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EVERYBODY IS screaming about growth these days.
Spotsylvania County is exploding. Stafford is getting out of hand. Houses are going up everywhere in Culpeper. Where will it all end?
These cries come from almost every mouth. Everybody, it seems, is against growth.
Everybody except the developers. The developers are the bad guys. They build houses just to spite those of us who oppose growth and, worst of all, they are getting rich doing it. What kind of people would go out and try to make a dollar by building houses? To hear many people talk, making money--at least when developers do it--is anti-American.
Now I am not a developer and I certainly am not rich, but I don't begrudge anyone who wants to make a buck by building a house. And I am smart enough to know that no matter how hard we try, we are not going to stop growth. It is a fact of life along the Eastern Seaboard and we'd better get used to it.
Houses, like any other commodity, are built on a supply-and-demand basis and there must be a great demand for homes right now because I don't see any new ones sitting empty. In fact, most are sold before they are even finished.
The argument here is that people from Northern Virginia are swooping down and scooping up houses right and left. This is absolutely true. Still, if everyone from the Washington suburbs is moving to Stafford, Spotsylvania and Culpeper counties, then there should be a ton of empty houses in Fairfax, Prince William and Arlington counties.
Of course, there is not. The housing crunch is just as bad in Northern Virginia as it is here. Apparently there is a need for new homes. So much for the developers-are-building-here-for-spite theory.
The truth is, if not another single soul moved into the area we would need to construct a ton of houses just to keep up with local population growth. There are now 18 public and private high schools within the circulation boundaries of The Free Lance-Star and each one of those institutions graduates an average of 300 young men and women every June.
That's about 5,000 of our own young adults each year that will need some place to live. Even when you pair up these graduating seniors you find that this area is producing some 2,500 couples annually. If two people live together--and some people always live alone--that's 2,500 more homes that will be needed for every June's graduating class.
Projected over a 10-year span, that means our area will need 25,000 homes or apartments just to take care of local needs.
Of course, some of our population will die and a few existing homes will become available, but not 2,500 a year or anything close to that number. Despite what growth opponents contend, our young people need some place to live.
When you start pinning these antigrowth people down, you always get the same answers.
"Of course I want my children and grandchildren to have homes," they declare. "I just don't want all this other growth."
The problem is that every parent and grandparent wants the same thing for his children and grandchildren and all that growth adds up. Suddenly, we are back to the basics of human nature--we want our family members to have every advantage but we don't care about anyone else.
Then comes the next argument.
"How are we going to educate all the kids that come from these new homes?"
You don't want your children to have kids of their own?
"Well, certainly I do! But that will probably only be five or six grandchildren. That's no problem."
Trouble is, there are parents of about 5,000 graduating seniors this year who will want grandchildren. If each of the 2,500 couples has but two kids, that means there will be 5,000 more children that will need to be educated a few years from now.
Maybe herein lies the problem. Maybe it is not the developers who are at fault but the people who have children. After all, if there were no children or grandchildren there would be no need to build more houses and all this growth we complain about would evaporate.
Antigrowth activists in many areas want developers to pay the local government $10,000 for each house they build to help with future educational needs.
Maybe we're taxing the wrong people. Maybe those people having children should be forced to pay $10,000 for each baby born. After all, children--not houses--seem to be the root of the growth problem. If we have no more children, we will need no more houses or schools.
Perhaps instead of giving tax deductions for children, the federal government should add $4,500 per child per year onto our gross incomes. This might do wonders for the growth problem.
But we have a right to have children, you say. Absolutely! As Americans living in a free capitalistic society we also have the right to have a home of our own and maybe even become a developer and make money.
It is a funny thing about getting rich. Everyone wants to do it, but once someone succeeds we figure he must be a crook because he has money.
We also look at growth as someone else's fault. It's not! It is our own fault. My children, your children, everybody's children should be able to own his or her own home. That's the American way. And as long as we're having children, there will be the need for more homes and growth will be inevitable.
Developers, too, have a right to build houses and make an honest dollar and neither the builders nor the couples who have kids are bad guys.
When you come right down to it, however, if you're going to place blame for overcrowded schools and housing booms, the fault falls squarely on the shoulders of those who are having children--not the developers who are building houses.
We all need some place to live.
DONNIE JOHNSTON is a staff writer with The Free Lance-Star. Contact him by mail at The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401; by fax at 373-8455; or by e-mail marked to his attention at gwoolf@freelancestar.com.