Sometimes you lose by winning, and that is the problem Disney has with the city of Anaheim. The company is trying to stop affordable housing being built outside of it’s gates. Horrible you say, right? Well, like many of these things, they are much more complicated than it sounds.

Disney would love to have low cost housing near it, as it would be a great convenience for it’s team members. And I am sure Disney does not want to garner all of the bad publicity that is coming it’s way over standing in the path of affordable housing.

However, and this is a big however, if the housing project that is planned gets built, it will undo a decade of work that Disney and the company have worked towards. You see, the area surrounding the Magic Kingdom used to be surrounded by low end fast food and cheap motels. Then a special zoning requirement was enacted to make the area surrounding the park a tourist area and tightly limiting zoning. The tax base increased significantly and the quality as a tourist attraction improved.

Now these same politicians are wanting to kill the golden goose by allowing a zoning exemption to allowing a low income housing development right in the middle of the tourist zone. When that happens, guess what, you open the doors to other zoning exemptions as it is impossible to put the genie back in the bottle.

Now if you have read my posts I am an advocate for property rights. I hate the government interfering to such a large degree. However, this time it was done correctly. The region was zoned, property owners had the ability to exit gracefully or maintain their properties, and profits were shared. This was not an eminent domain grab.

But politically based exemptions to the zoning now create the unfair playing field and undo the long term benefits. That in my eyes does not make sense.

The median home price in Orange County rocketed from $185,000 in 1997 to $645,000 in June. Rent has climbed too, to an average of $1,531 at the beginning of the year. The nationwide housing slump is only slightly modulating housing prices here, as job creation far outstrips new building. Overcrowding is a huge problem.
But don’t blame Mickey, Disneyland spokesman Rob Doughty said.
“Unfortunately, in the heat of this debate, the real issue has been lost,” he said. “It’s a zoning issue, not a housing issue.”
In 1994, the city created a special resort zone designation so that land around Disneyland would go only for tourism. Disney and Anaheim spent millions cleaning up the area. Nearby streets, once lined with fast-food joints and cheap motels, are now wide boulevards of flowering trees, long-leafed palms and adobe hotels. via the Houston Chronicle.

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