"Over the past few years, in several states and communities there has been a drive to eliminate zoning protections for single family neighborhoods such as yours. Those zoning protections were designed to keep your neighborhood in the same shape as you found it. A street of matching home styles, and of equal value, free of apartment buildings and excess crowding of those designed for lower income living space.
As Smart Growth programs began to take control of planning policy in many cities across the nation, single-family neighborhoods became a special target. Of course, Smart Growth is about control of development, not personal choice. Its main focus is to move people out of the rural areas and suburbs into the inner cities. 15 minute cities! In such a plan there is no room for traditional two-story homes and yards. The new housing plan is for high rise apartments squeezed together in an urban setting where few cars are necessary as you walk or ride your bike to the store; and take public transportation to work. It’s all to protect the environment!
But how do you get people to accept such a major change in life? Create a crisis, of course. So today, we have a housing shortage! Proponents of the scheme declare, “We can put 100 families in the space of your house and yard that today only holds four people!”
The main question that must be asked is do we really have a housing shortage? If so, why? Aren’t home building companies able to keep up with demand for housing? And why aren’t homes affordable to the average American?
The answer is, we don’t have a housing shortage, we have a government interference problem. For the past several decades, the government has been working to limit home building. Urban Sprawl, they call it. To protect the environment, we can’t have housing developments spreading all over the place. So, many communities have put up Urban Growth Boundaries around the city and allow no growth outside that line. The poster child for this practice is Portland, Oregon. Over twenty years ago the city installed such a boundary and the restrictions have barely changed. But the population has grown by almost 80%. Now Portland has a housing crisis!"
Click on the link below to read the rest of the article.
