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TiredPistachio t1_jd7mtvm wrote

Reply to comment by alexandercecil in They’ve Been Warned: Attorney General Says Suburbs ‘Must Comply’ With Transit-Oriented Housing Law by psychothumbs

Small towns got a huge break in a re-do of these rules last year. Carlisle for instance, only need to zone for 95 total units (was originally 750!). And again, thats just zoning, nothing needs to be done. If the builders cant deal with water and sewage they wont build. I'm not seeing anything in the rules that says the towns need to provide those services. My guess is a town like carisle will end up building a single apartment building sometime in the next 20 years, but no sooner than 10.

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alexandercecil t1_jd8zvgo wrote

One of the tricky parts of this legislation is that the areas zoned for dense residential development must actually be developable as such. That makes sense from a legislative view, because otherwise every town would pick 50 acres of wetland and call it a day. Does this mean the town must have infrastructure that can support the development? My understanding is that this is not clear cut, and towns may well need to improve infrastructure to support the potential development. I think there are lawyers from several municipalities looking at this to gain a more clear understanding. My town does not control its own water and sewer districts, so this is not as simple as people might think. We are not unique in this.

In my town, we could be looking at a double-digit percentage increase in our population. Beyond the water and sewer we do not control, our school, fire and police departments are at capacity. Right budgets mean that our long term debt management is planned out carefully for many years based on upcoming needs, and there is not room for additional projects like new school buildings.

I really wish it was as simple as it at first appears. If it was, I would personally have no problem with the legislation.

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TiredPistachio t1_jd9gugh wrote

Well with the sewage a LOT of these towns straight up have just septic systems. You can build an apartment with septic, but it requires a huge amount of space which will eat into 1) the profit for developers, 2) the # of units built, 3) useful space, although I wonder if they could build green space over the septic. Not sure if you wanna be walking around over leech fields that big though.

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alexandercecil t1_jd9ksh3 wrote

Yeah, I do not know if the large scale septic systems can support the required 15 units/acre. If they can that is one problem solved at the potential cost of creating others.

I have no problems with developers struggling to make a buck on their developments. I do not begrudge them anything, but it falls squarely in the realm of "not my problem" unless the state says otherwise. I do worry that the state might actually say it is our problem, but this is all something for lawyers to figure out. Law is complex, and they are the ones who can find the most likely answers.

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TiredPistachio t1_jd9tcgl wrote

They can but the leech fields are massive. They just built some huge apartments along rte 20 that I'm pretty sure have no sewer access. Must be septic.

The developer comment was just about how they'll be less likely to build it

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