How a Popular Development Practice Backfires on Homeowners

How a Popular Development Practice Backfires on Homeowners

Author: Strong Towns February 26, 2025 Duration: 45:49
Residents of a neighborhood in Colorado are confronting a $434 million debt incurred by their community’s special taxing district, which was set up by developers to finance the neighborhood’s infrastructure. A group of neighbors are now organizing to take control of the district’s board and try to bring transparency to the financial situation. In today’s episode of Upzoned, Abby is joined by Edward Erfurt, Strong Towns’ chief technical advisor. They discuss how using special taxing districts to fund developments is a common practice, how it leads to snowballing debt, and how difficult it is for residents to manage this kind of situation. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “The largest neighborhood of this Colorado city is $434M in debt. Neighbors are now seeking board control.” by Olivia Young, CBS News (February 2025). This Thursday, February 27, Strong Towns will release a toolkit to help city officials welcome incremental housing development. Learn more here. Become a member to join the launch livestream with experts Alli Thurmond Quinlan (Incremental Development Alliance) and Eric Kronberg (Kronberg Urbanists + Architects). Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.

Each week, Upzoned takes a single, pressing story from the world of urban development, municipal policy, and community economics and holds it up to the light. Hosts Abby Kinney and Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns, sometimes joined by a guest, don't just skim the headlines. They dig into the nuances of a specific zoning decision, a new infrastructure project, or a shifting demographic trend, asking what it reveals about how we actually build our cities, towns, and neighborhoods. The conversation is grounded in the practical, bottom-up philosophy of the Strong Towns movement, making complex topics accessible and immediately relevant. This isn't a broad news recap; it's a focused, thoughtful dissection for anyone curious about why their community looks and functions the way it does. You'll hear informed debate, critical analysis, and a persistent questioning of conventional wisdom, all aimed at understanding how we can create places that are financially resilient and genuinely enriching for the people who live in them. Tune in for a deeper, more substantive take on the stories that shape our shared spaces.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Upzoned
Podcast Episodes
Suburbs Broke the American Sunbelt. Now What? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:40
Sunbelt cities like Phoenix, Dallas, and Atlanta have long prided themselves on having affordable and abundant housing. However, they’re now seeing stagnation in housing construction and rapidly rising costs. Today, Abby…
How To Stop Slumlords and Protect Urban Spaces [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:43
Today, Abby is joined by Bernice Radle, a small-scale developer and historic building preservationist from Buffalo, New York. They cover two developing stories: First, a new bill was proposed that would give the Buffalo…
A Strong Towns View of the New SpaceX Company Town [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:36
Residents of Boca Chica, Texas, have voted to turn their community into a new official city called Starbase. This new municipality is tightly controlled by SpaceX leadership and most residents are SpaceX employees, which…
California Universities Face a $17 Billion Growth Ponzi Scheme [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:57
As of the 2023-24 academic year, the University of California faces $9.1 billion in deferred maintenance, while California State University faces $8.3 billion. In today’s episode, Chuck and Abby explore how this problem…
Will Privatizing Mortgages Fix the Housing Market? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:37
President Trump has proposed the privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, organizations that back the majority of mortgages in the U.S. and have been under a government conservatorship since the 2008 financial crisis…
Can We Take Community Wealth Back From Walmart and Kroger? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:57
In this Upzoned episode, Abby is joined by Strong Towns Chief Technical Advisor Edward Erfurt to discuss the emergence of food deserts in the United States. In the 1980s, the U.S. government stopped enforcing price discr…
What Does the Future Look Like for Tiny Towns? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:14
Co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss the challenges faced by Victoria, Prince Edward Island, a town in Canada that only has 139 full-time residents. In an attempt to attract new residents, the town has adopted…
How To Handle the Looming Shortage of Senior Housing [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:21
The U.S. senior housing market is poised to shift from a surplus to a shortage in the next five years, as the oldest baby boomers turn 80 by 2030. In this Upzoned episode, Abby is joined by Norm Van Eeden Petersman, Stro…
How To Reform Chicago Zoning: The Western Avenue Project [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:04
In this episode, Abby is joined by Chicago aldermen Matt Martin and Andre Vasquez to discusses the Western Avenue corridor study, one of the most ambitious planning efforts Chicago has seen in decades. It includes widesp…
Why Massachusetts Might Sue Its Cities Over Zoning Codes [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:04
In 2021, Massachusetts signed a law requiring communities that are served by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) to legalize multifamily housing development near MBTA transit stations. Recently, a state court…