Sierra Club: taxpayers are paying for sprawl

Homebuilders: Americans want it that way. In its new report, Sprawl Costs Us All: How Your Taxes Fuel Suburban Sprawl, the Sierra Club suggests that it is not just the environment that is hurt by current development practices; American taxpayers are supporting sprawl through hidden federal and local subsidies. Federal support for roads tops the list of sprawl subsidies. Despite growing evidence that building new and wider roads only encourages more driving, the government has set aside $173.1 billion for highways and only $41 billion for public transportation. The report notes that Americans drove a staggering 2.6 trillion miles in 1998. The Sierra Club also argues that new schools in sprawling communities are not only expensive and isolated, but also stretch budgets for busing to the limit. Some states, the report says, spend millions of dollars on new schools even as the student population declines, or tear down existing schools in urban areas. Taxpayers pay indirectly for new sewer and water lines to new subdivisions and commercial development, and they also foot the bill for the extra police and emergency medical services needed. The Sierra Club’s solution is to cut off the subsidies — to transfer spending from road building to public transit and to charge developers and suburban residents the fair cost of development through impact fees and property taxes. The larger questions of how to encourage transit use and the building of sustainable neighborhoods are not addressed by the report. However, the report was provocative enough to elicit an immediate response from Robert Mitchell, president of the National Home Builders Association (NAHB). He says the Sierra Club ignores the need for 15 million new homes to meet the demands of a growing population, and he warns that higher impact fees would have a dramatic effect on the number of American families that can afford to own a home. “Americans want the private auto to be their primary source of transportation,” Mitchell says. “The reality is that we spend far too little to expand and improve roads and highways.”