Opinion: Resources are finite. More housing can’t be our only goal.

What will happen to us chickens if our lot is redeveloped?

“We are chickens who live in a family’s backyard and supply them with eggs, to help them deal with rising costs. If the politicians have their way, their lot may be redeveloped with ADUs or condos or whatever. What will happen to us? And what will happen to the garden that they have so carefully nurtured that supplies them with clean, locally grown food?”

“I’m a mouse that lives in the weeds at the edge of a flood channel. If the lots owned by people upstream are turned into buildings and concrete, making almost all the land surface impervious to water, flood levels could dramatically increase and the city’s flood control work will become inadequate, and my burrow will be washed out. Where will I go then?”

“I’m a wise old owl and have suffered from the ever-increasing air pollution due to excessive traffic growth. I wonder how the humans I live near will feel when their taxes go up to cover RTD’s increasing costs of supplying more service to pick up an increasing percentage of commuters, as is being proposed. Since RTD is mostly tax-funded, more riders don’t increase revenues anywhere close to enough to cover the increased costs.”

“I’m a dog living in an area that is slated for densification, in order to supposedly solve the “housing crisis,” which is the inevitable effect of flawed planning in multiple arenas: no zoning requirements for balancing jobs and housing growth; lack of impact fees adequate to fully cover development’s costs, including roads, schools, parks, utility lines and pipes and supply, etc.; and inadequate requirements that business development adequately contribute to providing affordable housing. I keep wondering why the human politicians refuse to acknowledge these multiple failures and, likewise, make no effort to make the necessary changes, but just bark about “more housing,” ignoring serious water supply shortages, and the growth impacts on Colorado’s open lands.” 

“I’m a cat, and my human pets are appalled that our state government continues to subsidize job growth with tax breaks in places that don’t need it, creating excess demand for housing and driving up prices. For example, the state Office of Economic Development is giving millions in tax incentives to a company to add nearly 500 jobs in Boulder County, potentially exacerbating the area’s “housing crisis.” And this is not the first time this has happened in the Boulder area. Another was just a few years ago. I don’t get it. Why haven’t our human legislators restricted such giveaways to areas that are actually losing jobs, and not ones that have excessive job growth? They really do not need their taxes raised (to make up for the tax breaks) to increase this gratuitous demand on the human housing market!”

My point with all this is to hopefully bring some larger awareness to this urge for more and more humans. Our planet is finite. Ignoring this finiteness is to the detriment of both the human situation and the rest of the natural world, which is what supports and nurtures us, and without which we humans won’t survive. In simplistic terms, we can’t just keep adding more and more. There must be an end. And we may have already exceeded that tipping point.

On a more local level, we keep creating what I call resource debt: We approve more and more development without having the means to address the needs it creates. Some of those needs are addressable with more money, which means higher taxes or development impact fees. But some things, like open space and wildlife, are finite, and cannot be replaced.

One positive move occurred recently in Fort Collins. Their city council approved some new planning rules that would have increased housing growth and disrupted single-family neighborhoods. Many citizens didn’t like what happened and gathered enough signatures for a referendum. But, the council, instead of forcing a vote, wisely repealed their own ordinance! And they decided to do more extensive public involvement!!

One council member captured the contradiction in having a single simplistic goal around housing: “It’s not a government’s job to make it possible for anyone that wants to move somewhere to be able to do so and to afford it. That’s an impossible task and it’s not government’s job,” he said, according to the Coloradoan. “It doesn’t mean we don’t work on affordable housing. It doesn’t mean we don’t have a sane and improved land use code but … that’s a pretty high bar and it doesn’t happen anywhere.” 

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