This is my column in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link). Presumably, there’s nothing here to annoy Realtors or brokers, so I can have a Friday free of vitriolic anonymous phone calls. We’re back to money again next week, though, so my relief will be short-lived.
Government needs to stay out to stop sprawl
It seems reasonable to suppose that someday, the Sun Valley Parkway will be called the Loop 404 freeway.
By then, Loop 303 might stretch south all the way to Interstate 8 and east all the way to Fountain Hills, and from there all the way south to Apache Junction and Coolidge.
Already, people are talking about turning Northern Avenue into a freeway connecting Loop 101 and Loop 303.
All of this is simply the inexorable logic of the “Sprawl Machine” in action.
How does the Sprawl Machine work?
First, developers put up houses on remote farmland, where the land is cheap. There are no roads, schools, libraries, fire stations, etc., but the developers know that the new residents will clamor for those things as soon as they move in.
Politicians, scared to death of negative opinion, build all these missing amenities, adding value to all the remaining unbuilt homes and undeveloped land.
The politicians finally get wise and impose “impact fees,” taxes assessed in advance to pay for the amenities that will be built as the new homes rise.
The developers argue that this makes the homes less affordable, which is true. The politicians argue that the new residents are bearing the costs of the new burdens they occasion, which is also at least somewhat true.
But here are two more true statements that you will seldom hear uttered aloud:
In our current mixed economy, if the politicians said, “Sorry, folks, you moved where you shouldn’t have,” eventually developers would stop trying to build in places where municipalities don’t provide services.
In a truly free market, developers would build all the amenities we’re talking about (and then some) at a particular project, or they wouldn’t build the project at all.
The current mess is occasioned by government intrusion into real estate.
On the one hand, developers build where they shouldn’t. On the other, they sucker the taxpayers — again and again — into adding immense value to what was once essentially worthless land.
Want to stop sprawl in its tracks? Get government out of the real estate business.
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