San Jose is worried that the rush to build new homes is taking away from job production. Undeveloped land is quickly being converted to housing inventory and the locals are getting restless. By building up housing at the expense of commercial land, job prospects are being hurt in the region.

But whether the revisions – which seek to combat the potential loss of jobs – would have any practical effect remains a question. That’s mostly because the guidelines, or “framework,” as the city calls them, are merely advisory. The revisions were proposed, in part, because the council was already routinely ignoring the existing guidelines.
The controversy over the widespread rezoning is focused on two issues: Critics of the new rules argue that if the city actually adhered to them, then production of affordable housing – a city priority – would fall by the wayside. But opponents of the conversions, including city planners, argue that adding housing saps San Jose’s business tax base while costing the city money to serve demands created by new residents, like police and park maintenance. via the San Jose MercuryNews

Meanwhile on Long Island, New York the mentality is that new homes and greater density are bad, so the taxpayers keep voting on local land purchase measures to stop new growth. For an area that is so highly taxed and with property values so high to stop new growth will continue to cause young families to flee the island.

For the most glaring local illustration, all we have to do is look at the use of taxpayer dollars to buy land to stop the building of homes and businesses. Long Islanders will weigh in on the topic directly through four measures placed on the Nov. 6 ballot.
Voters in the Town of Oyster Bay will decide on a total of $60 million in bonds to purchase and maintain such land. Suffolk residents will dictate whether the county can borrow up to $322 million to accelerate land buys over the next four years and extend a one-quarter percent sales tax from the end of 2013 to 2030 to pay for it. via Newsday

As suburban areas run out of green space local governments and residents are going to have a tough choice. Do you preserve the land for recreation and face higher property values and taxes or do you have a land management plan that tries to manage the needs of residents, businesses, and the local government? These are difficult questions and probably will be very subjective to the region one lives in. However, the reprecussions will have a long term impact on the local economies and housing markets.

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