Reply to all these affordable housing do gooders are doing the billionaires' work

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP. I think like many things there is a “middle ground” for missing middle (pun intended). Increasing density doesn’t necessarily need to consist of large apartment buildings. I think having a mix of duplexes, triplexes, and garden apartments would be nice to get a bit more variety in neighborhoods.

I live in Arlington in a desired school district, walkable to a metro station. I managed to buy pre-COVID at a low rate, which isn’t doable for families like mine anymore (dual fed GS-14s and we couldn’t afford to buy our house today). It feels unfair to completely pull up the ladder behind me while aLL around are $2-3M new builds. So now only the very wealthy have proximity to public transit and highly ranked schools.

I believe people of all income levels should have access to taxpayer-funded amenities. Of course there should be real capacity studies, not just rubber-stamping of reports and write offs for developers. I know we already have plenty of rainwater issues in the county and so we can’t encourage building to the lot lines. And I agree with a PP about limiting the number of vehicles that can be registered to an address (with actual enforcement of this).

But I would be totally fine with something other than 5k + SFHs going up all around me. Rich people have been using zoning codes to their benefit for decades now to hoard resources and I don’t think it’s right. Of course not everyone can be in their #1 zip code choice. However, if localities throughout the region relaxed zoning and also added amenities to lower income neighborhoods that are lacking them, it would ease some of the pressure.[/quote]

Making sure public amenities are well distributed is right.  Goes for schools, too, of course.  Have to put extra resources in, there, and foot the increased tax bill to do that, or just decrease the resources to the schools that have it all to shift to those that don't. Can't put subway stops everywhere, so relax density restriction right in those areas.

There really should be no publicly funded differentiator such that, as a whole, a family would rather live in one place than another based only on those.  That should be the domain of private enterprises.  A cute coffee shop or a boutique decides to open up in a wealthy neighborhood area?  Sure.  Only nice areas keep parks with maintained playing fields and woods?  No way.

There wouldn't be a reason to "need" higher density everywhere if there isn't something the system fails to provide with reasonable equivalence from one area to another.

Also, expecting that a particular geographic footprint is going to be as affordable when it has 1.5x the population is arguing against basic supply/demand economics.  People who bought years ago aren't pulling any ladder up behind them that wasn't subject to the same conditions when they bought.[/quote]

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