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Money for Nothing
Poor folks pay for rich folks' play in ‘open space' land grab
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Business New Haven
3/20/2000
By:
Lawrence D. Cohen
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Consider for a moment the very notion of “sprawl” in Vermont, a rural state dotted with dairy farms that, without the help of an elaborate, federally sanctioned, New England price-fixing scam, would be abandoned to the tender mercies of black bears and sex-crazed moose on the prowl from Maine.
In fact, most average folks in the country towns of Vermont are begging for something or someone to sprawl into their jurisdiction, to spend some money and pay some taxes. A “house in the country” is well within the means of a great many folks who live in Vermont, or who sneak over the line from New York and other foreign lands.
But that's the problem, you see. The rich folks, the well-connected “environmentalists,” don't want any company. It's not environmental protection they're after; it's solitude and freedom from an influx of the great unwashed. As a researcher from the “Vermont Forum on Sprawl” put it so well, her advocacy group wants to “make people aware of the connection between their choices and sprawl.”
That's right. The horror of it. Those pesky outsiders have a “choice” of where to live - that is, unless the elites who already live in the country can generate enough make-believe about the horrors of sprawl and the need to protect the solitude of the squirrels and beavers.
In Connecticut, every town that doesn't have a steel mill in its downtown is beefing up “open space” budgets in anticipation of a gravy train of open-space matching grants from the groaning state coffers. The governor's office and the General Assembly are falling all over themselves to help the “haves” gobble up the real estate before the have-nots sneak across the town line and build a tacky ranch house.
To see what open-space environmentalism means in real life, take a wander through the real-estate ads in a newspaper like the Litchfield County Times. Home to lots of rich folks who already have their home in the country, Litchfield County and its 426,000 real-estate agents know what sells. From the January 28 edition:
• A $700,000 farmhouse, “located across the street from 100 acres of protected land.”
• A $2.2 million converted barn, “surrounded by protected land.”
• A $725,000 “sophisticated retreat,” with “mountain views and not another house in sight - ever.”
Not another house in sight, not ever. That's the open-space dream for those who can conjure up an anti-sprawl pretext. Keep them out, whoever they are - because we're already here.
In decades past, thousands of Connecticut acres were gobbled up by fish and game clubs and private foundations; but for the most part, the land suffered from some idiosyncrasy that made it less desirable for development, and thus affordable for purchasers without the benefit of tax dollars. That's the market at work.
The new breed of open-space enthusiasts wants the poor folks in New Haven and Hartford and Bridgeport and Waterbury to pay - so the country folks can play (in solitude).
With a few exceptions, every town in the state is well-armed with planning and zoning commissions, conservation commissions and inland wetland commissions - all capable of torturing any developer that attempts to construct inappropriate structure on inappropriate land. The regulatory route at least gives the developer a chance, a shot, a right to legal review. The open-space land grab, paid for with everyone's tax dollars, sets in concrete the peculiar notion that nothing is always better than something - subject to no review at all.
The snobby suburbs like open space because it precludes the construction of new homes to compete in the existing real estate market. If your town is desirable, and land is taken off the market, the value of your house goes us.
No matter how much money Connecticut's state government decides to hand over to the gentleman farmers, it will never be enough. By the very nature of real-estate markets, the act of taking land out of commission will artificially raise the price of other land - a perpetual cycle of government expenditure, driven by the artificial scarcity generated by the land grab.
Let's hear no more whining about the challenge of economic vitality in Connecticut. We've decided what we want to encourage. Nothing. Nothing at all. Without another house in sight. Ever.
Laurence D. Cohen is a senior fellow of the Yankee Institute for Public Policy.
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