Home Economics versus Home Politics

The Albuquerque Journal is richly irritating this morning.  Gotta give everybody credit for staying on point though.  Acting like everything is OK.   
The homebuilder guys' message is to blame Albuquerque politics for not as many building permits in a record year.

Albuquerque's  impact fees are killing development.  That's the line.  Repeat, rephrase, repeat.

Story is in the last two years Albuquerque has issued 68-75% of the permits - controlled 68-75% of the market, if you like that term.  And it's expected to go back up.  After all, we got the airporthospitaluniversitygovernmentnukesandwater.

But the Journal quotes Jerry Wade of Artistic Homes saying,

"The politics of Albuquerque, ... It makes it harder to develop land, so people went elsewhere."

Nevermind that there is more land in the world outside of the City limits, much of it cheaper for reasons that have nothing to do with impact fees.   What we call sprawl, Mr. Wade calls a good decision based on profit margin.  Giving our public services away free won't alter his bottom line enough to make a difference.  It won't make them love us more. 

Placing blame in a banner year has to be kinda hard.  And then there's that fact of record mobile home ownership in New Mexico.  I haven't heard a builder quote about that yet.   In Torrance County, mobile homes outnumber stick-built.

Oh, that's  probably Albuquerque's fault too.   Coco