Sorry I'm not taking the time to hunt it down and recover it, but a few days ago there was a post that suggested that it is perhaps appropriate to tax rental property at a higher rate than owned housing because rental housing is typically multi-family development, and multi-family development typically requires more City services than a single family development pattern. (Higher costs in police services were conjectured.)
This week I happened to receive the Winter 2000 edition of the American Planning Association Journal, a research-oriented publication, in which appears an article entitled "Does Sprawl Cost Us All?: Isolating the Effects of Housing Patterns on Public Water and Sewer Costs." The preface to the analysis cites research studies showing that spatial patterns of development have little relationship with the cost of providing certain municipal services--including schools, solid waste collection, and fire and police protection. The cost of infrastructure services, such as roads, water and sewers, on the other hand are sensitive to spatial patterns. (I would add the cost of transit service to this list.) But this relationship is in the opposite direction to the conjecture referred to above. It costs less to provide these services to housing units that are part of medium and high density development patterns. This implies that taxes from medium and high density residential property are actually subsidizing the delivery of infrastructure services to low density housing units. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe our water or bills currently reflect this reality. Nor our property taxes. Nor bills from our regulated utilities. A final corollary: One of the general approaches to discouraging sprawl and make housing more affordable in urban areas is to get the prices right in instances such as these where higher density development is actually penalized by subsidizing lower density development. I hope there are some list members out there who can add some informational depth to this very general issue overview. Tom Leighton Mpls City Planning Dept _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
