Eugene/Springfield - The Bad News (Portland, Junction City: insurance, loan, neighborhood)

[Mr Eugenified]

I was a humanities major in college, so that's my excuse...

You're right. Here's a simple definition I found: "Growth in which some quantity, such as population size or economic output, increases by a fixed percentage of the whole in a given time period; when the increase in quantity over time is plotted, this type of growth yields a curve shaped like the letter J. Compare linear growth."

[nutleynut]

[quote=Steve97415;8977531]This surprises a lot of people, but almost 40% of all homes built in the last decade were built for reasons other than primary home-owner occupancy. In other words, they were built for investment purposes. Most cities have far more homes than what their housing-demand document says they need. Current cessation of economic growth has nothing to do with urban planning. [quote]

I don't know where your facts are coming from and doubt that 40% were for investment purposes, but stipulating and assuming we are no longer talking about Eugene, why is that bad? These investments are made based on projections of people wanting them and occupying them. I'd prefer that they were built inside a city. I think we agree that sprawl isn't helping anyone but the developers. If it were Eugene, those would all be full dwellings.
I don't know about housing demand documents, but I figure they are like most bureaucratic documents 50-90% bulloney.

My point about Eugene and the UGB is that it is a very desireable community to live in. Yet there is almost no building of apartments or condos going on which would allow people to move here and those crowded into roomate situations they would rather not be in to get a place of their own. No buildings are being rehabilitated and expanded upward (which is the intent of a UGB) There is just more building on land that was never built on before. There is no buying up of old reusable houses and jacking them up to add liveable space, or old and useless houses and tearing them down to build new multiunit dwellings. That job on Oak and 19th is the only one I know of happening here, and IMO that house should have been saved and jacked up. None of the expectable things that happen inside a UGB is happening. Thus in practice they are working to stop or slow growth to a crawl. The implication is that they do not want the population here to grow.

Look at those holes in Downtown, they would be filled if the city would just lay out a set of reasonable standards and let it happen, but they don't. Each time it almost happens they enter new "negotiations" . This is not the action of people that want infill to happen. There is no need for negotiations if there are set standards. Those are two prime spots for apartments or condos upstairs and business on the first two floors. And they should be five story minimum buildings, better they were ten or fifteen.
Parking should be underground, that should be one of the set standards.

That's enough of me for now......

[nutleynut]

ok I was having some fun with the fifteen story building, that's a few decades away from happening here unless someone local invents something and builds the factory here.

[Steve97415]

Originally Posted by nutleynut

I don't know where your facts are coming from and doubt that 40% were for investment purposes, but stipulating and assuming we are no longer talking about Eugene, why is that bad? These investments are made based on projections of people wanting them and occupying them.

"Wanting them"? Yes. "Occupying them"? Not necessarily, and that's precisely my point. There are basically three reasons that drive demand for homebuilding:

1. to provide dwelling units for local inhabitants to live in (occupying them)
2. to provide jobs and income for the homebuilding industry
3. to provide real estate investment for speculators (with or without occupation of the building)

#1 is what we should be focused on. Getting carried away with #2 and #3 is a real economic danger.

A huge percentage of residential buildings in the U.S. is currently unoccupied. People bought them as a "land bank" because they thought they would appreciate in value and outperform traditional wealth-building investments. But when real estate crashes it crashes hard and easily imposes austere hardships on longstanding homeowners who took no risk in the decisions they made. Real estate bubbles -- sometimes huge ones like the one that popped around 2006 -- form when investment demand (#3) far exceeds actual housing demand (#1). Why is a large glut of real estate bad? Home values fall when supply greatly outstrips demand. People who need to move for reasons of employment, health or changes in family status may not be able to do so because there is too much vacant inventory in the market. They are hapless victims of an unsustainable "feeding frenzy" in the building market.

[CCCVDUR]

1. Sprawl actually increases livability, w/ a diversity of housing choices and shopping centers as a City gets bigger.

2. There is evidence that traffic increases in smart growth cities such as Boulder, since everyone living in the infilling developments downtown still wants their Subaru outbacks.

In Boulder, the existing boulevards can't accomodate the traffic, and there are 20 cars behind each stoplight at rush hour.

This idling lowers gas mileage and increases air pollution.

More people will bike to work, but only if there are paved trail systems kept free of snow year round.

Clearly, we need new solutions to growth rather than the EPA's antiquated, rather simplistic model at Smart Growth Online

[backdrifter]

Originally Posted by Tom Lane

1. Sprawl actually increases livability, w/ a diversity of housing choices and shopping centers as a City gets bigger.

2. There is evidence that traffic increases in smart growth cities such as Boulder, since everyone living in the infilling developments downtown still wants their Subaru outbacks.

In Boulder, the existing boulevards can't accomodate the traffic, and there are 20 cars behind each stoplight at rush hour.

This idling lowers gas mileage and increases air pollution.

More people will bike to work, but only if there are paved trail systems kept free of snow year round.

Clearly, we need new solutions to growth rather than the EPA's antiquated, rather simplistic model at Smart Growth Online

There is a study that just came out this year that showed denser urban areas have less of an impact on the environment than larger sprawling areas, despite 'all that traffic'. Really we need a comprehensive system that not only encourages public transit and dense, walkable development, but also discourages the use of vehicles.

