Fwd: LETTER: Housing demand should depend on merit | TuscaloosaNews.com
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Subject: LETTER: Housing demand should depend on merit | TuscaloosaNews.com
Janis Costilow
BirminghamPublished: Sunday, July 7, 2013Dear Editor:
After reading (Steven) Rumsey’s (chairman of Planning and Zoning Commission) comments (Page 1A, June 27) about student housing developments I thought I’d been transported back in time to the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting in September of 2011, when a Tampa development group wanted to build student housing on Hargrove Road. In opposing it, he wanted more studies and didn’t want the outlying, older apartment complexes to become slums and have to lower rents. He also said that supply was already over capacity.
Of course, new developments will pull students from the older complexes to the new ones, just like new subdivisions take people away from the old ones. That’s a risk assumed by property and business owners.
Companies conduct their own market studies before finding locations suitable for their proposed projects. They don’t need yet another taxpayer-funded study or task force to tell them if they are competent enough to know their own business. If it’s not viable, they won’t be interested. Developments should be evaluated based on the merits of the project and for no other reason.
It’s not hard to understand Mr. Rumsey’s comments if one knows through a public records search that he owns student housing properties himself. Or that the family of a business partner who also sat on the Planning Commission until recently owns several thousand apartment units. I’m disappointed that the municipal government of Tuscaloosa continues to put itself in this position.
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20130707/NEWS/130709897/1028/opinion03?Title=LETTER-Housing-demand-should-depend-on-merit