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Home Resource Center In the News Home Greenbelt Alliance in the News |
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Greenbelt Alliance In the News August 26, 2007 Speculation, not environment, pushing home prices Letter to the Editor Nicole Byrd, Solano-Napa Field Representative, Greenbelt AllianceMany thanks to Publisher Steve Huddleston for highlighting one of the Bay Area's most pressing issues in his column profile of Vacaville resident Tom Phillippi and his impressive efforts to provide homes people can afford ("Making the American dream more achievable," The Reporter, Aug. 12). Mr. Phillippi is absolutely right about the fact that many young people are unable to find starter homes they can afford. This is a real problem for our communities and our environment. People have to "drive 'til they qualify" to distant subdivisions that have paved over farmland. The resulting long commutes are bad for the air and tough on families. Mr. Phillippi is also right that to address the problem, we need to stop making one-size-fits-all houses; we need to build more types of housing that make better use of land, to enable young people, seniors and others to find a place they can afford in their communities. I don't agree with Mr. Phillippi on a couple of points. We do need developments to pay their own way - too often, taxpayers are made to subsidize costly, remote developments that drain investment away from their communities. And we all benefit from the California Environmental Quality Act, which protects our health and our communities. These are not the factors causing high housing prices. As the bursting housing bubble has shown us, the roots of the problem are economic: easy borrowing and speculative investing have caused prices to skyrocket in recent years. We have seen lot of new homes built in Solano cities, but we need to do more to ensure the homes being built are the ones that people need. That's why 59 of the Bay Area's 101 cities, including Petaluma, American Canyon, Napa and Walnut Creek, have adopted inclusionary housing ordinances. These ordinances require that new developments contain a certain percentage of affordable starter homes. Cities can adopt these ordinances and take other steps to make sure Mr. Phillippi's children, as well as everyone else's, can afford to live here. ### |
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