In fact, it's more development on a shoe string than the luxury that seems to thought of by some."
> 
> No one has argued that developers have bottomless pockets. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's the need that developers have to turn a profit on their developments that lead to the kinds of practices that most of us wish to avoid. If developers had bottomless pockets, then this probably wouldn't be an issue. But because the need to turn a profit often conflicts with the needs of the community (for example, to avoid unnecessarily increasing stormwater runoff), there needs to be a mechanism in place to balance these conflicts.
> 
> "Development at any level is just speculation. Market forces, population shifts, jobs, all create a demand for development."
> 
> And yet, we have heard stated as a concrete fact that "a million new people will be moving into our area in the next 20 years." Which is it? Are we speculating that a million new people will be moving here, or are we certain?
> 
> "In AZ and LV, it was the need to drive stocks in the right direction for
> investors. Not something I see a great deal happening around here. You
> don't see new development being built here for that reason because people
> are moving here every day."
> 
> I take it that you don't have any first-hand knowledge of what's happening in the suburbs of Phoenix and Las Vegas? Most of these houses were built to meet demand, and virtually all of them were sold. What's happening is that people are walking away from them because they can no longer afford them. Developers responded to market forces, and then the market changed. The climate didn't change. And to a large extent, the economy didn't change. But gas prices started to increase, and ARMs started to reset, and the entire mortgage shell game, which hinged upon people who were probably unqualified for the mortgages they got, tumbled down when those people realized they couldn't afford the homes they were living in. While its probably not the key factor, certainly the lack of development and zoning controls in most of the western states was an aggravating factor in the overbuilding that was seen in these communities over the past decade. 
> 
> Here's an interesting article from Salon (you'll have to watch a commercial if you're not a member) on how some entrepreneurs are dealing with an unforeseen problem that arose from all of the foreclosures and abandoned houses out west and in Florida. http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/05/09/mosquito_fish/
> 
> "Today, LV is just not LV, it's North LV, South LV and so on. From 1990-2000 some of these areas grew by 145% in population (ie: North LV grew from 47,707 to 115,488 in population; in 2006 it had grown to 197,576). In the same period of time here in Durham (1990-2000), we grew by 36.9% (from 136,611 to 187,035). Today, I believe the figure that is generally tossed out is a quarter of a million."
> 
> So, adding a million new people over the next 20 years will more than quadruple our population, which is a significantly higher growth rate than that experienced by the Las Vegas in the example Randy cites. But we agree that Las Vegas' growth was unsustainable. Why in the world would we want to engage in even higher unsustainable growth here? It' s not like we have infinite acreage of undeveloped desert ringing our city that we can plop down infinite numbers of subdivisions. I think it will be interesting to see what Las Vegas' population is 10 years from now, don't you? Same with ours. Putting a million new people in this area is going to make it a whole lot less desirable, and who knows what effect that will have on future growth rates. It's all just speculation, anyway. Right?
> 
> "But the downside of all this growth (in residential units) is that this is the worst kind of development to have. Residents demand many services but rarely pay for
> them in additional taxes. So our entire tax system gets more costly for all of us. We need a healthy mix of industrial, commercial and then residential to keep it all at some sort of sustainable level."
> 
> Quite right. The question is, how does this happen? I think it's clear from looking at examples of good development and bad development, not only around the Triangle, but around the country and indeed the rest of the world, that you can't rely on "the market" to ensure the "healthy mix" required to create sustainable development. The community, through both the professional planning staff and the elected political leadership, needs to be a part of the decision making process. the proposed "streamlining" of the development review process removes opportunities for community involvement, and increases reliance on "the market" to ensure proper development. But all the market does is base decision making on higher short term profits for developers, and not on long term community needs, meeting which are almost always more profitable in the long term for the community anyway. 
> 
> Finally, just a quick note on the farm issue. I think Randy's confused. On the one hand, he argues that farmers have no incentive to keep their land in production when they could sell it to developers and make more of a profit than if they continued to farm. On the other, he argues that farmers are already getting too much money to keep their land fallow and undeveloped, and turning a profit without producing food. I can't refute either of those, since they're mutually contradictory. I will note, though, that when Randy says "Let markets decide what something costs. The downside to this is shortages as farmers quit growing a crop because it's no longer profitable," he's got a point. But the whole purpose of the subsidy and floor pricing structure for farm products is to avoid food shortages. Because one of the result of food shortages is that people starve. And in most civilized countries, people have decided that avoiding starvation is a higher priority than utliizing market
>   strategies to set pricing and supply of food. I happen to think they're right.
