The Argus did a story about how homeowners are not real keen on having apartments built next to them out in the burbs;

“This sentiment that apartment owners and apartment dwellers are scumbags has got to stop in this community,” said Councilor Christine Erickson. “It’s just not what it is.”

I guess it depends on the location and the condition of the apartment. There is also a difference between $1,100 dollar a month apartments and HUD subsidized housing. I agree with Erickson, apartment dwellers who pay their own rent are NOT scumbags, and this city should do everything in their power to encourage more apartment dwellings for working folks.

The problem here is NOT the homeowners complaining, the problem is the location of the apartments. The large developers want to make a quick buck, so they prefer to build next to homes in a cornfield instead of in the core of the city where we should be building up density. This is what happens when you allow a hospital to bulldoze an entire core neighborhood instead fixing up these core neighborhoods. I know, I sound like a broken record.

As for the neighbors complaining, some of their statements are pretty ignorant. I lived in 7 different apartments in Sioux Falls before I bought my home, there was nothing wrong with it, and there is nothing wrong with me living by apartments now in my home. The bigger issue with these ignorant (and sometimes racist) complaints is that it is helping the developers that are pushing to skip several steps in the zoning process;

There’s always been hesitation from neighbors when they hear an apartment could be going up nearby, said Jill Madsen, vice-chair of the South Dakota Multi-housing Association.

But once all the meetings and votes are done, the construction is completed and the tenants have moved in, she said, “most people don’t even … there aren’t any issues going forward.”

There has been a rumor going around that this organization along with developers are pushing to change city ordinances and state law so that developers no longer have to ask for permission from the neighbors and can just go directly to the planning office to rezone the property and get building permits. No notification and no neighborhood meetings. This of course goes against how things have always been done, but it also lacks transparency. The proponents of this supposed change will of course use all the dreadful comments from homeowners to plead their case for less transparency and essentially ruin the process for the rest of us.

I have felt the planning department has wanted to sidestep the commission and council on a whole host of things. Just look at TIFs, they used to be for only blight and affordable housing until the state legislature changed the law to pretty much make them for anything, and since then they have been handing them out like candy in Sioux Falls, raising the taxes on the rest of us while getting NO economic benefit from the projects. If we allow the state legislature to make these new guidelines you will see apartments go up on every street corner and rent go through the roof;

With a housing market that’s often pricing out even those lucky enough to actually find a home for sale and multiple companies touting the thousands of jobs they hope to bring to Sioux Falls in just the next five years, city staff say qualms about multi-family housing simply don’t mesh with the reality of what the city of nearly 200,000 people needs.

The city administration is getting nervous because they have enticed all these employers with ridiculous tax breaks and now they have no workers and no place for them to live, so they will try any desperate attempt to get up apartments as fast as possible. I have also felt that homebuilders and realtors have artificially inflated home prices, which is going on across the country. The value of my home went up around 37% in ONE YEAR!

I can almost guarantee the Amazon parking lot will be one big campground when it opens.

Slow, measured growth is way better than the fire sale we have been having. Growth for growth sakes never turns out well, and we are in for quite a ride over the next few years.

4 Thoughts on “Are Sioux Falls Developers angling to push residents out of the zoning process?

  1. Fear & Loathing in Sioux Falls on August 4, 2021 at 10:28 pm said:

    Soviet housing and America’s decline due to the collapse of the middle class, I was warned of this as a child, but I expected it to come from the Cubans and their friends, and not from the greedy actions of some capitalists overtime.

  2. D@ily Spin on August 5, 2021 at 9:23 am said:

    City hall deception is disgusting. Everything is tiny print on small signs over the hill in tall grass at the back of property. At least with Huether there was bold waste on unnecessary and inferior construction. We’re not going to live here longer than we have to. Do corruption in our faces without cowardly sneaking up on us from behind.

  3. Leninism on August 5, 2021 at 10:52 am said:

    USSR leaders have said, capitalism will destroy the USA. We have decided money for a few is more important than freedom for all. Greed is the root of all evil.

  4. Further Fear & Loathing on August 8, 2021 at 9:01 pm said:

    Capitalism gave us Facebook, then Facebook steered an election outcome. Former KGB Putin, now “capitalist”, planted the seed, while American capitalism provided the mechanism for it to happen.

    AND, as if having a Taupe Housing Society of Conformity isn’t enough. Now, we have a Soviet Housing Society of Conformity in town, too.

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