You see, people may be sitting in their cars more if there is lots of traffic, but there's lots of traffic and ultimately more cars on the road with sprawl. Suburbanites will collectively be using more fuel starting their cars, driving many miles from work to the grocery store, starting their cars again and driving miles to another store, and then driving many miles back to their homes. If everything is so spread out then people HAVE to use cars for EVERYTHING to get ANYWHERE. Denser development allows for efficient public transit and means people don't have to travel as long of a distance to work, the store, etc, thus wasting less gas overall. And also, if they don't want to drive, it'll be much easier to bike, walk, or take public transit.

[Mr Eugenified]

Originally Posted by Steve97415

...Home values fall when supply greatly outstrips demand. People who need to move for reasons of employment, health or changes in family status may not be able to do so because there is too much vacant inventory in the market. They are hapless victims of an unsustainable "feeding frenzy" in the building market.

I don't really agree with this point. If you sell your house in a down market, sure the price is lower, but the replacement house that you are buying will also be priced lower. No real loss. (Not considering all the complications involved if the seller's house is valued less than the outstanding mortgage ...seems like the seller should have made a bigger down payment, right?).

Anyways, more on topic, fortunately Eugene has not felt much pain in the recent drop in prices. From what I have seen, prices dropped maybe 10%. Less for desirable houses with views or in excellent neighborhoods. I am talking about houses in the range of $250K-350K. Some houses above that took a bigger hit.

The whole media story about foreclosures dragging down market prices did not seem to make an impact in the south Eugene area either. Just about every foreclosure that I looked at was selling only 1-2% below market. And when you factored in all the hassle and delay of buying a foreclosure (or worse, a short sale), there really was no real difference from regular market price.

Sure, special cases exist, but I am talking about the overall trend.

By the way, I have seen so much contradictory data on housing prices, it seems almost useless to read it. It seems as if you can find data to support any story you want: Prices are stable; here's the data to prove it. Prices are dropping; here's the data to prove it.

Another problem is that the data offered often is based on all of Lane county, which is different from only Eugene, and more different from south Eugene (my area of interest).

[Mr Eugenified]

On the sprawl topic, I just wanted to make one comment:

Perhaps it is selfish to say, but I like Eugene just the way it is. No sprawl and also not much density. It's perfect for my style of life. I like to be able to drive from one end of town to the other in 15 minutes (as opposed to Portland or San Jose; don't get me started on Los Angeles!). I also like to have a wide choice of retailers (as opposed to Corvallis or Eureka, two other cities that I considered).

[nutleynut]

I agree with you Mr Eugenified it is a nice place. But isn't Santa Clara sprawl?
Traffic here could be improved easily by timing the traffic lights properly, and making Willamette two way all the way. The bottleneck at 18th-19th is contrived for a purpose I cannot see.

I think there is an unspoken subject here and that is people wanting to move here, or anywhere. I feel like we are tending toward taking away a persons right to move where ever they like.

From Mr. Eugeneified
[quote] Anyways, more on topic, fortunately Eugene has not felt much pain in the recent drop in prices. From what I have seen, prices dropped maybe 10%. Less for desirable houses with views or in excellent neighborhoods. I am talking about houses in the range of $250K-350K. Some houses above that took a bigger hit. [quote]
This is because so many want to come here and are coming here. If Eugene was not as desireable as it is we would have all felt it much harder.

Which leads me to this;
Since we are so desireable why don't we just set standards high for people and business to come here and ask them "What are you going to give us?" instead of offering them the keys to the kingdom. This would ensure high quality development and make those who want to slow growth happy since it automatically excludes a lot of less desireable options. But it only works if the council is serious about allowing business and people in. Byzantine process' only make us look bad and create an atmosphere where the quality of life is lower for the illusion of being powerless to change the system that is preventing action.
When high quality developers and people see that the standards are high and reasonable and enforced fairly,(not negotiatiing with each business and person individually) and that the council is serious about this they will come. This will require education to bring people into this way of thinking. It is a slow cultural shift which will happen one person at a time. :-}

[CCCVDUR]

Originally Posted by backdrifter

...really we need a comprehensive system that not only encourages public transit and dense, walkable development, but also discourages the use of vehicles. Denser development allows for efficient public transit and means people don't have to travel as long of a distance to work, the store, etc, thus wasting less gas overall. And also, if they don't want to drive, it'll be much easier to bike, walk, or take public transit.

Absolutely. If people live downtown, they can walk and bike downtown. Unfortunately, the problem is encouraging more people to actually get on their bikes or take the bus. When everyone downtown still wants their Toyota Tacomas, Jeeps, and Subarus, then traffic and pollution is horrible. Even Boulder, Colorado has horrible traffic (relatively) on a Sunday -- after 6pm. When traffic is bad, people don't want to ride their bikes in traffic. If gas was $20 / gallon, people would start buying more bikes. But this won't happen for awhile.

In the meantime, how do you think we can encourage this? Perhaps tax breaks for buying bikes? More bike trails, bike lanes, of course. We need to double our fuel efficiency standards, as Bob Brinker (Moneytalk) has been suggesting for years. Brinker has also said he has no problem raising the federal gas tax. I think the answer to rising gas costs is natural gas powered vehicles -- and also a massive nationwide project of nuclear plants AND solar/wind farms -- to provide the electricity for our vehicle fleet w/ batteries.