So there was this big article in the local paper about how the median home price in Flagstaff is now $333,000. Dean even commented on it in his column in the Flagstaff Live.
What the hell did the hippies expect? All this “smart growth” stuff is code for “no growth”, and that means that through the inevitable laws of supply and demand, house prices are going to go up. There's only so much land freely available in Flagstaff. Creating “low income housing” developments won't work, if you really want house prices to go down, encourage land swaps between the State and the Feds so that more acreage is opened up to development.
All that Smart Growth and Slow Growth stuff the Friends of Flagstaff Future guys like to talk about just makes it impossible for the little guys to build houses unless they're politically connected.
Sigh. You know, it really bugs me that these big developers are coming to Flagstaff and building all these gated communities. But it's an inevitable result of the stuff the hippies are always whining about. All this smart growth, environmental impact reports, blocking land swaps, etc. leads inevitably to this sort of thing happening. Once you squeeze the little guys out of the market, and you make building new homes more expensive, then you end up with big developers building expensive developments.
Meanwhile, they're selling homes in Bellemont 5 miles from Flagstaff as fast as they can make them. I paid $250K for my house 8 years ago, the guy down the street is asking $869K for his (though he's probably delusional).
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