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Mapping the Growth of Measure 37 Sprawl in Oregon
7 October 2007
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| Portland region growth. Each red dot represents 10 new people based on active Measure 37 claims. Click to enlarge. Source: Sightline Institute. |
Sightline Institute has published a series of updated maps depicting estimated population growth in rural areas resulting from Measure 37 claims made between 2004 and 2006.
Measure 37 states that the owner of private real property is entitled to receive just compensation when a land use regulation is enacted after the owner or a family member became the owner of the property if the regulation restricts the use of the property and reduces its fair market value. In lieu of compensation, the measure also provides that the government responsible for the regulation may choose to “remove, modify or not apply” the regulation.
In the first two years after Measure 37 was passed in Oregon, the state’s landowners filed more than 7,000 claims, requesting many billions of dollars of compensation or the right to develop in spite of current protections.
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| Hood River Valley Measure 37 claims. Click to enlarge. |
In the Portland region alone, more than 2,000 claims for new housing are active, setting the stage for nearly 14,000 new housing units and 34,000 new residents. Almost all of them are outside of Portland’s growth boundaries, according to Sightline.
In the Hood River Valley’s agricultural land, Measure 37 housing claims occur on 5,447 acres of farm properties—22 percent of the farmland.
Under the current business-as-usual development scenario, with sprawling development continuing to fuel growth in driving, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects a 59% increase in the total miles driven in the US between 2005 and 2030. This will overwhelm the forecast modest (12%) gains in vehicle efficiency. (Earlier post.)
October 7, 2007 in Sustainability | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0)
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The way to eliminate this sprawl is to refuse to expand the roads to it. You wanna live there, you're on your own.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Oct 7, 2007 4:53:38 PM
That does not seem to stop them in Southwest Riverside County California. The developers get pretty much whatever they want. If there is an old two lane existing country road, they will build 1000 tract homes at the end of it. People buy them and they take the money and go build again. The mayor of a local town said that the tax revenues would bring in the money (some day) to build better roads. After 15 years they still have not seen the better roads, but they have seen a new civic center.
Posted by: sjc | Oct 7, 2007 8:14:10 PM
The shame of it in Oregon is that those red dots don't represent marginal land, but some of the richest agricultural land in the world.
Posted by: Jeff R | Oct 7, 2007 8:51:08 PM
I sure as hell don't miss Van Buren traffic.
Posted by: yesplease | Oct 7, 2007 11:06:26 PM
EP, 'fraid not. If the government refused to build roads, then the developers would build them (e.g. in California, the government typically requires developers to build new roads or improve existing roads). You would need to set limits on road construction to have the effect you desire but, down the road (inevitable pun), the voters would demand road improvements.
If you want to limit sprawl into farm country, there have to be land use regulations set in place (as I believe there are in Oregon) that limit construction. But, since this is a "taking" of private property under the US Constitution, it is only fair that landowners be compensated for losing one possible use of their land. You can get around this to some extent by limiting the use that new owners could put the land to for sales after a certain date; but then the land seller would want to be compensated for the reduced value at time of sale. In theory, this compensation should only have to be paid once and the land should have its use limited from the compensation payment onward. In practice, future voters will be able to get the law changed.
Eventually, either the land itself will become more valuable than the homesite (priced Ohio farmland lately?) or a replacement technology for farmland will overtake the need for farmland. Either way, the marketplace will take care of the issue. This doesn't mean that you, as an individual, will like the outcome.
If you want to act personally to preserve farmland then buy it. There was a Scot immigrant who settled near Santa Barbara, CA, who wanted to preserve his ranch as a public trust into perpetuity; so he left it in trust, with the Regents of UC Santa Barbara as trustees. Very shortly after he passed away, the Regents cut a deal with his heirs to dissolve the trust and distribute the proceeds from the land sale between the University and the heirs. Today, there are housing tracts where the ranch was.
Any effort to hold back change is doomed in either the long or the short run. Unless a greater change (e.g. population contraction) overtakes events.
Posted by: Arthur | Oct 8, 2007 7:52:15 AM
Around here they worked WIYH thw dwvwlopwrs... The result was that the developers paid 3-k per home into a pot to pay for everything needed.
BUT a vital part was they didnt bleep away the money on stupid mass transit pork and community cwnters they had to agree to build roads schools and hire police and firemen and all that.
Theu also had planned ahead and so the land for the schools and the roads and the fire depos was cheap... AND because they werent zero growth ninnies the housing never got too expensive here and so all those teachers and police and fire dont have to be paid HUGE amounts to afford a toiley and a closet next to the sewage treatment plant;/
Where we used to live they wasted millions on mass transit none of the working people used... they built civic centers your now afraid to go near.. and they didnt expand the roads or the police or fire.. abd the homes there coast 2x what they cost here... Oh and did I mention.. they suck festering monley buttocks and all the wealthy people left... many cae here in fact...