> 
> Barry Ragin
> ---- RW Pickle <randy at 27beverly.com> wrote: 
> 
> =============
> I beg to differ with the opinion that all developers have bottomless
> pockets. Many developers are your neighbors, not some
> national-publicly-traded-stock-selling group trying to make investors
> happy. They do not have all of the resources you might think. In fact,
> it's more development on a shoe string than the luxury that seems to
> thought of by some. Development at any level is just speculation. Market
> forces, population shifts, jobs, all create a demand for development.
> There are a number of cities across this country that have plenty of empty
> housing stock; none of it as new as those in LV or AZ. In fact, some of
> the places in Ohio I am thinking of may have vacant historic homes just
> waiting new owners. But that's not to be since there are no jobs to even
> get folks to consider moving there. So development ends up being built
> where people/jobs/ corporations want to be and where economic forces will
> smile on them. And here we all are...
> 
> In AZ and LV, it was the need to drive stocks in the right direction for
> investors. Not something I see a great deal happening around here. You
> don't see new development being built here for that reason because people
> are moving here every day. We're fortunate to live in such a desirable
> place that consistently finds itself on the top of someones list. We can't
> be this good, or continue to be this good, without the things that make it
> so good. And development is part of that good. It's not bad. Sure there
> may be some bad developments, but in general, it all grows to meet the
> needs of the people who live/move into an area. And like I said in the
> earlier email, we have a million more people coming here in the next 20
> years. So if development is bad and it is not going to happen, someone
> needs to get the word out to these folks who are coming so they'll go
> elsewhere...
> 
> To think that communities, any community, looks 50 years down the road at
> anything, must be a joke. Our long-range transportation  planning, which
> is critical to moving all of the folks here and coming, looks at 20 years.
> The longest date out ahead of us I have ever heard is 2035 (still just a
> 30 year plan). And if you even look back 50 years, here or in LV, who
> would have ever thought our populations would have grown so much. In 1958
> LV had 22% of the states population on only .02% of the land. It seems
> unlikely, as it grew, that everyone wanted to live that close to city
> center. So LV started spreading out. Today, LV is just not LV, it's North
> LV, South LV and so on. From 1990-2000 some of these areas grew by 145% in
> population (ie: North LV grew from 47,707 to 115,488 in population; in
> 2006 it had grown to 197,576). In the same period of time here in Durham
> (1990-2000), we grew by 36.9% (from 136,611 to 187,035). Today, I believe
> the figure that is generally tossed out is a quarter of a million. So this
> is why development has to happen. We continue to grow! But the downside of
> all this growth (in residential units) is that this is the worst kind of
> development to have. Residents demand many services but rarely pay for
> them in additional taxes. So our entire tax system gets more costly for
> all of us. We need a healthy mix of industrial, commercial and then
> residential to keep it all at some sort of sustainable level. And as bad
> as they may seem to some, we need impact fees. Otherwise we'll all end up
> paying for the services these new residents will want...
> 
> Barry said:
> 
> "And don't you think that a public policy that encourages farmers to keep
> their land
> in production makes a certain amount of sense? With food and fuel prices
> at all-time
> highs, minimizing our reliance on food produced 4,000 miles away or more
> seems like
> a good idea to me."
> 
> We do this already. They are called farm subsidies. Our government pays
> farmers to grow (or not to grow in some cases) all sorts of our food
> chain; milk, wheat, soybeans, cotton, corn and the list goes on. In
> addition to routine cash subsidies, the USDA provides subsidized crop
> insurance, marketing support, and other services for farm businesses. The
> USDA also performs extensive agricultural research and generates
> statistical data for the industry. These indirect subsidies and services
> cost taxpayers about $5 billion each year, putting total farm support at
> between $15 billion and $35 billion annually. In recent years, it has
> risen to $121 billion. So more than encouragement is happening already.
> But most of the subsidies go to large producers (because small producers
> are just that and their addition to the food chain is marginal at
> best...). For example, the largest 10 percent of recipients have received
> 72 percent of all subsidy payments in recent years. Even late-night talk
> show host David Letterman gets some. I read an article where the
> government sends him an $8K check for his farming efforts. The extensive
> federal welfare system for farm businesses is costly to taxpayers and
> creates distortions in markets. It's a bad idea whose time has come to be
> changed. Let markets decide what something costs. The downside to this is
> shortages as farmers quit growing a crop because it's no longer
> profitable. And in the end, it'll only hurt us as we'll no longer be able
> to get something we once were or that milk goes to $23 a gallon. So it's a
> fragile line... We can't grow all of our food here anyway. So that's why
> we buy it cheaper in foreign countries and bring it here. We have just
> become accustomed to having our blueberry pancakes year 'round I guess.
> Otherwise, if there wasn't a demand for them (blueberries are just an
> example), they'd rot on the grocers shelves.
> 
> RWP
> 27 Beverly
> 
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