> It is still illegal to erect an apartment building on roughly 75 percent of our nation’s residential land.
Good - multi family dwellings/apartments are a blight, proudly NIMBY
Good - multi family dwellings/apartments are a blight, proudly NIMBY
And I do believe you have control over how your town is shaped. You can shape zoning and ordinance laws to prevent certain types of projects - whether it be fast food, drive-thrus, strip clubs, or dispensaries. Housing developers are trying to make money, and if you make it difficult to make a profit, they won't build.
You are arguing two completely unrelated topics as if they are connected: zoning and welfare.
It truly is about the character of your town.
If your current residents wants to hire a teacher, firefighter, restaurant worker, etc that person may need to move in from out of town. So you can decide how / where people live through zoning.
You also decide how easy/hard it is for people to live in your town, and thus how much goods and services costs.
It's entirely in your hand...
I just think most people focus on one aspect (buildings near them) and don't think about other tradeoffs (all the consequences of how/where people your town 'hires' could live as the economy grows). It's complicated and the whole point is you get to work with your zoning board to make those decisions informed by the data and needs of the town.
Some have done away with single family zoning, but it's still perfectly legal to build SFH there; it's just not the only thing that's allowed to be built.
What exactly do you mean by that?
- New arrivals bring crime and disorder? Enforce the law, lock criminals up, problem solved.
- Overcrowded schools/overused city services? Tax new residents as needed to support new services.
- Packed roads? Public transit is one option, there are others but I confess to not being an expert in this area.
- Just want to keep your town's culture the same? Legitimate desire, but consider how achievable it is—if young families can't afford to live in your area, it will just die out eventually.
Which is it? "Town residents" or "non-residents"?
No. They work for the residents, independently if whether they are taxpayers or homeowners.
> not non-residents wanting to move here from other places, who'll require subsidized housing and likely, dip into the general assistance fund (its just welfare, which they can claim on top of federal and state benefits).
Yeah, the assistance fund for low-income residents is for residents, not non-residents.
> There are almost no employers/jobs here.
That is a common cause of low-income residents.
Your town could seemingly cut out the middleman (the taxpayer) by raising minimum wage (which would either decrease opportunities or increase housing affordability). Ideally, increasing the highest margin progressive property and income taxes also to reduce income inequality and housing prices - while lowering the lower marginal brackets.
Well, this is a very old racial dog whistle — so much so that I don’t think it’s only a dog whistle even today: only the (white) land owners get to vote and have a say in government! Make sure housing prices stay high so that they buy folks with generational wealth today can buy in my “small town”!
Absolutely fucking gross.
Internal movement restrictions come with their own problems, so probably not the best solution.
Perhaps if your town allowed for development, there would be sufficient supply, and you wouldn't need to subsidize housing?
You say that like it’s a bad thing. Why shouldn’t people be getting help to afford homes?
In a huge amount of US small towns, the largest downtown buildings in most of them, forming the economic core of that town, are also some of the oldest, and it would be illegal today to build the buildings around which those towns revolve.
It was true in NY and Pennsylvania when I lived in that area, and it's true here in Oregon.