The Smart Growthers are a witty lot — just ask them. They have lots of snarky names for things they do not like. In the tradition of McMansion we now have “Pulturbia,” via the local Smart Growth hang-out. Fair enough. But what comes next is some serious cognitive dissonance.
Pulturbia, you see, denotes any inexpensive, spec-built, frame on-a-slab subdivision. That is bad. Remember that.
A much better alternative, Mary Newsom tells us, is sprinkling a few low-cost homes around rather than build whole subdivisions of them. She is thinking of what Montgomery County, Maryland mandated back in the 1970s with the Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit. (Orwell would approve.) Other DC-area burbs have done the same thing.
In effect, these local governments have tried to have it both ways; both increasing the cost of housing while ordering that the cost stay low. Building and zoning codes are extensive and stringent, real estate taxes — both transfer and ad valorem — are crushing, all of which rolls back down to the would-be home owner in the form of insanely high housing prices. Rather than live with this effect, more regulations were crafted to force developers to build less-expensive housing than the market demands. (With buildable land scarce due to a host of land-use regs, the value of land goes up; meaning the price of the housing which can profitably be built on it must go up too.) Builders must build the MPDUs in a timely manner or risk fines, so they build the low-priced units and recoup their MPDU cost by increasing the price of the other units.
Thirty years of MDPUs have not solved the low cost housing equation in Montgomery County. In fact, one initial effect was to turn much of even more-distant Frederick County into a vast Pulturbia, the very “sprawl” the Smart Growthers abhor. Another was to help rachet along the ever-higher cost of housing. We’re not talking nice appreciation one would expect with a growing economy over the years. No — moon-bat crazy prices.
Nice, upscale homes in the New Urbanist dreamland of the Kentlands — homes that might fetch $400,000 to $500,000 in greater Charlotte — going for $1, maybe $1.2 million. Hyper inflation in the housing market so bad that even Frederick County has just instituted its own MPDU program — which produced $175K townhome units still too expensive for many to afford. Frame on-a-slab? They’ve got that. Got that 30 years-old with electric heat — $400,000.
If frame on-a-slab is bad in Charlotte at $150,000, it must be a mortal sin at $400K. But you get the picture.
There is simply no way to hide government action that increases the baseline cost of housing. I have no idea why anyone would want to emulate such policies in Charlotte. The easy — and snarky — thing is to tell these advocates to ago ahead and move to Montgomery County; actually live with what they prescribe for Mecklenburg for awhile. But somehow I don’t think the $400,000 on-a-slab house would have many takers.
