Says city needs to also promote single family homes

Vox Pop

I can understand that the City of Medford would want to promote multi-family housing in the City to enhance economic development. But why is the focus strictly on multi-family housing only? Where is the love for single family housing?

Yes, I realize that many individuals starting out in life or are new to an area would have a difficult time affording the purchase of a house. But to ignore single family housing is short sighted.

Single family housing does many things to enhance a community. A single family house will generate more in property tax revenue per person than a multi-family house. A single family house owner is going to be more stable than a multi-family house tenant. This person will be more engaged in the community. A single family house owner is going to take care of that property as they have a large investment in the properly. Home ownership is the embodiment of The American Dream.

Multi-family housing will have challenges with NIMBY, or not in my back yard.

Perhaps the City of Medford should look at removing onerous burdens to single family house construction. For instance, the City allows only a 24 foot curb cut for driveways. With the ownership of boats, campers and UTVs more common, try backing one of those suckers in your driveway with a stingy, 24 foot wide driveway.

Also, it does not help that years of misguided Federal Reserve monetary policy (artificially low mortgage rates) has driven up the cost of a house. Add in ever increasing property taxes and unwarranted gifts to large, far off corporations, such as the dark store loop hole, and the burden to purchasing a house grows further out of reach.

But the end of single family housing is what the Green New Deal, Build Back Better, and Great Reset crowd have in mind. They’d like to get you out of your single family house and herd you into a cramped, tiny, multifamily house ala a Chicago housing project. Sorry, no gas stove or gas furnace for you. Put on a Jimmy Carter sweater.

It’s a sad commentary that the property on Pep’s Drive that was originally developed for commercial, job creating purposes has regressed to the economic activity of collecting rents.

— Bryan T. Bormann, Medford