Red County, California

Northwestern Orange County — handy as a commuter’s jump-off for points north, south, and east — has come under pressure for more housing. Most of the housing is single-family detached suburban tract housing, with some standard apartments, townhouses and condominiums in complexes generally separated from the detached houses. But as housing prices have shot through the roof, great pressure has built up to increase the density of the housing.

When we first moved into our house, there were several large tracts of land nearby that were used for such things as a wholesale plant nursery and oil storage tank farm, plus numerous older houses with double- or triple-sized lots. The large tracts were the first to be filled in, with more-or-less standard tract houses at the upper end of the price range. Then the oversized lots began disappearing, either singly or combined, to form “pocket tracts” unconnected to the large tracts that usually surrounded them. Althought the lots in the pocket tracts featured thumbnail-sized backyards, no street parking, and formerly rare two-story houses, the usual objection to them by established neighbors was through traffic; folks with existing houses didn’t want traffic to increase on their own streets. Hence the isolation of the pocket tracts.

Now developers are trying to increase the density further by planting condominiums on oversized lots inside established neighborhoods; for instance, at 5582 Karen Avenue in Cypress:

The conflict between the folks living in neighboring properties and the developer over land use brings to mind a discussion of housing, supply and demand, economics, and shortages in Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. (A review of that book by David Gordon is available at The Mises Review.) My own suspicion — completely unvalidated by any sort of research — is that allowing a condiminium complex to be built inside a housing tract will inevitably lead to the remainder of the housing tract turning over into condos, and a wholesale change in the character of the neighborhood.

So who do you root for? The folks who want to keep their neighborhood just the way it is? Or the folks who could afford a condo but not a detached house, given the ludicrous housing prices prevailing?

Technorati tags: California, Real Estate, Southern California.