Ready to trade in your car for a bike, or maybe a subway instead? Interested in fewer choices for your home, paying more for housing, and being crammed into a denser neighborhood? You can have all this and more if radical environmentalists and “smart growth” advocates have their way and local, state, and the federal government impose the policies set forth in the United Nations’ Agenda 21. You might have heard of this nefarious-sounding policy in a recent Republican presidential debate, but even if you haven’t, here’s some background information: …
April 30 was the last day for the planning department of Petaluma, Calif. The city decided to axe the department after it became clear that development activity was not generating sufficient revenue to cover the department’s expenses. As of March, the department was running a deficit of $280,000 for the fiscal year, which ends in June. Too few developers were applying for building permits or otherwise making use of the department’s fee-generating services. In 1972, Petaluma became the first city in the country to attempt to control growth through limiting …
This Wednesday, government-sponsored entity Freddie Mac announced that it lost $2.8 billion in just the last quarter alone from foreclosures and other related expenses. Both Freddie, and its sister Fannie Mae, are at the core of the recent housing finance crisis. Freddie and Fannie help finance 40% of all U.S. mortgages, and in 2004 the two GSEs bought a combined $175 billion in subprime backed securities — 44% of the subprime market. Liberals are desperate to pin the housing crisis on anybody other than government intervention in the marketplace. Government …
Visiting Heritage scholar Wendell Cox has a new paper out titled “How Smart Growth Exacerbated the International Financial Crisis” in which he praises New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s prescience on diagnosing the role of land use regulation in driving the housing bubble. Krugman wrote on August 8, 2005: But in the Zoned Zone, which lies along the coasts, a combination of high population density and land-use restrictions – hence “zoned” – makes it hard to build new houses. So when people become willing to spend more on houses, say …
