Reply to Can anyone cite an example in which YIMBY policies have worked?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

The bigger issue in the region is land use. Is it better to pave under green space on the fringes for more cul-de-sacs and arterial car sewers, or focus density on transit corridors to expand housing options that way. What you are calling a windfall for developers, the rest of us call utilizing land in a smarter way than was done from the 1940's to the 1990's.[/quote]

Smart land use isn't what Montgomery has actually done. Instead, it has provided non-targeted subsidies that don't tie public funds to public policy goals, and it has enabled high-density development far away from transit. It's a dumber version of the same thing that was done from the 1940s to the 1990s. You can't possibly be defending a land use policy that's allowed developers to use less than half the allowable density to build the cheapest building possible, market it as luxury, and only rent to tenants at 120 percent AMI and above while at the same time approving plans to pave under green space for high density development because it's near I-270.

The communities that have been most successful in executing smart growth -- like Ballston -- have demanded that developers maximize developable land near transit and have smartly targeted subsidies so that they achieve specific outcomes. I'm all for upzoning near transit. I'm not for blank check subsidies that don't require developers to do anything they weren't going to do anyway, and I'm not for building new low-rise developments less than a quarter mile from rail stations. That's dumb, but that's what Montgomery County has done, and Thrive says Montgomery County should do more of it.

All Montgomery County has done is deliver high profits for developers. It makes you wonder whether that's what was intended in the first place, despite the rhetoric about smart growth and affordable housing (a term they don't even use anymore).[/quote]

Very much this.  And add a means of providing communities that get more directly impacted by a particular development with an offset.[/quote]

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