The Garner planning commission and the city council are busy dictating home building practices. After all, they know more about home building, the current housing market and what customers want than builders and investors who risk their own money on their projects.
The developer of Sutton Springs subdivision is attempting to respond to current market conditions by reducing the amount of brick on the front of his new homes from 80 to 30 percent.
The council denied the change.
Of course, the planning commission and council members have no financial risk in this decision. If Sutton Springs developer and investors go out of business, it is no skin off their noses. Council member Kathy Behringer is quoted in the Garner-Clayton Record as saying ?I think we need to look long range.?
While we are waiting for the long range, builders who want to build marketable houses, workers who want to work and consumers who want to buy an affordable house are out of luck.
Oh, I have a grand idea! Maybe the council could pass an affordable housing ordinance that would force builders to build ?affordable? housing and sell them at below market prices. On second thought, perhaps that is not such a good idea because those houses would probably have fronts with less than 80 percent brick.
It is not hard to discover who benefits from this decision because the special interest group showed up at the meeting to lobby the council. ?Patrick Burns, of the southeast division of the Brick Industry Association, asked the town council last week to deny the change.? I wonder if the Brick Industry Association will reward those council members voting to deny the change with campaign donations when they run for reelection?
And you thought that special interest politics where you can get government to force others to buy your product just happened in Washington DC.
