Reply #52: I've been wondering when we would start hearing about this [View All]

Homes are soooooo expensive!! Here in Orlando they are not even building homes under $150K. When I see the signs starting at $150K, I realize no one is really getting in for that. Most of the stuff I see and hear about going up is $200k+ with an amazing number of homes in the $500K+ market. There are thousands of homes and condos being built in a market of primarily low paying service and tourism jobs. The average income is about $42k, last I heard. In our downtown area there are thousands of urban condos going in. The downtown is really dreadful too until you go several blocks away. It's all in hopes that the young urbanites will buy. I just wonder How many people can there be to buy all this property?

Going hand in hand with building the expensive homes is building lots of apartment buildings. This is necessary since home ownership has gotten so far from the reach of so many. So families are cramming themselves into apartments.

I wish the local government did a better job of managing the growth. Not only for environmental, traffic and school concerns (which are poorly handled) but to evaluate the need for the development. Is it too socialist of an idea that the government or a special commission evaluate how appropriate a development is for an area? Consider issues such as average family income and number of similar developments already in place. Look at duplication and assess long term affects. The developers just put up the sites and leave. They don't deal with any long term consequences.

I have wished for awhile that they would consider some of these issues when approving retail sites. But that is just because I want a Whole Foods Store in my community where I have 9 supermarket locations of 2 chains within 4 miles of my house. All have pharmacies and in addition to that there are 7 or 8 drugstores.