Growth-Management Planning

Efforts to control the rate and/or the location of future growth.

“Tradition has broken down. Taste is utterly debased. There is no enlightened guidance or correction from authority.”

Thomas Clark

“There are hordes of hikers cackling insanely in the woods. . . . lying in every attitude of undress and inelegant squalor.”

C.E.M. Joad

“The extension of towns must be stopped, building must be restricted to sharply defined areas.”

C.E.M. Joad

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That housing must be “in great new blocks of flats which will house a considerable portion of the population.”

C.E.M. Joad

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$933,000 in London

•250-square feet•Includes a 55-square-foot patio

•Only $479,000

London Housing Prices• A 6’x9’ storage closet

converted to an apartment rents for $1,400 a month

• A cabin made out of packing crates sold for $95,000

• A 320-square-foot public toilet converted to a house sold for $195,000

Demand

Supply

Housing Supply & Demand

Quantity

Demand

Supply

Housing Supply & Demand

Quantity

Growth-Management Techniques

• Urban-Growth Boundaries • Urban-Service Boundaries • Greenbelts • Agricultural Reserves • Restrictive zoning • Large-Scale Open-Space Purchases • Limits on Building Permits • High Impact Fees • Lengthy Permitting Process

Coldwell Banker House

Coldwell Banker House • 2,200-square feet • 4 bedroom • 2-1/2 baths • Family room • 2-car garage • Nice neighborhood

$155,000 in Houston

$357,000 in Portland

$1,100,000 in San Jose

“Government regulation is responsible for high housing costs where they exist.”Edward Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko

Planners KnewThere are “welfare tradeoffs for higher density” that “take the form of higher housing prices and perhaps lower housing output.”

Metro, Metro Measured, 1994

Homeownership Rates

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

19001910192019301940195019601970198019902000

United States

Oregon

North Carolina

Index is roughly the value of a 1999 median home in 2005 dollars

The Planning Penalty• Added cost per median-

valued home• $60,000 in Portland• $14,000 in Asheville• $22,000 in Wilmington• $850,000 in San Francisco

metro area

The Total Annual Penalty• Added cost to all people who

bought homes in the nation, state, or region during 2005

• $17 billion in Florida• $136 billion in California• $275 billion in U.S.A.• $200 million in N. Carolina

Total Annual Planning Penalties(billions of dollars)

1364

3

MA 15RI 2CT 6NJ 17MD 3DC 11

17

8

2

6

3

235

1

>$1 billion<$1 billion$0 Other factors

Solutions Worse Than the Disease

• Inclusionary Zoning • Subsidies to Low-Income Housing • Rent controls • Tax-increment financing

These practices reduce housing costs for a small minority by driving up the cost of housing and/or taxes for everyone else

“Inclusionary zoning produces few units. After passing an ordinance, the average [Bay Area]city produces fewer than 15 affordable units per year.”Powell & Stringham

“Inclusionary zoning makes other homes more expensive. We estimate IZ causes the price of new homes in the median city to increase by $22,000 to $44,000.”Powell & Stringham

“New housing production drastically decreases the year after cities adopt inclusionary zoning. . . . New construction decreases 31 percent.”Powell & Stringham

“Price controls fail to get to the root of the affordable housing problem. . . . The real problem is government restriction on supply.”Powell & Stringham

“If policy advocates are interested in reducing housing costs, they would do well to start with zoning reform.”Edward Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko

“Had Portland's policies been applied nationwide over the last 10 years, over a million young and disadvantaged families, 260,000 of them minority families, would have been denied the dream of home ownership..”

Randall Pozdena

The New Segregation

“In sprawled areas, black households consume larger units and are more likely to own their homes.”

Matthew E. Kahn

United States Homeownership Rates

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

White Hispanic Black

Percent

North Carolina Homeownership Rates

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

White Hispanic Black

Percent

Source: USDA, 1997 Natural Resources Inventory

Rural Develop-ments 1.3%

Lower 48 StatesRural Open Space

95.0%

Cities and

towns 3.7%

Urban

8.4%

Otherdevelopment 2.0%

Rural OpenSpace88.6%

johnlocke.org

americandreamcoalition.org