Posted by: wintermane | Oct 8, 2007 8:03:34 AM
Measure 37 was sold to Oregon voters as a way to help granny retire by putting a couple of houses on her 10 acres. In reality, big property interests were behind the measure and would stand to gain the most.
BUT: Measure 49 (Measure 37 "fix") is on the ballot next month, and it would drastically curtail almost all of the larger proposed developments cited in this post. I think it will pass.
Posted by: pauln | Oct 8, 2007 9:28:01 AM
Oregon obviously cannot afford to compensate all these landowners if it decides to rezone the land from residential to non-residential use.
However, the state could make residential use of such land much less attractive, e.g. by adding speed bumps and imposing low speed limits on the access roads and then, enforcing them. You know, to better to protect the frogs that might just want cross the road or a similar trumped-up rationale.
A more sensible approach might be to come up with much larger zones with a special mixed use designation: partly high-density housing, partly protected from all future development. Plots would could be as large as a square mile, representing an entire district, and shaped roughly like a pie wedge. Construction would be limited to the portion near the center of the pie.
In high-density small towns, you can get around by bicycle and/or offer decent public transportation both locally and to the nearest major city (in this case, Portland). When developed on a sufficiently large scale with generous floor plans per apartment, multi-storey buildings with large balconies and/or roof terraces can actually be quite cost-effective - especially if district heating and cooling is integrated into the development plan from the outset. Note that families with small children and seniors benefit more from having services within walking distance than they do from large gardens surrounding McMansions.
If the building code is applied intelligently to permit it (e.g. via easements), the second and higher storeys can overhang the sidewalk and optionally, a bicycle path, supported by columns that separate these from neighborhood roads. Such a "Laube" (arcade) shelters pedestrians and cyclists from rain, snow and direct sunlight. It also increases business volume for high street shops on the ground floor. If applied systematically, possibly with covered crossings at street corners/roundabouts, this eliminates the need for a giant shopping mall at the edge of town that you have to drive to.
Here's an example (sidewalk only) from the medieval old town of
Berne (Switzerland). Taller and wider examples exist in many other European cities, though usually around the edge of old squares rather than along regular streets.
Posted by: Rafael Seidl | Oct 8, 2007 10:45:38 AM
It is a complete fallacy that rezoning requires compensation. The US Constitution requires no such thing. The US Constitution requires that when land is taken, that compensation be paid. When the land's use is adjusted, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled, the only time that payment is required is when absolutely no use remains.
Two questions:
If the US Constitution requires compensation on a change in zoning regime, who had to be paid when your neighborhood was zoned single family residential?
Answer: nobody: zoning is reasonable governmental action that preserves the common good.
If the US Constitution requires compensation on a change in zoning regime, why did the special interests have to work so hard to pass Measure 37?
Answer: Because the US Constitution requires no such thing. In essence, meausure 37 was a special subsidy to large landowners, enabling them to enrich themselves by taxing the common people.
Posted by: dollared | Oct 8, 2007 11:19:50 AM
Dollared,
I suggest you read Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992) wherein the SCOTUS ruled on what constitutes a regulatory taking. By preventing Lucas from building houses, the SCCC was found to have "taken" his land and therefore owed him compensation.
Your statement would be true if you changed it from "when absolutely no use remains" to "when absolutely no ECONOMICALLY VIABLE use remains."
Posted by: Arthur | Oct 8, 2007 4:02:06 PM
As an Australian, I don't know much about the US constitution but I do know something about rezoning. When land is rezoned from rural to residential there is a massive uplift in value. The developer buys the land at rural prices and gets a massive profit as a result of the local government decision to rezone to residential. The developer has done nothing other than speculate on land. It's a a safe bet that it will be rezoned if you're buying on the urban fringe.
It is only reasonable that a proportion of that windfall should go to providing infrastructure and services such as public transport to the people that will live in the new community.
Posted by: critta | Oct 8, 2007 4:07:56 PM
Critta,
That's pretty much the way it works here, too. But the price of the houses goes up with each added piece of infrastructure. And the government takes a big chunk of the pie, which also comes out of the home buyer's pocket.
None of which preserves open or farm land. Where I live in Colorado, the land has a "Conservation Zoning" meant to preserve open, though privately held, land. I asked the zoning commission about dividing my land and they said (in simplified terms), "Just ask."
Posted by: Arthur | Oct 8, 2007 4:46:00 PM
People generally do not like either/or tradeoffs. They want their cake and eat it too. You usually can not get them to trade off carpooling versus gas rationing. They will want neither and when you tell then it has to be one or the other, they are not happy. I am not saying that we are at this stage yet, but we may be some day.
Posted by: sjc | Oct 9, 2007 8:29:43 PM
