Land Use and Local Governments

in #life6 years ago

I'm learning more and more about how local governments take different approaches to controlling who gets to live where. Basically they all try to keep the rich people living here, middle class here, working class here, and poor ... well a lot really seem to be out to get rid of them, but ostensibly someplace.

When I was in metropolitan areas like NYC and San Francisco, this was mostly done with a combination of zoning and developments approved. You might be zoned commercial, residential, or mixed use, for example. Though AirBnB skirts this, for the most part you can't run a business out of your home that has customers/clients coming in. It's too disruptive to people trying to just live there.

Really in metro areas anyone who isn't doing a strong 6-figures likely has a side gig, though often it's online and not public facing. I've worked from home most of the last 15 years.

And developers always want to develop for the wealthiest people they can get to buy. Cities will often give them incentives to include a certain amount of low income units, or even mandate a certain percentage be such, but in San Francisco $117,000 a year for a family of 4 is considered low income.

To place that in context, someone making twice the minimum wage in SF is making about $40,000 a year. That's considered a 'good wage if you can get it' for an awful lot of people, despite how little it actually buys there.

Meanwhile rent control means that landlords have little incentive to fix up places with longterm tenants in them. So they let the buildings fall apart until they can do a major renovation, evict all the tenants, then rebuild at market rates to cater to the six-figure crowd in tech and finance.

In the end, you wind up with enclaves that are mostly divided by income, as the rent control people get squeezed out of the city entirely and all new construction caters to tech employees. The working poor either become homeless or move elsewhere and commute very long hours for very low pay.

Different Ways Here

The same things are achieved here in Taos, but with a different approach. There doesn't seem to be zoning per se. But if a developer buys 1000 acres from an old family, he must divide it into smaller lots to sell it. The government tells him how small each lot can be and how large each house must be, even how many structures there can be on each lot and what style of buildings are allowed to be built.

So let's say you divide the 1000 acres into 200 lots of 5 acres each, and allow only one house and one in-law unit on each lot. Typically there is also a size restriction in such a case, such as there needing to be one house that is at least 1,000 square feet in size. Manufactured homes are generally forbidden at any size. Often a particular building style is required that happens to be rather expensive to build.

The sum effect of these and other rules is to make this a more expensive neighborhood to live in. You see land is relatively cheap, so they don't want someone to build a $600,000 house and wind up with someone in a $35,000 mobile home living next door.

What would be wrong with that you ask? Well the government (and developers) think it would hurt property values, so they work to prevent it.

There are also issues with water and infrastructure here, this being a desert, so sometimes an area will disallow agricultural use simply because they don't want well water being used to farm.

There is also a countywide mandate here that a home lot has to have at least .75 acres to have a septic system. Meaning you can't build any new homes on less than .75 acres unless you build in the dense and expensive county seat, which has a sewer system.

This further increases the prices for new homes. That developer couldn't turn that 1000 acres into 4000 homes (each on .25 acres, which is considered a double lot in most cities) that are affordable by middle class people. Even if he could make the same profit doing so, and so would be happy to help with the housing crisis as such, he simply isn't allowed to.

There's actually a lot more to it than just this, but I think I've made the point that whether well-intentioned or not, local governments are making decisions that lead to many homes for the wealthy (often people who only have second homes here that they live in a few months out of the year) and a massive shortage of homes for everyone else.

I found it so hard to find a rental when I was moving here last month that I finally decided to just buy a house instead!

(In the end I decided to let that deal go during negotiations and buy land that I'll build on instead. I'll update you more on that once that deal closes.)

I had the option of doing that because I'm coming in with cash, but qualifying for mortgages is no joke when there is a huge whole in the market between rich and poor. The jobs don't support the housing costs. Only people who make money elsewhere can afford to buy, and few are interested in being landlords for the poor with almost 1 acre lots.

Where You Are?

How does the local government control the housing supply where you are, and are they doing a good job of it?

What are they doing right that others might learn from?

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(Photo source: Pixabay)

Resteems always appreacited!

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Wow... While I understand it is far more complex too, this is really valuable info you share here, @indigoocean. Be it well intending or not, I can't believe how controlling the governments in the states have become. And to think I had considered moving to and buying in that very area some time ago (thinking with the old apparently outdated mindset of "land of the free and home of the brave").

I'd have to say I've lived in 4 countries on 3 different continents and Brazil was by far the best and most free in all things building development. Albeit that was the island capitol of the state I lived in, which was (at least then) very free of regulation. Because of that fact, I got a really nice house with land and a pool in a beachfront town (population 10k) on the north end of an island, which connected to the mainland via a large 8 or 10 lane bridge copy of SF's Golden Gate bridge. Because of the freedom in this beach resort community, there was a construction explosion like nothing I had ever seen in my life; and I have been involved with real estate in one way or another ever since I was a child helping my dad find rental properties and build cottages.

There in Brazil in just over 6 years the 10k year-round resident population grew well past 100,000 and prices doubled or tripled. Every lot and property had made some sort of major improvements, built apartments or new houses on them; and they were developing new roads going up the surrounding mountains. Even now with all the problems the Brazilian economy has been going through, because many of the same freedoms still exist for much of that island, from what I gather, construction is still developing at a pace the rest of the world would consider booming.

