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Poor Growth Cycles Must Change |
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Written by Frederick D. Jarvis
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Wednesday, 02 February 2005 |
The housing industry remains concerned about governmental control.
Having just returned from the National Association of Home Builders’ (NAHB) International Builders Show held last month in Orlando, Florida (no, I didn’t go to Disney World while I was there), I am reminded of how concerned the housing industry remains about governmental control, or in some cases, lack of control over growth.
One of the biggest issues still at the forefront of the home building business is how to provide the number of new and replacement housing units that will be needed in the coming decades. The reality is that even with shortages of supplies and builders in some areas of the country, new houses will be built if there is a demand for them. The more important question is will the houses be built in the right places and will they be affordable to the people who need them?
Since the early 1990s, growth management and, more recently, smart growth have become planning buzzwords. The movement continues to be highly publicized, written about, and debated.
In my opinion, smart growth in most communities is not happening. Instead, many communities are only deflecting the growth farther out where they think they won’t have to worry about it! Some municipalities and regions even have competing policies. In the Baltimore-Washington region, for example, Montgomery County has adopted a policy of promoting job and employment growth, yet it doesn’t adequately provide for the housing that goes along with that growth. This was documented in a series of Washington Post articles last August. The articles reported that in the Clarksburg planning area, employment growth is projected to create the need for 40,000 new housing units, while only 15,000 are being provided for in the Clarksburg plan. The result will be a significant job/housing imbalance.
The impact of these policies is that the needed housing, especially “Workforce Housing,” the new politically correct term for affordable housing, will have to be built in jurisdictions farther out, causing great strains on regional transportation networks. Although Montgomery County officials see this as a way to hold down taxes, the county along with the state of Maryland will end up spending large sums of money on regional roadways to get people from their homes to their jobs. This form of sprawling growth exacerbates two of the most serious problems facing most regions of the country: traffic congestion and housing affordability.
In my years as a planner, I have seen history repeat itself over and over again. Local areas or regions grow. Rapid growth occurs and then a backlash from that growth results in the adoption of no-growth policies and moratoriums.
This causes regional impact and infrastructure deficiencies, so the growth-limiting policies and moratoriums are lifted. Then, growth resumes and the cycle repeats.
With the U.S. Census projecting significant population growth of 94 million from 2000 to 2030, housing growth is inevitable. If it is not properly planned for, or if it occurs in the wrong places, the results will be bad. It is my hope that in 2005 and the years to come we will come to better understand the reality of growth and properly plan for it. SLDT
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Sustainable Land Development Today 
