Should A Hurricane Tax Zone Benefit Luxury Condos?
A luxury condo project in Galveston, Texas is causing controversy. Last year we mentioned the Palisade Palms project, a pair of new towers on the beach that are selling for premium prices up to over $1.5 million. The project has sold well but as the Houston Chronicle reports, some want to know why the developers of the project were able to take advantage of the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones (TIRZ) meant to bring jobs to the area after Hurricane Ike. Critics say that the TIRZ laws were meant to help the poor and not provide incentives for luxury businesses.
The article in the Chronicle lays out the arguments with strong words on both sides. Greg Leroy, the head of Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C., group that promotes corporate accountability calls using zones to build luxury homes "just another extreme example of the perversion of the program." Also two developers chair TIRZ boards that oversee the expenditure of tax money on their developments and control a majority on their board, a situation that one of the Houston Chronicle commenters referred to as the fox guarding the henhouse. Construction of luxury condo projects does bring money to an area and upscale buyers do stimulate the local economy but should the developers be able to take advantage of these types of programs to create properties that serve the upper tier of the community?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andy May 11th 2009 10:15PM
The developers did nothing wrong. The program was created for development and this is exactly that.
Mike May 11th 2009 10:41PM
Yeah, who do they think is going to work at this Condo? Where do they think the tourist are going to spend their money? This WILL help the poor people.
Methuselah May 11th 2009 11:20PM
Let's face it. Amerika is a rogue nation run by gangsters for banksters fronting for fraudsters. And why doesn't it surprise me that Mike and Andy haven't worked out that it's their dime 'incentivising' the privatisation of gains and socialisation of losses, again. Dudes, where's your country while the big hats are rustling the longhorns and looting Treasury? Not that the fiat money is real, anyway, and becoming less so by the day as Helicopter Ben and Timmy Geithner follow the Hank and Al doctrine of running the printers in inflationary overdrive. But, meh, giving two fingers to the Amerikan people by drawing down on finite funds to whack up a couple more ivory towers beside the seaside in a transparent conflict of interest is par for the course. Sweet deal, dudes.
P_Helix May 12th 2009 10:43AM
Lets face it..
the occupants of these luxury condo will bring in income for the locals. They will be the top of the food chain, using the services and employing locally..
So whats the problem? Because business is business to the existing shops and services..
I rather have a diverse neighbourhood...
Methuselah May 12th 2009 11:37AM
Yer right, Helix. It's all a system of flows; the only problem exists in a bunch of elitists thinking they're at the top of some fictional foodchain, when the reality has them stealing opportunity and substantive quanta from the granary, again, and skewing who gets what, when, and how, as if it's the natural or even an acceptable state of affairs. It's all an opportunity cost, and who am I to point at that the demonstrable crumbling of the food pyramid is precisely caused by denying opportunities to a base that would create more jobs and more overall wealth in cross-synergies and horizontal complexification than is gained by a top-down fiction of vertical service. What's the problem? The conflict of interest, and the recirculation of elites' fractions to sieze decisional authority for highly select personal gain as against common gain and implicit mutual destruction of the body politic through shortsighted greed which overlooks the flows across time, and the diminution of potential by not counting the costs!