Michelle_Hue wrote:
I'm not really a fan of development, I wish there would be a moratorium on any new houses or condos or roads. I wish the Maui government could just say, "This is it. We have enough infrastructure and strip malls and condos and mansions, and there will be no more!" I know that sounds like an extreme position, but many people here feel that way, because the natural, pristine landscape of Maui is so beautiful and once you develop an area, you can never get it back to pristine. Anyway, rant over. LOL.
Some times you just have to rant.
But there are problems with trying to severely limit growth by laws such as a moratorium.
Clearly land can and should be set aside for preservation as our national parks, for example. Green spaces are incredibly important in any urban or suburban environment. As long as the population is growing in a particular location, and granted, there are many places that isn't happening, growth restrictions can lead to many unforeseen problems, however. A classic example of this is the city of Santa Barbara in Southern California, a pretty desirable place to live... like Hawaii.
Back in the 80's they created amongst the strictest growth regulations in the nation. Fast forward about 20 years and property prices skyrocketed far beyond the already fast growth in the region. By the mid 2000's, before the real estate crash, a typical 1400 sq. ft. ranch house was selling for a million dollars. I remember a local newspaper at the time showing a pretty typical looking ranch house from the 60's on the front page, with a headline "$1,000,000!" The middle class was being squeezed out. That included groups like first responders. The problem got so bad that the city purchased multiple properties and rented them out far below market value so that at least some police and firefighters could live nearby in case of a natural disaster or the like. Business owners complained they couldn't find workers for minimum wage positions and couldn't turn a profit with the higher rents. Even people who already owned property and were seeing huge increases in valuation, saw pretty significant increases in cost of living expenses. In economic matters, you can't really change one thing without it affecting other things. Sometimes these consequences aren't immediately seen, or even anticipated, but they will happen. For Santa Barbara, the market collapse eased this situation for several years as property prices dropped, but with the recovery, the city has eased many of these restrictions. They've even begun to zone for more high density housing in some areas to try and avoid a recurrence of these problems. Many people now, though, are complaining about that higher density construction. There's no simple solution that will please everyone, unfortunately.
