Using his pen "warmed up in hell", Seattle Times columnist Jon Talton is hitting the tip of an iceberg to reveal what's underneath the fortunes made in real estate here in Arizona - and both the scarcity limitations and high costs of controlling and delivering this commodity in the desert.
Today, after all the multi-million$ of bond issues - the 'costs of doing business' for the construction, operations and maintenance of water treatment facilities - and wastewater treatment plants - approaches over ____million$$$$$$$ per year taking the biggest chunk of the Budget Pie Charts, paid for by taxpayers to service the debt. [see below]
Jon Talton tells all in this fine piece of reporting:
Bill Gates buys Arizona land — hilarity, or tragedy, ensues
Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment recently purchased an $80 million stake in desert land west of Phoenix. Unless Gates plans to turn the land into a preserve, he might want to know a few things that the locals didn’t tell him.
Unless BillG plans to turn the land into a preserve, he might want to know a few things that the locals didn’t tell him.
(And to put my cards on the table, I am a fourth-generation Arizonan, former columnist for the Phoenix newspaper, and continue to write, pro bono, a blog on Arizona history and issues.
First, Arizona doesn’t have enough water to continue these kind of developments, no matter what the mouthpieces of the Real Estate Industrial Complex say. . .
Arizona has a long history of land fraud . . .
That mostly ended in the 1970s — and went legit, first boosted by the savings-and-loan bubble, then massive freeway construction to make worthless desert and farmland valuable for sprawl development, and finally with the subprime and housing bubble of the 2000s. Unlike other peer metros, real estate in Phoenix isn’t driven by a diverse economy — it is the most powerful driver of the economy.
In addition to destroying precious wilderness, rural areas and farmland, sprawl is terribly inefficient and costly. It requires expensive infrastructure and Arizona requires few impact fees. It adds to greenhouse gas emissions and long commutes because of car-dependency. It hurts civic cohesion. All these and more are externalities never priced into these plays. Sprawl is one of the worst social-engineering mistakes in American history. But as a short-term proposition, it can be very profitable for developers and investors . . .
Link to original Source > https://www.seattletimes.com
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