Showcase of Homes in Savoy

I always enjoy looking at the basement home theaters - a guy has to have a dream :-)

Sounds like a Libertarian's dream!

Sure they are, just use those special light bulbs and you can feel good about driving that Hummer.  :-) 

With some great difficulty all of Ms. Dykstra's urban sprawl could be turned back into farmland.  I have seen daffodils blooming in corn fields where homesteads used to be, as the backwoods southern Illinois poet Gwaltney observed. 

It is impossible to legislate and regulate unto good sense.  Developers and real estate people believe that they have the right to destroy America's best black earth farmland and convert it into mindless and expansive labrynthine Suburbian vomitus and cul-de-sacs.  Indeed it is their right of pursuit of happiness, or as some have said, their right of property.   However, as the Apostle Paul (Arvid, that's not Ron) noted, we have the liberty to do many things that wisdom dictates that we ought not do.  (And I rather like the quasi-Solomonic quasi-Sysiphusic quasi-Priapic quasi-Zenoic paradoxical twist that it is the right to "pursue" happiness, since good sense suggests it is only to be pursued not attained fully, eh?)

The only consolation that I find in all this madness that Ms. Dykstar is applauding, is that these new homes are poorly enough constructed using cheap enough materials (chipboard composites, OCX, and glue) that they will be falling down around the ears of the their unCaucasian inhabitants in a few short decades and it is unlikely that there will be any Savoy hysterical preservation society to spare from the wrecking ball or maybe even a particularly fortuitous blast of the wolf's breath.

It does confuse me when people complain when they have to pay to help protect their neighbors, some day their neighbor maybe them.

"It seems like an celebration of excessive and mindless consumption."

Since you put it that way, I just might have to give it a try!

I'm the sort who is thrilled to get a house but NOT have a yard.

And when it comes time to mow the lawn, I sometimes envy you.  :) Then again, a big back yard can be nice when you have a dog.

Having just returned from the Planners Network conference (these are the social planners) in Winnipeg, Manitoba and visiting a reserv while there, the following column by Neal Peirce seems an appropriate posting to this conversation about show homes. (Note that there are some typing aberrations due to transporting text.)

Pattsi Petrie

NEAL PEIRCE COLUMNFor Release Sunday, July 20, 2008© 2008 Washington Post Writers Group  HOUSING POLICY: TURNING AROUNDTHE DISASTER  By Neal Peirce  A real mess. ThereÂ’s no other way to describe national housing policy in America today.ThereÂ’s the massive subprime crisis -- caused in no small part by lackadaisical federal regulation.Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- mainstays of the multi-trillion dollar U.S. mortgage system -- face the biggest crises in their histories.We have a Department of Housing and Urban Affairs largely ignored by a White House either contemptuous of or oblivious to the critical nature of national housing policy.Finally, thereÂ’s the grim fact: Millions of Americans still struggle to put a roof over their heads. The National Low Income Housing Coalition reports thereÂ’s not a single American community in which a minimum-wage worker can reasonably afford to rent an apartment.Sums of federal housing assistance /do/ flow -- some through public housing and federal “Section 8" renter subsidies. But the vast majority of federal housing expenditures -- roughly $80 billion a year -- finance the home mortgage housing deduction. Only 30 percent of taxpayers use it. Applicable to homes worth up to $1 million -- even rich second home “McMansions” -- it overwhelmingly benefits the richest Americans.So -- assuming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can be stabilized -- where do we go from here?Tackle the mortgage deduction head-on, counsels Bart Harvey, recently retired chairman of Enterprise Community Partners (Pattsi's note--Enterprise was established by James Rouse when he retired from working on massive developments, such as Harbor Place, Baltimore, and Columbia, MD), a major national nonprofit that helps finance housing for low-income families. “Even in a time of fiscal distress, it can be done,” Harvey told guests at a National Housing Conference gala recognizing him as “Housing Person of the Year.”The federal dollars now used for the deduction, said Harvey, could be shifted to people in real need of housing. One suggestion is to convert the deduction into a straightforward tax credit for low-income renters, or to benefit middle-income renters or homebuyers in highly inflated local housing markets.But at the same meeting where Harvey spoke, staffers from the Senate Banking Committee told me it would never happen -- that the resistance of the homebuilders and real estate industry is so fierce that the deduction is an untouchable “third rail” of American politics.Maybe so. But itÂ’s also true that in 2005 President BushÂ’s bipartisan Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform endorsed converting the mortgage deduction to a less regressive tax credit. And our demographics are changing. A big wave of “millennials” -- would-be homeowners in their mid- to late-20s -- is now fast approaching, notes John McIlwain, the Urban Land InstituteÂ’s top housing expert: “If they received a benefit, thereÂ’d suddenly be a huge rise in housing demand -- which the homebuilders should be ecstatic about.”Right now, Congress has an opportunity to help low-income renters by approving the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. It provides a significant new opportunity to assist low-income renters, with funds from the Federal Housing Administration and contributions by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (when, hopefully, theyÂ’re back on their feet).A next big breakthrough would be to restore HUD, now thoroughly demoralized by scandals and the current administrationÂ’s disinterest, to its preeminence under such past secretaries as Carla Hills, Patricia Roberts Harris, Jack Kemp and Henry Cisneros. Imagine the next president appointing a forceful ex-mayor like Tom Murphy of Pittsburgh, an urban policy whiz like Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution, or a seasoned housing professional like Bart Harvey. With a will, we could have top-notch leadership and a rejuvenated agency staff focused on a full spectrum of housing for all Americans.Though maybe with a caveat-- to rename HUD the Department of Housing and Metropolitan Development, suggests McIlwain. Why? To think more expansively, to make connections, he says: “No other developed country lacks a national policy on cities, recognizing the vital importance of urban regions. We need such a policy -- and department.”Incentives for coordinated development could be built not just into housing, but also highway or transit bills, requiring our nationwide set of Metropolitan Planning Organizations to take on land use, working with city and suburban governments to limit wasteful outward sprawl of regions.But a HUD focused especially on cities and housing could be a special steward of the new relationships, providing incentives for core cities and suburbs, which increasingly need housing supports, to work together.Plus, a new HUD could watch to see that housing has meaningful income mixes and works hand-in-glove with transportation -- making sure, for example, that when federal housing dollars are used, there will be upgraded zoning around highway interchanges or transit stops, thus providing higher density, more energy-efficient and socially inclusive housing together with job-providing commercial development. That way, isolated housing “projects” for the poor and federally-financed roads to developersÂ’ greenfield projects would be history.We /could/ do all these exciting things. But first, weÂ’ll have to make some smart choices -- candidates with vision, and some tough political hides -- in the November elections.