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Voices of Spencer Creek
Norm's Notebook: A Few Acres, a Few Chickens–Who Is Living on the Land Now?
Changing Demographics Affect Rural Life and Land
By Norm Maxwell
Posted on Aug 7, 2003 |
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When I was growing up around Eugene, Oregon in the early 60s, it was my observation that people with money lived in town and poor people like us lived five to ten miles out of town in a shack or trailer on a few acres of logged over land.
When I returned to the area in the mid 80s, the situation had somehow
reversed itself in my absence. Now, if you don't have money, you tend to live in Eugene/Springfield and people with dough live out of town on a few acres of second growth land, and usually not in a shack or trailer.
This change in demographics is due at least in part to the work of
developers. A developer's goal is to buy a piece of land and divide it into multiple lots and sell each lot for at least as much as was paid for the original whole.
Lane County's Land Management Division is an agent for the raft of
developers we have here playing the system for all it's worth. The basic
premise here is that all rural land in Lane County can and must be halved and halved again in order to keep the developers making money without having to resort to a dead end job like most of us are stuck with.
There are millions and millions of dollars to be made selling ever
shrinking tax lots. I am here to tell you that there is not one red cent to
be made fighting the development process. Our County Land Management and Division works stealthily with ambitious developers to create buildable lots that make money for developers and generate building permit revenue for the LMD.
The first precept of rural land development in Lane County is that
Anything That Is Not Challenged Is Therefore Legal. Our Land Management Division has made non-noticing (as in non-announcing) adjacent land owners to development attempts an art form.
Our LMD insists that precursor land use maneuvers such as "lot line
adjustments" are not really land use decisions and therefore require no
notice to affected neighbors. If you should discover something like this
going on next door, it is promptly shielded from you by being labled as
"preliminary," and therefore not subject to challenge. The next step after "preliminary" is "final." The deck is heavily stacked and the LMD runs interference for the developer every step of the way.
Development in Lane County is interesting in that the market is fueled
artificially. That is to say, many people move here without the common
necessity of a job. This means that the price of real estate has no bearing on local pay scales. The buyers have made their pile in California and will move here to escape the overpopulation mess there while bringing it with them. A friend of mine tells me that you can buy a fine house on some acreage in Wellington, Kansas for fifty thousand dollars. Californians are not moving to Wellington.
Under this impetus, smaller and smaller pieces of land are worth more
and more money. Every Californian wants to live "out in the country" while being five minutes from town. Developers obligingly create lots in the woods and flood plains and sand dunes because somebody will buy them for big money. Farmland is too valuable to grow crops. Rather, if you can change the zoning and throw down a house farm, you can run away with a huge bag of money.
What is going to happen to Rural Lane County? Our land use laws and
regulations are as effective as a screen door on a submarine when it comes to withstanding the big money of developers and the contacts and behind the scenes manipulations of their full time "consultants" in the unending quest for more lots to sell.
Little people with no ties to real estate can delay and even stop
development in tactical land use battles but it comes out of their pockets, even when they win. A developer can most likely write off legal expense fighting you at tax time and certainly pass the cost on to the future buyer, and the Land Management Division will even supply a staff lawyer to defend their mutual agenda.
There are plenty of State laws and County policies on the books, that if
actually observed and enforced, would curb and even curtail the mad rush to pack every square foot in our countryside with McMansions. It saddens me to think that this will continue until we have achieved equilibrium with Southern California.
Norm Maxwell
block captain (retired)
Fire Road Defense League
Visit other articles by Norm Maxwell at West By Northwest.org
including the section "Voices of Spencer Creek, Norm's Notebook" and
Remembering the 30 Mile Fire
Old Men and Fire
The Fire of South Canyon: Remembering Storm King
Wee-wee for BB
Norm's Notebook: The Story of the Spruce Tree, and Mosby Creek, a New Land Use Lot Adjustment
Norm's Notebook: Dead Cars and the Six Million Dollar Manx
(Editor's note–Norm's "Dead Cars" story inspired a feature story in the Register Guard, "Heaps of trouble in the woods.")
Mentoring Military Style
Three Dollar Hammer
Song of the Open Road
Remember Fire Road
Home, Home on Fire Road
and more.
© Copyright 2000-2004 by West By Northwest.org
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