If you watch the video (not that he claimed to be a legal expert) it is supposed to be nearly a year before granite’s appeal will be heard. Also, a veteran of the commission stated he had never seen a project that garnered so much opposition and emotion. Local politics and campaign contributions work best when nobody is watching, this is the third rail now for the Board of Supervisors. I’m with paramount, it’s over, there will be other fights and that group will stay together, they will show up for the next fight and the next. They have been at it for a decade, Mrs. Hamilton and her S.O.S. group will soon notch their second victory in ten years, Sempra Energy was the first victim and now Granite. Environmentalists backed by universities and local government and townsfolk, not to mention the richest tribe in the state, they are more powerful than you think. I’ve said it for years, if the casino would have let me bet on this, I’d throw down retirement funds, the odds are better than the stock market anyways.
And here’s how this relates to housing and macroeconomics. Everything is on the mend up this way, tourism is up, the major developments have started up again and are building out the unfinished projects(wolf creek is finishing now, so is morgan hill, so is paseo del sol). Repos have tapered off and it’s the end of August, brown lawns are fairly rare (at least in the south where I drive around). I just got out of my PMI, appraisal shows I’m up 25% in value in under 3 years. My street of ten houses is down to only 2 pre-2008 owners. My arm is sore from patting myself on the back.
How did this happen, cause we ripped the band aid off. We went to crap before the moratoriums and bailouts and the low interest rates. We churned through more units than were purchased during the bubble, it stung like a muther %&&^$ for a while but then it got better. 50-60% drop in values in 18 months sucked, but the sooner the better. Housing became affordable, the new owners aren’t saddled with debt, the local economy is recovering and the city is flush with cash. I wish the federal government would have the luxury of hindsight in this little case study and let the invisible hand of economics take care of the rest of the country all at the same time. They wouldn’t have run up so big of a tab trying to slow down the inevitable and their fears turned out to not be such a bad thing had they just let it happen.
Before I get off my soapbox, paramount, see, no granite and the hospital is being built as I type, oh and that low income housing project near the hospital didn’t happen either. Just like I said a year or two ago, I feel cooler than the other side of the pillow.
