Concessions being made to developers hurt Gainesville residents
The City Commission majority is giving away Gainesville’s assets, hoping that developers will provide additional, more affordable, housing if certain regulations are relaxed. What is the city giving up, and what might we gain in return?
Though the specific regulations are technical, there are three broad kinds of concessions the city is providing to developers: community property, cursory plan review and money.
The more land developers can use, the more housing units can be built. Developers have been making this case for decades because it increases their profits, and developers have a right to make money, just like everyone else. The commission is convinced that if the land cost is cheaper per unit, developers will pass along the savings to renters or homeowners, thereby making housing more affordable.
To create more developable land per lot, the city is reducing on-site parking requirements; reducing or eliminating building setbacks (the distance between the building and the property line); allowing building in floodplains; and allowing mature trees to be clear-cut.
All these concessions help developers but hurt city residents. For instance, excessive on-street parking is a nuisance and a danger for those living in neighborhoods with narrow streets. Reducing or eliminating building setbacks invades neighbors’ privacy and can cause fires to spread from property to property.
Building in the 100-year flood plain will cause flooding for those living downstream. Cutting mature trees reduces the city’s forests and increases the heat island effects (heat stored in hard surfaces). It also reduces shade, making walking more unpleasant and air conditioning more necessary.
These concessions will hurt the future tenants of these developments, who will pay extra for permits to park on city streets, use more air conditioning and who may need flood insurance.
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The second type of concession concerns developers’ time. Developers complain, sometimes justifiably, about how long it takes to have building permits approved.
Streamlining the permitting process by excluding the public helps developers control their development costs, but it also leaves neighbors and other community members without a means to call problems to the attention of those reviewing the plans. As a result, large developments are being imposed on city residents, rather than planned with them.
The city’s third concession is simply giving developers the taxpayers’ money, in the form of tax incentives, below-market-rate property sales, infrastructure improvements for their projects and even financial commitments to pay tenants’ rents. These concessions vary from project to project, and even metamorphose during commission discussions. It is difficult, sometimes impossible, to know what deals are ultimately being cut.
Most large developments involve some negotiations with host cities. Here, though, the consistent justification for substantial concessions is that these developers will provide “affordable housing.” How much housing, for whom, and at what cost is fuzzy at best, even to some of those on the commission dais. How will developers be held accountable for promises made?
Gainesville citizens are losing long-term tax revenue that should fund our city and improve our city’s public infrastructure. (This current approach leads to upgraded streets or sidewalks only adjacent to random large projects.) Also, some public money earmarked for “affordable housing” may be going to middle-income residents who would not typically be eligible for public charity.
While many would be willing to allocate more of our tax dollars to house our community’s neediest residents, we would be less likely to agree to reduce our tree canopy, flood our downstream neighbors or destroy our historic neighborhoods. Nor would most of us choose public policies that cause our neighbors to lose the “quiet enjoyment of their homes” due to significant overcrowding, or higher taxes.
At this point, no one seems to know what precisely would be gained in this bargain. The city’s leaders believe building more housing will make it cheaper, which has not happened elsewhere. They are convinced that, using the mechanism of inclusionary zoning, every tenth house would be more “affordable” than the other nine in a development, despite scant evidence that this approach works in other cities. No one knows how much “affordable” housing would be created, for whom, or how long it would remain “affordable.”
Tragically, the city has placed all its chips on one bet, that developers, given enough financial incentives, will build the affordable housing the city needs. If city leaders win this bet, an unknown number of housing units will be “affordable,” for some people, for some unknown length of time. If they are wrong, we will lose much that makes Gainesville what it is today.
Kim Tanzer lives in Gainesville. She is a former UF architecture professor who was also dean of the University of Virginia's School of Architecture.
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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Kim Tanzer: Concessions to developers hurt Gainesville residents
