Brady Bunch Country gets hit by UGB

The WSJ article is an example of the ill-conceived "Smart Growth" land use planning that has led to an artificial shortage of buildable land, and consequently higher prices for housing in regions where urban growth boundaries exist.  Many studies agree that UGBs are responsible for the rise in housing costs that rob people of their ideal of the American Dream.  The social engineering that is taking place nation-wide to cram more people into ever-more dense cities also lowers the quality of life for millions of people who prefer a low-density lifestyle - which the majority do.

It strikes me as particularly cruel that the public is being made to pay multiple times for 1) manipulating the market to create higher housing costs; 2) requiring people to pay more of their personal, hard-earned income for housing needs; and 3) being asked to subsidize expensive "low income" housing in markets where housing has become costly.  This is Central Planning at work - selling a utopian ideal for a terrible reality.  The clarion call for reduction of green house gases (and carbon footprint) is the Green red herring that is, and will be, used to persuade us to continue to follow the Central Planners to our own compact, expensive future.

This post should be read along with a previous blog posting, "A Better Way to Sustainability."  The GHG/sustainability needs to be put in proper perspective concerning what is realistically doable rather than the Orwellian Central Planning we have now.

Land Crunch Hits Builders in 'Brady Bunch' Country
Attached Homes Become Far More Common as Single-Family Houses Decline
Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2013

Excerpts:
Faced with a dearth of developable land, home builders across Southern California are cramming more houses into less space. Many are dispensing with the single-family homes that have defined the region's development for half a century (Exhibit A: "The Brady Bunch"). In their place they are building somewhat smaller structures in the form of townhouses or pairs of homes that share one wall.

This contrasts with the rest of the nation, where homes are for the most part getting bigger after shrinking a bit during the housing bust. The average size of a new single-family house grew 5.4% to 2,642 square feet in the second quarter from a year earlier, led by fast-growing housing markets in Texas and several Southern states, where land is relatively inexpensive and plentiful.

Government agencies also have played a role in pushing denser developments such as townhomes. As part of a series of air-quality and environmental laws passed in the 2000s, often dubbed "smart growth," California encourages cities to embrace higher-density development by clustering housing around transportation hubs.

There is no legal minium on density, but the policies likely will to be tied to future greenhouse-gas-emission targets that will further push developers toward attached homes, said Benjamin M. Reznik, head of the Government, Land Use, Environment and Energy Department practice at Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Mitchell LLP, a law firm in Los Angeles.

"To generate the density by definition you have to get away from the single-family-home concept," he said.

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