INFILL REDUX
The Tale of the Rolling Boise Condos
By Headwaters News, 10-06-05
Not far from Boise State University, early morning, two days ago: three two-story duplexes were rolled onto three narrow lots, waking and disturbing the neighbors. According to the Idaho Statesman, which covered the incident, one of the neighbors received a typed letter taped to his door that read “There will be a house moving by here tonight between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m.�
Besides irking the neighbors, the newly moved houses prompted the Boise City Council to “pursue an emergency ordinance to temporarily suspend or restrict the application process for skinny houses and other substandard lot development.�
This emergency ordinance comes on the heels of another planned ordinance that deals with substandard city lots, which are lots less than 30 feet wide. That ordinance aims at developing some standards for infill, which Headwaters News wrote about on these pages earlier this week.
The three condos, which were rolled onto lots that were considered substandard, meaning they were less than 30 feet wide, illustrate what some consider to be one of the dangers of infill, which is development on inappropriate, too-small or illegal lots that somehow slips through the cracks only to get noticed when its too late. And that’s what the Boise City Council is hoping to avoid.
As for the rolling condos, it remains unclear who did it, but they have 10 days to make it legal, or get ‘em out of there.
[End of article]
Stories like this frustrate me to no end. As a Boise area realtor I am daily confronted with cries from the left to end suburban sprawl. They want to prevent the pollution, frustrating commute times and repurposed farmland that comes with this development. They argue this causes affordable housing to be limited to the 'burbs, driving up prices in Boise proper, forcing lower income families out of downtown. Their solution: high density urban residential development, and big part of that is infill construction. Until it touches their own neighborhood.
Downtown Boise, particularly the university and North End neighborhoods, have traditionally been comprised of individuals who differ with Boise's more conservative majority. As infill has begun to bring changes to these two neighborhoods the cry of "not in my backyard" has begun to echo down their narrow tree lined streets. This is nothing but hypocritical social elitism at its worst! If you agree a social good is a social good, and if bringing about that good causes personal neighborhood changes, so be it. You can't have it both ways. These folks need to either get off their high horse or move to the suburbs. I have a lovely three bedroom two bath home available in Kuna just waiting for them!