Free market land use restrictions
May 18th, 2008 by Republican By DefaultAs an alternative to the zoning approach to land use restrictions, Houston, TX has always had used a free market approach. There are benefits and drawbacks, but the important thing is it puts property rights in the right place, the hands of the property owner.
Michael Ennis of the Washington Policy Center (WPC) attended a conference in Houston where the subject came up. He points out some interesting aspects of the system in this blog entry.
Our Neighborhood Council meeting recently had visits from the city’s planning commission staff and from a lobbyist group that is lobbying the city for more restrictive land use. This article seemed a good way to start the conversation on this blog.
I’m not advocating a radical change to our land use and zoning laws. However, I do want to make clear that a) there are alternatives, and b) that more restriction isn’t the best approach.
Update: Robert Mak, probably the closest thing that Northwest TV news has to an objective reporter, did a segment on this issue (here’s an online synopsis). He spoke with a UW professor who, without outside funding or support, did a study on the impact that land use regulations have on housing prices.
The professor, Theo Eicher, didn’t make any moral value judgments about land use regulations, only looking to find a dollar figure of the impact. Here’s an earlier Seattle Times article about his study.
Eicher made some good points in the TV interview. Elderly suffer from the new multi-level construction that is replacing single family dwellings since many have a hard time with stairs. He also took a shot across the bow of his detractors by bringing up the point that if this isn’t the cause of the higher prices in Seattle real estate, then they have to come up with an explanation of what is causing it.
A point I would add is that if this multi-use and multi-family dense urban dwelling is so popular, why didn’t it replace single family dwelling long before Seattle started running out of space allowed for development by the Growth Management Act?
One of the professor’s detractors (forget where I read it) tried to refute his findings by pointing to the new, denser dwellings as being more supply for the demand. The point missed by this anti-sprawl fanatic was that it’s usable land that’s at issue, not the dwellings. Also, if dwellings were the issue, they would have to be desirable dwellings, not the glorified apartments and x-plexes (duplex, fourplex, etc.) that are being built.
Update: NewsBusters.org did a good job of showing the hypocrisy of a leftist urbanist today. Krugman compared Berlin to Atlanta in a column in which he blamed America’s dislike for city living on racism. They pointed out that urban Atlanta’s poverty rate of 27.8% is three times higher than the national suburban average of 9.4%, and that the crime rate (per 100,000) in urban Atlanta is 3 times higher than in suburban Atlanta.
This is much like Tacoma. Most of downtown Tacoma is an Economic Empowerment Zone because of poverty and the high crime rate is what the area is known for (and the rate is climbing, see this post).
I can always tell a vapid ideology, like urbanization, when they have to resort to patently false or misleading emotional arguments to advance their cause. It’s similar to when opponents of global warming hysteria were compared to holocost deniers. Maybe this is a sign that it’s the beginning of the end of the current socialist movement to pack people into cities like sardines in a can.
May 18th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I think more regulation IS the best approach. More regulation provides predictability, something that all “property rights”-centric places do not have. If you’re a homeowner in Houston, you have no guarantee that your next door neighbor won’t be able to build a maximum security prison or a gravel mine to keep you awake 24 hours a day. While it is true that Euclidean zoning has been overused to create the trashy suburban landscape covering most of our urban areas today, there is a degree to which it can be useful. I disagree with development regulations designed to keep places low-density and suburban in nature, but Houston, with its complete lack of regulations, is far more oppressive than any suburb: the lack of regulation tends to bring out the worst in people. The buildings are hideous, the city sprawls outward faster than any other in the US, the people are the fattest in the country, and every traffic-congested road looks like South Tacoma Way.
Yes, there are alternatives. However, having spent considerable time in “pro-property rights” places, there are a lot of people who desire better land use planning. They want to emulate better planned states like Washington, Maryland and Florida. They certainly don’t want to emulate Houston.
May 18th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
You’re obviously down Houston, but apparently all the people who live there and have moved there don’t share your disdain. I have to wonder if the people you refer to as wanting more restrictions are just a bunch of liberals who don’t believe in individual property anyway.
An important issue that needs to be at the forefront of this discussion is that adding regulations to property that is privately owned is effectively taking away some value from the property.
Houston was founded (I believe) with free market land use policies whereas Washington DC was founded (or better ‘re-founded’) as a planned city. So when someone bought land there they knew ahead of time what they were getting. In the case of cities like Tacoma and Seattle (as well as Pierce and King counties) adding regulations changes the value of the property and in many cases prevents the owner from using the property the way they intended when it was purchased.
In my opinion any additional land use restrictions should be grand-fathered in so as to prevent people from being ripped off by government without being compensated. Oregon passed an initiative to prevent such rip-offs, but liberals fought that, too. Which is usually the case where individual rights class with the left’s collectivism (resistance is futile).
It’s also important to look at the ‘affordable housing’ issue in light of the average cost of a home in Houston as opposed to even Tacoma and Seattle. The impact of free market policies can’t be ignored on the price of land and the ability of residents to find their part of the American dream.
May 18th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
It’s very easy to label an entire group of people who want their American dream without it being trampled on by others as nothing more than “a bunch of liberals.” How immature. In fact, most land uses ARE grandfathered in, if they are realized before the regulations change. I don’t think that someone who bought 80 acres in east Pierce County in 1940 with the intention of “someday” turning it into 400 homesites is necessarily entitled to do so if there were no regulations in 1940 and there are now restrictions on density in the rural areas.
I am an Oregonian. When Measure 37, the property rights initiative, passed in 2004, most voters, many of my close friends included, thought they were making the regulations fairer to all. Of course, the proponents of Measure 37 (and Initiative 933 here in Washington) essentially wanted to usurp the democratically-elected government’s ability to regulate land use. Look at what has happened since Measure 37: all sorts of land uses have been allowed that are completely incompatible with surrounding uses and intensities, preventing Oregonians from realizing their right to realize their American dream. Oregonians feel duped by the neo-fascist proponents of Measure 37, and most voters there would repeal it if they had the chance.
It is true, is is less expensive to purchase a home in Houston than in many places. However, Houston rarely comes up on a list of most people’s lists of where they would actually like to live. New York, San Francisco, …….Houston? There’s something wrong here. I know about three or four people here in Tacoma that are from Houston or its environs. All of them came here by their own free will. None have any intention of returning to a city they consider to be a giant wasteland. My point is, just because houses are cheaper somewhere else, does that make it a better place to live? Would you live in a city you hate just to have a less expensive house, or would you pay a bit more to live in a place you love? The American dream is about having a choice. My gut feeling is that many Houston residents would rather live elsewhere, but don’t have the means to make the move.
May 18th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
“neo-fascist proponents of Measure 37“?
And you complained about me labeling someone? I see you’ve matured beyond your years.
My gut feeling is that many Houston residents would rather live elsewhere, but don’t have the means to make the move.
You sound like that idiot John Kerry when he said that if you don’t get an education you’ll end up in Iraq. He didn’t realize that there are people over there that are better educated than he is, not to mention smarter.
Please don’t take this personally but your statement is asinine. And with it you put everything else you’ve said into context.
So do you mean ‘Oregonians feel duped’ or just the ones you know? Liberals do tend to be a little cloistered. I lived in OR for a while and I have a lot of family there. They don’t feel duped. They feel like they finally have some of their rights back.
Again, people you know want to live in NYC, SF, etc? Those are liberal mecca’s. But obviously people are moving to Houston. In fact, Houston treated Katrina victims very well and many of them stayed. Must really suck to live there.
Maybe the only people you know are people who think like you do. You should get out more. Meet some people who think for themselves. People who like open spaces.