Don’t vote for stupid people
These aren’t hidden, they ARE necessary, and they distract from the real problem which is profit from existing land owners.
If you bought a property 50 years ago for $20,000 just outside of town, and are now selling it for $4 million dollars so that a condo building can be put up, then that money has to come from somewhere and other than being there first, you didn’t do a damn thing to earn that increase in value.
Land values account for almost half of the price of a fucking condo, which should have almost zero land cost associated with it because of how many units you can build on a small footprint.
These are often called DCCs (Development Cost Charges), and they’re necessary. I help set them.
You can’t massively increase density without upgrading infrastructure. There’s only so much capacity in your watermains and sewermains. So, either:
- You treat it as first come, first served—meaning eventually a developer gets stuck upgrading the entire sewer main,
- You make homeowners pay for it through higher taxes, or
- You have new developments pay their share up front, covering the future upgrade costs their projects will trigger.
To me, #3 is the most reasonable approach.
The mantra is “growth pays for growth”… but at a certain point upgrades and new amentities with density benefit existing homeowners and local businesses as much as the new development, so there’s an argument that this would justify some degree of cost sharing. Definitely not a popular argument with most residents though.
Development fees don’t go towards road infrastructure, they go towards upgrading the local infrastructure to handle the new influx of residents.
I don’t agree about the development fees covering those costs, but homeowners go absolutely ballistic about rising property taxes
We want to convert a room in our house in Germany to a tiny flat where e. g. a student could live. If we’d do it the legal way we’d have to supply them with 1,5 (🤦♀️) parking spaces for car(s?) 🤷♀️
