Reply to Removal of development cap in downtown Bethesda

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm getting the distinct impression here that the person who has the most planning interest/experience on this thread is really out of touch and doesn't seem to have a position other than calling all the other posters' ideas and opinions wrong.[/quote]
I am starting to come to the conclusion that Planning as a whole is a profession that’s as a whole completely out of touch. [/quote]

Planning may be a profession that is completely out of touch. I don't know, I am not a planner.

I am a homeowner, though, in fact a longtime homeowner, and I know for certain that longtime homeowners who refuse to acknowledge the existence of a housing crisis are completely out of touch. [/quote]
“Homeowner” = you own a 1BD condo in downtown Silver Spring. [/quote]

No, actually, I have owned a detached single family house in Montgomery County for over two decades.

Your response says a lot about your opinions, though. Because a person who owns the one-bedroom condo they live in, whether in downtown Silver Spring or elsewhere, actually is just as much a homeowner as any other homeowner, not more, not less.[/quote]

When I was a renter I cared about services and infrastructure so I’m not sure why we need to distinguish residents in this way. When I was deciding where to live I also cared about services and infrastructure. I’m not sure how disinvesting in infrastructure benefits current or future residents but it sure does save money for developers so I guess we should roll with it?[/quote]

The question is not, do renters care about services and infrastructure?

The question is, what are renters' priorities?[/quote]
[b]
The question is, "What are residents' priorities?"[/b]

So far, we have a reasonable handle on infrastructure and services being important when considering changes to development.[/quote]

Well, yes. But all we are hearing about, at least on DCUM, are the priorities of some (not even all) homeowners. And those priorities seem to be: no new housing where I live.[/quote]

That's a rather unnuanced and strawman-ish way of characterizing:

"I want my community to have good infrastructure and services, and would not want to see additional development in a manner that fails to ensure that these are not degraded."

And yet we still seem to have nothing that supports the phantom narrative of this not being the priority from the bulk of area residents, whether homeowners or renters.[/quote]

Summary: I am the homeowner of a house, and I prefer not to have multi-unit housing my neighborhood, because I believe multi-unit housing in my neighborhood would degrade my neighborhood.

Which is fine, you get to have the preferences you have. Similarly, other people get to have other preferences. I think it's a basic part of adult cognition to recognize that people who are not you might have preferences that are different from yours. [/quote]

Here we have, again, an entirely misrepresentative restatement of another's position.  As mentioned, the position is that any development should not come at the cost of lesser/more overtaxed services/infrastructure for area residents.  There has been more than one respondent noting that position in one way or another.

Development of multi-unit housing in a way that does not degrade levels of service or infrastructure for existing residents would be a considerably different proposition.  It seems that, for some reason, there is an objection by those pushing density to such reasonable conditions.

However, those objections are illustrated not with a clear position, critiquable reasoning or evidence to support the vague allusion to the "other preferences" mentioned, but with logical  fallacies of rhetoric such as these strawman mischaracterizations.[/quote]

Hey guess what? This is 2025 and we live in America. We actually know how to build sewers and roads and infrastructure. Believe it or not. You pay some company, they come out and build stuff. Then it's done. And it works.

You NIMBYs seem to think companies or the state can't do that. Why? Do you know how the world works?[/quote]

But they don't. Look at development that leads to overcrowded schools and suddenly there's no money to increase school staffing let alone expand the actual schools or build more.[/quote]

There are numerous schools under construction/modernization/expansion right now.  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:

NIMBYs gonna NIMBY[/quote]

Expecting the county to responsibly manage school enrollment and county finances is not being a “NIMBY” that is just common sense. It costs the county - a minimum of $55,500 per student to build new school capacity. The impact fee per high rise “infill” development unit is only $3,739. But high rise developments generate .an average of .168 students, so they cost the county a minimum of $9,324 units when additional school capacity is needed. Development impact fees are only covering 40% of this amount. [/quote]

We literally have built this entire state and have been able to figure it out. "Impact" fees are not supposed to cover literally everything. If they were, we'd be doing similar things for SFHs or additions to homes.

No argument. Honestly I think you are a parody account due to your tenuous grasp of basic econ and development.[/quote]

DP.  They do assess impact from SFH development.  At a higher rate, too, due to higher formulaic student generation rates.

And what has been figured out in building the entire state is that politicians can line pockets of doners by overburdening existing residents and underfunding infrastructure as long as they can replace lost votes there with those coming from new residents.  Those new residents may come with different priorities or with lower infrastructure concerns for the short term, whether that is because they have lower expectations, are unaware of conditions as they move here or are relying on a reputation of the area that reflects a bygone era rather than ground truth.[/quote]

In other words, "I got mine, young people and familes, GTFO".[/quote]

From which developer-donor playbook did you draw that uninformative retort?[/quote]

A developer built your house, genius.

You can tell how out-of-touch someone is when they start spouting off the "evil developer" trope. Spoken like a true "I got mine" homeowner who wants the deck stacked against everyone else.

Hint: developers aren't the ones making unjust profits right now. Do a bit of research before you make a fool of yourself.[/quote]

It's likely that an obstetrician delivered you.  Does that make it OK for obstetricians to pay lobbyists to influence lawmakers to limit medical liability so that their expenses are lower amd their profit higher?

The rest is a red herring, aiming to deflect from the obviousness in this case of developers (and certain others) profiting at community expense.

The insinuation that SFHs don't get assessed impact tax the way that multi-family was wrong.  They actually get assessed more because of the presumed higher student generation rate.

Beyond that, the formulation for property tax on multi-family rental ensures that large corporate owners of such pay far less than owners of comparable condo units, even though the costs to the community in providing services is equivalent.[/quote]

Your whole idea that new housing is a "community expense" is laughable, selfish, and unfair. The people living in those new buildings certainly wouldn't think so. (And they outnumber you selfish NIMBYs ten-to-one)[/quote]

Your deliberate misrepresentation of disdain for [i]developers profiting[/i] at community expense as suggesting that new housing is a community expense makes your position clear as a shill.  You bring nothing to the table for discussion.

The people living in newer buildings are current residents.  Many would not like to see their roads, schools, etc., underfunded or their effective tax burden rise to facilitate building more for others when the cases based on charity and efficiency in doing so are so lacking in the measures being pushed through.[/quote]

You really have no idea how outnumbered you are, do you? It's like a parody at this point.

Nothing is being "underfunded", doofus. There is a reason why people are leaving the state (and blue states in general) and it's anti-housing, anti-family people like you.[/quote]

Outnumbered by what metric?

I am very curious about this since the YIMBYs are just a giant sack of excuses when it comes to shows of support, which is why they’ll never agree to put any initiatives on a ballot.  Please don’t reference GGW blog push polls.

I’d love to visit this fantasy land in which you reside.[/quote]

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