Smart Growth Increases Housing Costs
This report from the American Dream Coalition demonstrates in clear fashion how, around the country, “smart growth” policies have driven up the cost of housing. Randal O’Toole, the report’s author says:
Smart growth and other forms of growth-management planning create artificial housing shortages that impose significant burdens on low-income families and first-time homebuyers.
Examing housing costs from around the country O’Toole identifies the one common element to higher housing costs as ” planning and regulation, most often so-called smart-growth planning or some other form of growth management. ”
Since the rail project being considered for the island of Oahu is also part of an overall comprehensive “smart growth” housing plan, the residents of this island should take note. Implementing these plans, as well as rail, will not make housing more affordable, but less so.
Most regions that experiment with growth-management planning see housing prices sharply rise soon after plans are put into effect;
- Of the 124 metropolitan areas with affordability problems in 2005, the problems can be traced to planning in all but a handful of cases;
- In fifty of those metropolitan areas, homebuyers must pay a penalty of $100,000 or more per median-priced home for the privilege of living in a city or region with smart growth;
- The total cost of planning-induced housing shortages is truly staggering, adding approximately $275 billion to the cost of owner-occupied homes purchased each year.
This just an example of what is revealed in this lengthy report.
Whole report here.