Infill makes sense, but sprawl makes $$$$$

Summer heat has set in and the fruit stands are up and running. Today my husband and I picked 12 pounds of peaches at one farm and grabbed a really nice melon at another. Melon is just starting, peaches will be over soon, so we go out regularly to stock up so I can freeze enough to get through winter.

It’s nice to live within proximity to farms, they don’t have this kind of produce in stores. We need to protect our farmlands, once they are developed for housing, they’re out of food production. It is backwards thinking to pave over land you can grow food on for housing to bring more people and more demand for food to your area. Water matters too, and the south east foothills are our watershed.

I live in what’s considered an old neighborhood in Chico, my house was built in the 1960’s. But in the 1950’s, the land was an almond orchard – there were still almond trees around the property when we bought it. There are/were properties around us of an acre or more, “ranchettes” subdivided out of the farm on which our house sits, but over the last 20 years, several of those have been developed into tiny housing subdivisions. This is “infill”. It makes sense since the neighborhood is no longer suitable for agriculture, and there are already streets, electric lines, and sewer lines present. Makes more sense than developing land that is not connected by infrastructure, like the proposed development known as “Valley’s Edge”. Valley’s Edge is the very definition of “sprawl”.

The sprawl vs infill argument is being led by developers, and shills such as Bill Brouhard and Tom VanOverbeek, as has been the entire development discussion, for years. Developers have a variety of reasons why they don’t want to build infill, but here’s the main reason – they can get sprawl land cheaper. They don’t want to pay people reasonable prices for their infill lots. And they don’t want to deal with the neighbors, because that might mean less money.

In our neighborhood, a developer paid a woman less than $200,000 for 1.9 acres of land, on which he built a seven house subdivision. Within four years, he sold the first house for over $650,000. That developer had been granted variances to the building code that would have allowed him to shove in ten huge houses rather than the five that would have been compatible with the neighborhood, at a higher density. The two story houses came right up to the back fences of their existing neighbors.

The neighbors protested and the subdivision was cut to seven houses, still incompatible with the neighborhood. They are shoved in so tight there’s no parking except garages (full of crap) and driveways (huge boats in front of two houses. So their extra cars and various visitors spill out onto the street in front of other peoples’ homes, putting a kink not only in neighborliness, but pedestrian and bicycle safety.

So I like infill, I really do, but it has to be done within the code and legal density of the existing neighborhood. And hey, how about a little fucking respect, okay? The developer instead went around our neighborhood taking pictures of our years old homes, pictures of “code violations” like an unmowed lawn, a taller than average milk weed growing next to somebody’s mail box, a guy’s trophy car on blocks in his driveway. They attacked us, for trying to get the city of Chico to respect the law and the city code, as well as neighbors who had been paying property taxes for nothing for years. That’s why people don’t like developers, they aren’t very nice, they seem to be set on taking advantage of other people to fatten their bottom line.

Given new state mandates for MORE HOUSING, people are no longer allowed to protest badly planned subdivisions in their town. Valley’s Edge is GO. So, I can only say, get your peaches while you have the chance, enjoy your lawn and shady trees and maybe that tiny tomato patch while you can.