That’s really interesting. Sometime you and I should have a real estate chat. So much to this concept of “ where to build.”

Sure... As the saying goes, location, location, location.

The area where I am currently schooling. Non of the above is ever considered. Once you have your cash to buy a land, you go ahead and buy. The only difference is that the land in well developed areas are more expensive than areas where are still under developed.

And lack of these control is reason for too much flooding in Nigeria generally because where drainage should be built, people will be too greedy and will use a very small portion for water passage.

Please explain what you mean about the water/drainage. When I think of drainage I think of flowing water being able to reach a larger body of water. But how does greedy people using the water interfere with that?

It's good in some ways that where you are has no such rules, because that's a free people. But then part of that is that the people then have to self-regulate to act in the benefit of the entire community. That sometimes breaks down when people feel like they lack something that they need.

What i mean by greedy people is this. In some areas that are a bit steep, instead of building a good drainage in front of their houses for water to pass, they make it extremely very small. In this case, when there is an over flow of water and the small drainage can no longer carry the large body of water passing through it, it begins to enter the houses of people.

Also people block these drainages by pouring waste being like paper, leather, plastic containers into it and that blocks the passage of water as well.

Oh, I understand. It's so different from here, since here the government would do it instead of the homeowners here, and they would do it uniformly, using cement. I think your drainage is something like our rain gutters on the side of all roads.

I think so. The rain gutters by the road is taken care of by the government when they construct the road but in most cases they do not add gutters by the road and that easily spoils the road.

I don't think the average person even recognizes all of the obstacles put in place by local governments. Redlining for instance was a practice in the 1930s where mortgage companies determined who was awarded loans largely off their ethnicity.

This prevented African American's from inner city neighborhoods from building wealth through real estate investment. The worst part is this has effected their communities generationally preventing families from building the generational wealth that others have prospered from.

Since I will be looking to buy a home in the next 5 years I should start looking into the local laws to help determine the best course of action that will secure my financial investment for the long run. As far as I am aware of currently they have a certain percentage of "affordable" housing that must be available in each city. More research needs to be done on my part though for sure.

Congrats on becoming a Dolphin as well!

Good points about redlining. And yes, it is definitely worth some research to see what laws are in place where you hope to buy. Your realtor can probably teach you a lot as well. Are you building on raw land or buying a prebuilt house? That makes a big difference in most places.

Thx on the dolphin thing, though I kind of want to keep it on the downlow. I still feel like a minnow at heart. The depressed price of Steem certainly keeps me sober about its upvote power.

If everything goes to plan we will have some money set aside to invest in a prebuilt home once the market goes into a downturn. Then once we have had all of our children and are ready to retire it would be nice to be able to build our forever home on a piece of private land somewhere. So regulations would be more of a concern in the distant future.

I've been contemplating investing into some steem myself to take advantage of the depressed price, but haven't pulled the trigger. I should probably start throwing a little towards it each week until it decides to go on another run.

I love your plan. And yeah, the regulations really come into play when you build mostly. Though there are also many if you decide to rent any portion of your property.

On Steem I have mixed feelings. I have put some money in recently, but I’m holding off on doing more, because I realize that it’s a unique coin. There are so many people who sell at any price that the value could collapse way believe actual value it delivers. There is no real floor for the coin so long as people all over the world are living off selling it regularly.

So the adage “ only invest what you are prepared to lose” I think goes double in this case.

How does the local government control the housing supply where you are, and are they doing a good job of it?

My country is a complete disaster, and this of course includes how housing is managed.

In here, private property isn't respected, if a house has no people living in there, they can take it away and put it to "social" use allowing poor people to live in there for free. Or they can also force the owner to sell the property at incredibly low prices.

If you are wondering why they do this, the answer is because they use this as a way to buy political support from poor people. This type of government is always the same when these issues.

Wow, that would suck royally if you just can't find paying tenants right then, or want to save the house for your kids who haven't grown up yet. Or any of a number of reasons one may still value their property, but simply not be able to have it rented right then.

I hate the idea of empty houses with people sleeping on the streets, but the problem can't be solved by taking people's houses!

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they actually think that's a good idea. But how can that possibly be a fair idea? Terrible.

I wonder if there is anywhere humans are getting this whole "live and let live" and "community" intersection in balance. Is that simply still beyond our social evolution?

I wonder if there is anywhere humans are getting this whole "live and let live" and "community" intersection in balance

I am not sure, perhaps in Switzerland? :P

Is that simply still beyond our social evolution?

I don't think it is beyond our evolution, I see a lot of people understanding the importance of freedom in order to thrive on an individual level, and also as a society. Not long ago there were millions of people supporting horrible ideologies like fascism and communism, which is something unthinkable nowadays. With time, we are getting wiser, and problems regarding the lack of respect some people have for other people's freedom should eventually be nonexistent.

I hope you're right. When I look at our world right now, I see Fascism get infused with the breath of new life in so many places in the world, including my own country. Are the people too wise from past experience to let it completely gain dominion again? I don't know. What I'm seeing is that the worse you make public education, the more you make a populace that will actually support the surrendering of their own freedom under the guise of denying it to someone else. May sound harsh, but it's what I seem to be seeing.


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