Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A tax category I'd like to see

I was walking by three different vacant lots on my way to work. One is used as a parking lot occasionally, but for most days of the month lies vacant. The other lots are fenced in, and there are a few other lots I know of along alternative routes to the metro, also fenced in.
Anyway, I was thinking, it would be great if these lots were community gardens. About half of part of the lots get full sun. Even better a couple have southern exposure. A way to encourage this could be a reduced property tax rate for owners who lease green space to gardeners. In the city center, where there are more apartments, condos and townhomes with non-existent yards there is a demand for greenspace. If there was an environment that encouraged this sort of land use, it would be great.

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6 Comments:

At 4/15/2009 11:43 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Would be nice, however I'm sure that once dcra gets ahold of it, the licensing, permitting, etc would quickly. Maybe just a different class of managed, unimproved land. imho, well kept land w/o a building should not be considered vacant as it is today. The downside, it would probably encourage people to raze a lot of old buildings.
-Mike

 
At 4/15/2009 2:31 PM, Blogger Mari said...

Your 1st sentence appears incomplete. I take it that you might mean DCRA will screw it up with restrictions?

 
At 4/15/2009 4:46 PM, Anonymous jimbo said...

There is a documentary movie coming soon at the E Street Cinemas about radical Los Angeles urban gardeners who uncover a local government ring of corruption. It's called 'The Garden'. We should go see it and learn how to be rebel gardeners:

http://www.blackvalleyfilms.com/

I plan on planting my castor bean plans to be an agro-ter'rist.

 
At 4/15/2009 10:03 PM, Anonymous Caryn said...

guerrillagardening.org

 
At 4/16/2009 10:18 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

there's already enough creativity in the real property tax area. Too much Alice in Wonderland at OTR

rr446

 
At 4/17/2009 7:53 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's a good idea buuuutttttttt,
heck DCRA can't even figure out that a once classified vacant property is occupied, despite being informed with documents. I'm told that only one guy works on it.


esse

 

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