Affordable housing: A policy challenge for farmland preservation

Excerpt

ADVOCATES of farmland preservation policies must become more concerned about the availability of adequate, affordable housing. They have already in Oregon, and that experience provides some useful lessons for advocates elsewhere about farmland retention efforts at both the federal and state levels of government. The legislative trend in other states also indicates that more balance is likely in policy-making between farmland protection and housing concerns.

The policy history of two farmland preservation techniques—tax incentives and zoning—illustrates the need to learn from an experience such as that in Oregon.

Much has been learned about the performance of early state laws providing for the differential assessment of farmland (2, 4, 5, 12). Some states have adopted better techniques as a result. Wisconsin and Michigan, for example, recently enacted laws that avoid giving windfalls to speculators by tying the net property tax break to the owner's net income tax liability.

In the case of zoning, there has been increasing recognition that policy tools for farmland preservation must be equitable as well as effective (8). The classic example of the problem is the imposition of urbanstyle zoning, or what Charles Little calls open space preservation techniques,” …