By Lee Muller:

After spending $2,000,000 on consultants to gather input from 40,000 citizens of Knox County, Mayor Jacobs sent an angry letter to the County Commission on Wednesday, threatening to veto any amendments to his version of Advance Knox changes to the Growth Plan and General Plan. In other words, the public process was just window dressing and democracy faking. The proposed amendments are advisory; they have no legal force to guide development.

Mayor Jacobs pays lip service to the free market, and rights of (some) property owners to do as they wish, to promote "affordable housing".

Mayor Jacobs' positions are NOT free market.

* He is seeking to SUBSIDIZE developers by having existing taxpayers pick up the costs of improvements to drainage, roads, schools, and police protection.

* The buyers of future homes and renters of future apartments which do not include public recreational areas, or access to parks and trails in the existing plans, have NO CHOICES. The free market will be offering no choices
on these new units. Any such bare-bones developments are in conflict with existing long-range plans by Knox County for bicycle and walking trails connecting all parks and neighborhoods.

* Other developers already set aside and budget for sidewalks, play areas, parks, trails, woods, and picnic areas. It is not fair to them, to let some developers skate by without any of these amenities and necessities called for in other plans.

It is not the job of the County Commission to create so-called "affordable housing". Such public initiatives always fail, for many economic and social reasons.

The current high home prices are due to market forces beyond control of Knox County:

* A decreasing supply of easily buildable land, which the free market bids upward.
* Heavy federal banking regulations have increased mortgage fees.
* Most mortgages are being brokered by middlemen who add huge fees for
nothing but their profit. Closing costs have increased 1,000% in 30 years.
* General price inflation created by a huge expansion of the money supply to finance deficit spending.
* Huge cost increases in labor and materials are nationwide.
* The largest housing cost today is interest rates, which have tripled since 2020.
* Development firms from LA, NYC, and Chicago with offshore investors who care nothing about Knoxville, are behind the majority of new developments.
* HUD subsidies paying premiums above the free market rates for rentals.
* Sparse development of rural land is inefficient and more costly per unit.

Future development will have to be more infill and more vertical, which is more sophisticated than single family homes. Local builders will have to improve their abilities and offerings, or be replaced by those who can. That is how the free market works to improve quality and increase value to home buyers and renters.

Knox County has no control over any of these cost increases, and bowing to demands of developers has done nothing to lower costs.

Two units per acre is not "rural protection", as one of the stated goals of Advance Knox. It is urban sprawl, is inefficient, and adds much more infrastructure costs than high-density development in areas already served by
water, sewer, and adequate roads.

Knox County loses money on every new single family housing unit, due to absorbing so much of the development costs, which is why the County already has huge bond debts and has more than $100 million in infrastructure projects which have no funding. Advance Knox solves none of these problems.

Lee Muller
Knoxville, TN