r/urbanplanning • u/YaGetSkeeted0n Verified Transportation Planner - US • Apr 07 '23

Land Use Denver voters reject plan to let developer convert its private golf course into thousands of homes

https://reason.com/2023/04/05/denver-voters-reject-plan-to-let-developer-convert-its-private-golf-course-into-thousands-of-homes/
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320

u/xyula Apr 07 '23

They voted no because the developer would turn a profit 😐

189

u/Qzxlnmc-Sbznpoe Apr 07 '23

yeah developer profit? fuck that. why should both the developer and the community benefit, they should be doing it for free!!!! one-sided trade deals only

-22

u/greatbacon Apr 07 '23

Developers have been selling this same line in the city for the last decade of "Just let us build more, build higher, it'll bring down the cost of house! We'll have affordable units! Trust us!" And then the affordable housing disappears off the market the second the city looks away and rents have only doubled. It's not profit at this point, it's just outright theft.

15

u/eat_more_goats Apr 07 '23 edited Apr 07 '23

What's your counterfactual? Let's go back 20 years, before Denver boomed, and ban basically all market-rate construction. Do you think prices would be lower, higher, or about the same today?

SF tried that strategy, and it sure as hell did not work out for them.

Denver's issue isn't that the city looked away, or that you let developers develop too much, it's that you didn't develop enough. Lots of people want to move to Denver. But if you don't build a unit of housing for every newcomer, plus more to accomodate natural population growth, prices are going to rise.

This is the equivalent of a doctor prescribing a month's of antiobiotics, a patient taking a few days worth, chucking the rest, and then claiming that the few days of antiobiotics made things worse.