Is the problem in Sacramento one of land use regulation or the inadequate provision of social services?

If Sacramento was to deregulate land use planning the consequence would be that people are living on polluted land or living in a floodplain in substandard housing.

There is alternative solution, maintain the current planning regime, but increase social services to the populations most likely to be homeless.

Essentially that is what Sacramento County is doing. Arguably the plan should be implimented faster. But I think the outcome will be a lot better than what you are advocating.

http://www.communitycouncil.org/homelessplan/

The reason people live in squatter camps is that they were forced to the margins, and the city has a responsibility for taking them back into normality. That means that it has to abandon its planning system of city and developer partnership, because squatters are their own developers and can’t afford the expense of the planning system.

The City of Sacramento was formed at the location of where the American and Sacramento Rivers joined. Historically the city was subject to flooding when water levels on either the American or the Sacramento Rivers would flood. To protect the city a series of levies was built around the floodplain for the American River. This floodplain area is now the American River Parkway.

The American River Parkway floods seasonally. Is this really a good location to regularize a squattor settlement? Isn’t a wise idea to enforce the zoning rules here?

On the otherside of the levy, the land is owned by SMUD, Southern Pacific and the Blue Diamond Almond Growers.

The land owned by the railroad is polluted. It was waiting the approval of a plan to enivormental impact report to clean up this land. Again is this the type of land where squattor settlements should be regularized?

The land owned by SMUD is where the natural gas main to the city enters the community. SMUD has plans for a power substation to be built on the land to support growth on other land owned by the railroad once that land is cleaned up. Before this land was owned by SMUD it was owned by the railroad. It still has detectible levels of PCB’s in it. The enviromental impact of the clean up allowed industrial uses here because it was argued that by capping the dirt with a powerstation, the pollution wouldn’t spread. Residential uses were prohibited here because the PCB levels are still considered unsafe.

Again is this an area where squattor settlements should be regularized?

Lastly there is the land owned by the Blue Diamond Almond growers. Its the rail spur to serve the factory. Again is this a good place for people to be living? To provide water and sewage to this area, you would have to dig through the polluted soil on the ajoining lots. Its an industrial area. Again is this a good place to regularize squattor settlements?

Its expensive to do an enviromental impact report. Its expensive to provide infrastructure to a development (water, sewage, gas, electricity, drainage etc). In short its expensive to provide people with a legitimate place to live.

The issue is how do we allocate those costs? The planning process allocates those costs onto the developers wanting to develop there properties.

If you think your land would be more valuable as residential than industrial uses, it falls upon that developer of the land to pay for all of the costs of converting that land from industrial to residential uses.

If we didn’t the railroad in Sacramento could get away with dumping the cost of cleaning up their polluted land on the public. Is that a good idea? Wouldn’t that just be encouraging the railroad to be indifferent to polluting their land?

None of this matters, however, if the planning system that drives people to become squatters is abolished and replaced with a planning system that gives people a legitimate place to live before they have to become squatters.

The reason the state bulldozes squatter settlements is to protect the title of the legal owners of that land. If someone comes upon your land and builds something upon it. You can have them removed with a motion for trespass. Because you know the state will protect you from other people trying to either take your land or from either adding to taking things away from your land, you can now feel safe in making improvements to your land like building stuff on the land, practicing agriculture on the land etc.

If you don’t have clear title to a property a bank won’t issue you a home loan to purchase that property. The bank doesn’t want to lend money to you to make improvements in the land only for someone else to take either the land or the improvements away from you.

This is why no matter what your credit rating a bank won’t make a loan to buy or build a home if you don’t have legal title to that land. This is why your assertion that ONLY creditworthiness grants credit is factually untrue.

I can see a very good reason to not regularize squattor settlements. Specifically the state has an interest in promoting clear title. If land owners and bankers know that the state will regularize encroachments upon land owned by others both property owners and lenders have less reason to feel confident in investing and improving property.

Why establish a farm if you know squattors can move onto your land occupy it, build structures upon it and take the land away from you? Why lend money to a farmer when you don’t know if he will be able to actually grow a crop on the farm or if after planting squatters will move in build structures upon his farm and take his land away from him? Why build a home on property if you don’t know if someone else will move in and take it away from you? Why lend money to someone to build a house if you don’t know if someone else will move in and take the home away from them?

How much credit will be available in a society where title isn’t respected? Why would anyone bother to make any improvements in land where title won’t be respected?

You may criticize the flaws of living in squatter towns, but you can’t deny the failure of the system that forces people to live in them. I have yet to see a good reason why spontaneous towns cannot be given the same legal title as banker-financed development, so that they too could invest in their property. (This has been used to great results in South America.) It would seem to fall under the principle of equal protection under the law.

One of the things a planned city can provide is clear legal title. Part of the reason the housing quality is so poor in squattor settlements is no legal title. That means the occupants don’t have access to the credit markets. Thus they can’t borrow money to finance the cost of constructing nor improving their buildings. The lack of access to finance limits there ability to use high quality building materials and puts high quality construction techniques beyond their reach.

You claim that planners do not have the power to create growth but that simply is not true. The power to create clear title is the power to create create wealth and fund growth. Clear title is what gives bankers and financers the confidence to invest money in the property.

In the US, clear title means access to credit. This is why a man with no money down can buy a home or an automobile. Access to credit is what distinquishes the poor in the US from the poor in Mexico.

You still haven’t really addressed the issue of how to keep people from building in unsafe areas without some type of planning process. You haven’t discussed how to ensure the provision of infrastructure to these homes in the squatter settlements. How to provide water pressure in the fire hydrants and how to ensure than fire trucks can move freely in these communities? Nor have you discussed how to pay for this infrastructure. In the squattor settlements how do you fund schools, police of fire protection?

The power to create growth is not to destroy and imprison people who build in flood plains, it is to create new neighborhoods with complete infrastructure before people are forced by destitution to build in flood plains. It is ensuring that people always have a real, viable choice. Planners have not been keeping up with demand for new cities, instead they have suppressed that demand, and this is what I mean when I say that the planning system creates a permanent crisis.

A big part of the reason city planners were given so much power was to avoid these types of issues. By zoning communities, you could ensure that people wouldn’t be building in flood plains or on hillsides with lots of clay in the soil with poor drainage.

With planning you have an idea of how intense land use will be in a given area. That means you have an idea of how much infrastructure needs to be provided and where and how to provide it.

One of the things city planning standards achieve is the prevent building homes too close to each other to prevent firefighters and fire trucks from reaching the structure.

They ensure that homes are built attached to the sewage infrastructure, that potable water is provided and that homes are build in areas with adequate drainage. They even ensure that there are adequate numbers of fire mains with adequate pressure in the water lines to get water to all of the areas that might burn.

Building codes also give you a good idea of what materials are being used in the homes. Bad wiring can burn down not just your own home, but the adjacent homes in a squatter settlement. Building codes mandate the use of flame resistant materials.

If cities are unplanned. How do you ensure that these other aspects of urban planning are addressed in your squatter communities?