How do you spend your Sundays? If you're like me, you probably spent the day relaxing and watching an NBA double-header and wondering how how you've become so out of touch with professional basketball that you can't remember when Jordan and Barkley were replaced by Dwayne Wade and Lebron James.
However, if you're serious campaign junkie, you braved the cold and traveled to Michael Nutter's campaign office to hear him talk about his housing plan. I get the feeling that most of you probably didn't.
But guess what? It's ok because you can see the whole thing on Youtube. I just watched the first few seconds. I'll stop myself from reviewing Mr. Nutter's performance and try to stick to the points of his plan. (That doesn't mean you can't comment about it.)
Amazing. Anyway, give the plan a read. Either Wendy or I will post our own thoughts about it later today. I'm specifically looking for folks from our new Community Network to give me your evaluations - especially those among you who deal specifically with housing. Feel free to email me and I'll reprint it here on the blog or you can post in the comments.
Comments (4)
Yes, I think everyone with any interest in housing should read Nutter's proposal. I think it's clear and concise, and addresses specific problems in the city that can be addressed in short order.
The one thing that disappointed me was that he isn't immediately proposing a land-value tax system, which I think would promote efficient land use in the city while lowering tax bills for most homeowners who generally have tall (2+ story) structures on very small plots of land.
I especially like Nutter's idea of changing the 10 year tax abatement so that the length of the abatement varies depending on how much development is needed in an area, and decreasing the abatement from 100% to 90% in order to fund the housing trust fund. I also like the idea (borrowed from NYC) to use the abatement as an incentive for developers to include affordable housing in the more expensive neighborhoods.
The idea of streamlining the process developers need to go through both for permits and for acquiring land (especially the centralized land bank) is something that's long overdue. Maybe he'll also manage to reform NTI so that Habitat for Humanity can actually get some land/buildings:
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/special_packages/15426614.htm
Posted by Anonymous | February 12, 2007 12:24 PM
Ah yes, I also like that Nutter's plan calls for more tax abatements for improvements to existing homes (as opposed to new construction).
Posted by Anonymous | February 12, 2007 2:09 PM
Nutter introduced a bill in city council a couple years ago that would phase in a land-value tax, so he definitely isn't opposed to it. I assume he has his reasons for not proposing it in his housing plan.
http://webapps.phila.gov/council/detailreport/?key=3522
Posted by Dave![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://blogs.phillynews.com/dailynews/nextmayor/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 12, 2007 10:17 PM
The plan looks good to me. He is proposing to finish a lot of things that should've been done under NTI. People forget that many important goals of NTI were never acheived.
Posted by sj | February 13, 2007 9:33 AM