Ban Gated Communities Unless They Have All Their Own Public Services.

[TheMastersNemesis]

As long as any gated community gets one cent of public money their roads and neighborhood should be open to the general public. Unless they completely fund ALL their own services like water and electricity and own and fund their own police and fire department their gates should be removed.

Gated communities should be illegal and gate removed.

[MineralMan]

1. Unfortunately, that argument breaks down all too easily.

Since individual property owners can put up a gate on their driveway and a fence around their property, it won't be possible to keep communities where the commons are owned by an association of homeowners from putting up fences and gates. The same goes for businesses, which can gate and fence themselves in.

All use public roads. All use common carrier utilities. All are in the same situation.

You can't restrict one from such things as long as the others can have them. That would be the argument in court, and it would win, every time.

[hardcover]

2. I agree with you about the roads

Although I pay for the road in front of my house, I can't stop the public from using it. I wonder how the developers of gated communities got around that one?
There are none in my area but if there are in yours, you should challenge it at the local level.

Utilities, police and fire dept. don't fit in this.

[GeorgeGist]

4. In most cases they build their own roads.

And pay taxes.

[Mariana]

6. They are probably private roads.

There are such things.

[ileus]

3. Get rid of individual front doors also...

Unless they make their own water, electricity...

[Blanks]

5. I agree with some of your points, but...

It should be well established that a gated community is responsible for maintaining their own infrastructure before the gates go up.

Making them illegal doesn't make any sense if they are maintaining their own roads and drainage structures. If they pay taxes for fire and police, they should have those services provided to them. To some extent they are reducing the emercency personnel response time by constructing a gate with a pass key.

The utilities go in and sometimes the utility pays for it, sometimes the developer pays for it, but the only way taxpayers pay for it is in the increased rates that they pay if the utility foots the installation bill.

There are always a lot of 'costs' to the community at large any time a new subdivision is developed. The developer doesn't pay for the relocation and abandonment of existing schools, and while they pay for the sewer and water that goes into the subdivision, the future maintenance on the existing utilities is not levied or additional water towers or pumps or any of the necessary additional future costs. Additional wear and tear on the existing roads on the route to the new subdivision etc.

I would prefer that we provide financial incentives for developers to re-develop existing properties and make new developments pay for all of these future costs.

As a civil/environmental engineer it breaks my heart to see developers go in and level perfectly good forest land, when we have so much under-utilized land that people commute through in the cities. If a developer is gating a community to shield it from a bad neighborhood that surrounds it, I am all for it.

Gated communities are not that big a deal. They don't put any more of a strain on the existing community than any other new development.

Did one of them somehow do you wrong?

[whopis01]

7. Don't know about all areas but in Florida they generally do

pay for such services.

The area inside the gates is considered private property and as such the owners are responsible for all costs. It isn't much different from anyone's property - once electrical lines, water pipes, etc. come on to your property you are responsible for their upkeep and maintenance.

Police do not patrol within gated communities - unless the community goes into an agreement with the local police and pays for patrols. In those cases the community also has to cover the cost of insurance for the police too.

The homeowners also have to pay the same taxes on their properties as any other house would - and actually receive less services for it (no road maintenance, no police, etc.)

[Cleita]

8. Yes, I agree. I used to like to take drives through the canyons in Bel Air, CA. The roads

were publicly paid for. Then one day a gate appeared and if you didn't live or work there, you couldn't drive through. Since the people who live there are some of the richest in the nation, I think they can pay for their own everything if they fence everything off and that includes fire and police. They don't though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Belair.jpg