Everybody around here says they want "growth management" and "affordable housing" until they see what that looks like.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 25, 2007 10:48 PM | Email This30-40 Percent of the cost of building can be directly attributed to government permit fees and to governmental regulations, most of which carry a high cost with or no little benefits. In fact some are counterproductive -- negative benefit and high cost mandated by government.
Cost savings do not figure in. Logic doesn't exist.
Density has been mandated. So has open space. Each costs someone either money or quality of living. If you accept the growth management concept you accept the results, even if those results actually directly impact you (of all people).
Posted by: Dick on April 25, 2007 11:20 PMAnybody who thinks we should be building willy-nilly around here should be required to attempt to drive north on Route 9 during rush hour -- heck, any time after 3:30pm will do -- and see what that's like.
I work from home not because I want to save the environment or anything like that, but because I don't feel like spending four hours a day in my car.
Now consider this: I'm from NEW YORK.
People need to understand that a land use law, or any law, for that matter, that would regulate the ability of governments to give the blessing to development, must be enforced to work. Unfortunately, the GMA is used as the excuse for several decades of government unwillingness to enforce simple and logical mandates like concurrency. Some would call it simply corruption by governments to subvert this basic premise and then blame the GMA for the result.
Referred to as "CONcurrency" by anyone touched by the mechanism that drives growth without the necessary infrastructure, the Act is an easy target for politicians and critics deflecting deserved criticism for policies that overwhelm communities with poorly built, ugly crackerjack boxes that are sold based, not on a desire to gut buyers a break, but simply based on market prices driven by demand, and the growing ease of financing overpriced homes. And then its labelled as "affordble housing" to excuse the adverse impacts to our lifestyle.
These boring, "one size fits all" insta-neighborhoods, built in assembly-line effeciency and designed to maximize developers' profit on land that the left demands be offset by huge set-asides, are ugly and overly dense, not because of the Growth Management Act, but because government, in collusion with an industry that funds its land use agencies, promotes the crisis of affordable housing so they can be constructed, and unsuspecting people without much of a choice, buy them.
One thing is for certain, though. If you're a small or medium-sized builder, you can expect to pay extraordinary fees to get your permit. But if you're any one of the giants out there, like Quadrant or Murray Franklyn, you get a substantial volume discount based on one heck of a lot of careful and favorable government analysis. Most of it, of course, focused more on that permit fee at the end of the rainbow necessary to pay government salaries, than providing any real funding for the necessary infrastructure we're all desperate for.
This website more than most, is visited often by readers aware of government's inability to be fair, honest, or efficient. I would hope that readers generally acknowledge that it is the special interest, and rarely the law that drives bureacracies, particularly when those bureacracies are funded as a result of the decisions they make. That flaw in the funding model extends to government's ability to enforce even the simplest of laws, even when logic and the public good is behind them. Like concurrency, the logic is so simple to understand, but because it results in such a significant cost to governments that might try to enforce it, most don't bother. And in places like King County, planners and their agency leaders will even go to work manipulate analysis to bury impacts if you're a big enough customer.
Posted by: MJC on April 26, 2007 06:52 AMI owned a property where they had underbuilt parking so much that they wanted to know what visitors license numbers were that may be visiting your home on a frequent basis so they could judge if they were abusing the common area parking. They wanted pet license tag #'s, they wanted property insurance policy #'s and limits so they could judge if it was adequate. They limited the number of homes in the community that can be rented at any given time. Don't forget with this type of density you are also going to have to develope an appreciation for other peoples lifestyles, cooking odors, choices in music, pet behaviors and levels of cleanliness. Trash days were a real trip, especially holidays with all of those overflowing cans stacked on too narrow streets, more often than not blown over in the wind and rain with the garbage going everywhere. Welcome to GMA gone wild.
Posted by: Smokie on April 26, 2007 07:07 AMLet density increase in the city cores. Sure, cap it at some level (even four or five stories with setbacks outside of business districts, so you still have sunlight on the sidewalks), but there are place in Seattle still zoned single family. It's clear from the speed at which new condo development sells out that there are a lot of people taking up our single family homes who would be happy to live in condos!
Posted by: Ben Schiendelman on April 26, 2007 07:24 AMYou're only looking at part of the equation. Without massive road subsidies, growth would never have sprawled like this. We're seeing backlash now with all these big highway replacement projects.
Density occurs naturally. Businesses and people, for the most part, want to be close to each other - That's why city cores develop in the first place. Remember, Seattle existed as a city before any land use or zoning laws. Sprawl, and then the law necessary to reign sprawl in, only really started with the highway projects.
Posted by: Ben Schiendelman on April 26, 2007 07:34 AMWe were fortunate enough to purchase our home before the market headed north fast, because now houses that have land have gone through the roof.
Posted by: Palouse on April 26, 2007 08:06 AMNow that you've presented your opinions as facts, you actually back them up?
Posted by: H Moul on April 26, 2007 08:23 AMAn airhead condo gets you about 12/acre. An old-fashioned apartment complex with similar parking problems gets you a max. of 20/acre. New condo projects with 5 and up stories get you about 60 units/acre with very, very limited parking.
Where are the people going to live? I say these airhead condos provide better living quarters than the other high density types of development. And people want to own their own homes.
I am still shocked that cities like Edmonds and Lynnwood and Bothell, to name a few, were able to avoid the wrath of the NIMBYS when GMA first came out. These cities made a deal with the folks that 3.5 units/acre (er, 4, when you subtract a few things) was okay. The 1000 ENEMIES OF WASHINGTON allowed the cities to thumb their noses at GMA. 15 or so years later, the land is eaten up and people have no where to go.
Posted by: swatter on April 26, 2007 08:34 AMAdd "light rail" (trams) to the mix, with the forest of overhead wires attendent, you have the bronx, or perhaps the mission district in san francisco.
The brave new world these idiots are advocating can be seen in any documentary about 1900.
People should fix the damned roads and quit this nonsense.
Add "light rail" (trams) to the mix, with the forest of overhead wires attendent, you have the bronx, or perhaps the mission district in san francisco.
The brave new world these idiots are advocating can be seen in any documentary about 1900.
People should fix the damned roads and quit this nonsense.
We've been in Everett for a little more than two years, just buying our house about 6 months ago. We avoided new developments due to the small yards. We have kids, and would like to have a yard for the kids to play in. That steered us towards older neighborhoods.
Posted by: Big Tex on April 26, 2007 01:18 PMYou can buy a 1br/ba houseboat on Lake Union for 89k. Thats much more affordable, not really practical for raising a family. I could only find one other house in Seattle for under 200k.
Regards
Jeff Sax
That doesn't make it a good idea, though.
I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea, either, just that allowing all this building without upgrading the roads to handle the new traffic is completely insane. I schedule my entire day around the traffic. A trip that should take 15 minutes can take well over an hour.