Toothpaste and Affordable Housing
And now for a post that is near and dear to my heart in more than one way. A slightly older, yet still timely, guest post about our lovely Garden State courtesy of Sharon.
I spent part of the holiday weekend scrubbing petrified toothpaste out of my friends' bathroom.
Interestingly enough, it wasn't their toothpaste. They just bought their first home and it was left positively filthy by the previous owners. My friends are lucky enough to have a few weeks between their closing and their move-in date so there's some time for the big clean-up. Seriously, it looks like the previous owners kept the house nice to show but once there was a contract in place they quit cleaning or weeding the yard. My friends don't care; they have a house for their child to grow up in and little will dampen their happiness about that.
We live in New Jersey; the greatest state in the U.S. (Boy, there will be some comments on that one!) but one of the most expensive. Housing prices went up 17.76% in the past year, and we pay the highest amount monthly for our housing costs, while having the fifth-highest median home values in the nation. Our property taxes are scary while our total tax burden (State, Local and Federal) ranks 3rd in the nation for 2005. And, as you've heard if you live here, we only get back 57 cents in Federal spending for each Federal tax dollar we send to Washington.
In other words, you'd better love it if you live here because you'll pay through the nose to do so.
Somehow, we stay. Through shrewd market analysis and careful planning (OK, dumb luck and our apartment being sold out from under us) we bought our home 11 years ago before the market bubbled up as it is now. We had a home appraisal done six months ago before major work and found the home had increased in value over 130% since our purchase. Floored was I. It's not like we had done a major renovation or anything during that time; we just kept up with the yardwork and general maintenance. Suddenly, my home was worth more than I could afford. How can first-time buyers manage it?
The short answer is, they often can't. There is a housing crisis in Our Fair State. It's a crisis in that affordable houses in decent neighborhoods are nearly impossible to find. My new-homeowner friends waited for years until they had enough money, then had to find a home they liked and could afford, then had to wrangle every step of the way to get through closing. It shouldn't be this hard.
Some will say there's a housing shortage and we have to continue to build. I have a hard time believing the McMansions that are being thrown up on every spare inch of former farmland or forest will solve the problem of a middle- and lower-income home scarcity. Plus I would like my kids to recognize a tree when they grow up.
A win-win situation is to develop dilapidated sections of existing towns. Hightstown is doing just that. They are turning a run-down, mostly-empty factory in the middle of an old town into approximately 80 single-family and condominium units. This is a blighted section of an otherwise nice, very small town that will in the future be reasonably-priced and -sized homes for people who need them.
A lose-lose situation is what’s happening in Pennsauken. Large sections of this South Jersey town are being ignored for redevelopment in favor of developing Petty's Island, a current brownfield with a nice view of Philadelphia. The large single-family houses, luxury condos and golf course proposed for there are of a size and price out of the reach of most of the residents of this large town and will not help the housing crisis in the town or state in the slightest.
We need to reign in our open-space development in New Jersey. It is too easy for towns to ignore areas that could be RE-developed and just destroy farm fields in the name of increasing ratables (while ignoring the fact that these new sprawl developments will need more in services than their taxes allow.) We need smarter growth in Our Fair State.
In the spirit of "Not Complaining Without Proposing A Solution," I suggest you, fans and friends, get involved. Go to your town planning board meetings, especially if you rent and would like to buy there someday. Write your legislators (mine write back quickly!) and talk to your neighbors. Watch The Race for Open Space , if NJN rebroadcasts it, to get a more in-depth analysis of sprawl issues. Realize nothing will ever change until we all get involved and make Our Fair State a bit more fair.
And please, when you move, clean your own lousy toothpaste out of your medicine cabinet.
I spent part of the holiday weekend scrubbing petrified toothpaste out of my friends' bathroom.
Interestingly enough, it wasn't their toothpaste. They just bought their first home and it was left positively filthy by the previous owners. My friends are lucky enough to have a few weeks between their closing and their move-in date so there's some time for the big clean-up. Seriously, it looks like the previous owners kept the house nice to show but once there was a contract in place they quit cleaning or weeding the yard. My friends don't care; they have a house for their child to grow up in and little will dampen their happiness about that.
We live in New Jersey; the greatest state in the U.S. (Boy, there will be some comments on that one!) but one of the most expensive. Housing prices went up 17.76% in the past year, and we pay the highest amount monthly for our housing costs, while having the fifth-highest median home values in the nation. Our property taxes are scary while our total tax burden (State, Local and Federal) ranks 3rd in the nation for 2005. And, as you've heard if you live here, we only get back 57 cents in Federal spending for each Federal tax dollar we send to Washington.
In other words, you'd better love it if you live here because you'll pay through the nose to do so.
Somehow, we stay. Through shrewd market analysis and careful planning (OK, dumb luck and our apartment being sold out from under us) we bought our home 11 years ago before the market bubbled up as it is now. We had a home appraisal done six months ago before major work and found the home had increased in value over 130% since our purchase. Floored was I. It's not like we had done a major renovation or anything during that time; we just kept up with the yardwork and general maintenance. Suddenly, my home was worth more than I could afford. How can first-time buyers manage it?
The short answer is, they often can't. There is a housing crisis in Our Fair State. It's a crisis in that affordable houses in decent neighborhoods are nearly impossible to find. My new-homeowner friends waited for years until they had enough money, then had to find a home they liked and could afford, then had to wrangle every step of the way to get through closing. It shouldn't be this hard.
Some will say there's a housing shortage and we have to continue to build. I have a hard time believing the McMansions that are being thrown up on every spare inch of former farmland or forest will solve the problem of a middle- and lower-income home scarcity. Plus I would like my kids to recognize a tree when they grow up.
A win-win situation is to develop dilapidated sections of existing towns. Hightstown is doing just that. They are turning a run-down, mostly-empty factory in the middle of an old town into approximately 80 single-family and condominium units. This is a blighted section of an otherwise nice, very small town that will in the future be reasonably-priced and -sized homes for people who need them.
A lose-lose situation is what’s happening in Pennsauken. Large sections of this South Jersey town are being ignored for redevelopment in favor of developing Petty's Island, a current brownfield with a nice view of Philadelphia. The large single-family houses, luxury condos and golf course proposed for there are of a size and price out of the reach of most of the residents of this large town and will not help the housing crisis in the town or state in the slightest.
We need to reign in our open-space development in New Jersey. It is too easy for towns to ignore areas that could be RE-developed and just destroy farm fields in the name of increasing ratables (while ignoring the fact that these new sprawl developments will need more in services than their taxes allow.) We need smarter growth in Our Fair State.
In the spirit of "Not Complaining Without Proposing A Solution," I suggest you, fans and friends, get involved. Go to your town planning board meetings, especially if you rent and would like to buy there someday. Write your legislators (mine write back quickly!) and talk to your neighbors. Watch The Race for Open Space , if NJN rebroadcasts it, to get a more in-depth analysis of sprawl issues. Realize nothing will ever change until we all get involved and make Our Fair State a bit more fair.
And please, when you move, clean your own lousy toothpaste out of your medicine cabinet.
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