Building Housing on Prime Farmland
I want to congratulate you on “Choice for 21st Century: Keep Farming or Build Homes” by Mark Arax (Nov. 30). Until 1992, I worked as a government affairs advocate and served as the head of the largest home-building organization in California for nearly 14 years (Building Industry Assn. of Southern California). I can say with hard accuracy that I have dealt directly with every single issue represented in your article about urban sprawl. A lot of housing was built in the ‘70s and ‘80s because of arguments that I helped to win at the local government level on behalf of home builders.
Certainly, home building is an important segment to the California economy, but it does not compare to agriculture as a long-lasting contribution. Housing actually does cost more in tax-supported services than it can contribute. In Arax’s article, the blame for this was correctly placed on the passage of the anti-tax initiative, Prop. 13, in 1978. However, there is a serious problem regarding population growth and housing need. Currently, there are no solutions to balancing this need with other realities.
A statewide solution is really what California must consider due to the fact that local governments are involved in intense competition for commercial and industrial tax dollars. So, along with a statewide growth management program, California must include a plan for local government financing. Lacking the financing component, land-use regulation alone will accomplish very limited goals and probably run the risk of certain failure.
Something needs to be done regarding urban sprawl, for as your article points out what we cannot do in California is create more agricultural land.
KENNETH WILLIS
Upland
* Converting prime farmland into ubiquitous housing tracts seems to have the momentum of a speeding locomotive which must be stopped.
A possible solution would be for California to create a farmland preservation act authorizing the state to identify and purchase at-risk farmland in the Central Valley and other counties, and declare it to be used only for farmland. The state could then lease it out to agribusiness (large and small).
How much would this cost? It would probably be expensive but there’s money available and already earmarked in the 1996 federal farm bill, under the Farms for the Future program, that will provide up to $35 million a year in matching funds for states with agricultural conservation easement programs.
REGINE WOOD
Los Angeles