Sounded Good at the Time...

“But, that nice empty field behind our house got turned into a housing development!” you cry. And what was the land on which your house sits before it was built? You can have yours, but the people who would buy and live in the new houses on that once-empty field can’t have theirs? As part of the deal when you bought your house, did you pay the owner of that empty field a fee to guarantee that it would never be sold to a “nasty” developer and become housing for other families like yours? If not, why do you go to your local Planning Commission when public hearings are held and speak out against the development? By doing so, you are infringing on the right of the landowner to decide what he wants to do with his own property, including making a profit from it. What if he kept you from selling your house because he was worried about who would buy it and feared a change would upset the neighborhood? All this infringement on property rights doesn’t work so well when the shoe is on the other foot.

“I have a right to a view!” you proclaim. Yeah – sure – whatever. I have a right to clear, blue skies. Time to call a lawyer and file a lawsuit against all those pesky clouds. Saying you have a right to something doesn’t make it so. Everyone saying it together in unison doesn’t make it so. Having your local Congressman push a bill through Congress and getting the President to sign it into law doesn’t make it so. In other words, you have no more “right” to a view than you have a right to anything beyond life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and your property (the one that somehow got left out of the Declaration of Independence – an omission that has led to such niceties as the US Supreme Court decision in Kelo v New London).

“We must fight ‘urban sprawl’!” you yell, fist clenched and held high. Yikes! Only 75% of the land in the U.S. is undeveloped – no houses, no offices, no shops or schools, and no agricultural (farming, livestock). Of the remaining 25%, only 5% is “urban.” Yup, sounds like “urban sprawl” alright. Round up a posse! Seriously, if people in urban areas have such a yen for wide open spaces, there’s Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, etc. Hang a map of this nation on the wall, put on a blindfold, and toss a dart at it. Assuming you actually hit it, the odds are very good you will find some “open space” to move to.

“Developers are just a bunch of pushy money-grubbers!” you holler, red-faced with indignation. Simmer down. That’s quite a statement and deserves careful dissecting. First, are they really pushy or do they get pushed around more and more? I venture to say the latter. For example, in Mesa, Arizona, developers pay “impact fees” up front before one weed is cleared or one clod of soil is overturned.

“The developer pays impact fees when obtaining permits or water service and helps offset the costs of new growth to the City. There are nine impact fees: water, wastewater, parks, cultural, libraries, public safety, fire, general government and storm drainage.

“There is also a fee for solid waste that is a residential development tax.”

(http://www.cityofmesa.org/building_safety/Development_Impact_Fees.aspx.)

(“Cultural” fees?) Let’s not forget fees charged for submitting plans, the cost of “Environmental Impact Studies,” etc. (Too bad there isn’t a “Business Impact Study” before some of these silly fees, laws, and other restrictions get put into place.) Nothing could be more unfair or ridiculous. Far from “impacting a community,” developers create that community. Again, where would you be living, working, learning, etc., if some developer hadn’t built a building?

Second, are they really money-grubbers or just like you and me – trying to get fair pay for a day’s (or week’s or month’s) hard labor? Again, I say the latter. Most business people are. Do you run your store, restaurant, service company, etc., to have a loss? If you do, take a course in basic economics (or read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt), and don’t be surprised if you end up trying to live off of the meager Social Security checks you’ll be getting when you retire.

• Feng Shui is an ancient superstition originating in China that says our happiness rests in the arrangement of our furniture, whether a mirror is across from our bed, etc. (You can read a rather biased description in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_Shui. Don’t expect any semblance of reason here.)


• Detached garages are coming back into vogue as an attempt to get back to some imagined better and simpler times. Actually, detached garages started out as livery stables that turned into a place to park the “horseless carriage.” (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Role%20of%20the%20garage%20in%20suburban%20American%20culture) In the 30s attached garages were an innovation in modern home design, as the Ranch style of house was developed. They made sense, especially in climates with lots of extremes, such as Minnesota. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranch-style_house)


• Homeowner associations go back as far as 1914, when covenants and deed restrictions were imposed on a housing development by the builders as a way of assuring buyers that the property would retain its value. Unfortunately, a lot of the restrictions appeared to be racially motivated and have since been banned. Still, there can be a lot of rules to follow when buying a property in such a development. Buyers have to decide which is more important: Their rights as property owners for deciding such things as what color to paint their house versus assuring that their neighbor doesn’t paint his house a color they don’t like. Sadly, many have traded in those rights for a pleasing house color next door. (Our recent experience with neighbors in our non-HOA neighborhood has us thinking this might not be such a bad trade-off afterall. The renters there, in what is an otherwise owner-occupied cul-de-sac, have turned their front yard into what can best be described as a 3-ring circus zone.)


• Historic districts and preservation date back to 1813, when the Philadelphia State House (Independence Hall) was closed off to becoming much-needed housing. (http://www.emich.edu/public/geo/history.html) Basically, every time an old structure is slated to be removed in favor of a newer structure that would provide housing, shops and other buildings beneficial to man, it is prevented in the name of preserving the past. (Soon, anything built in the 1970s will be considered historic.) In my current town of residence, a small, delapidated structure that was to be torn down came to the attention of those who get such buildings declared “off limits” to improvement. So, now the town is stuck with this eyesore and possibly will have a tax-burden for the next millenium.

By all means, we desperately need developers, as we continue to have children who grow up and need a house in which to start their own family. And where will your children work if no new stores, offices, and factories are built? Far from being “nasty,” developers give us shelter and a place to be productive. It is unfortunate that they have been forced often times to play along with the government game of “squeeze the developer.” If you have any sense of the true impact on your lives, you’ll go to your “Town Leaders” and tell them to back off. Then, go to your county, state, and federal officials with the same message.

It’s time to recognize developers for what they really are: Creators of Communities.

Copyright © 2007 A.C. Cargill