Posted on 04/28/2009 10:11:43 AM PDT by Lorianne
Surprise, Ariz., doesn't look very surprising. It might be anywhere in the suburban West. Home Depot and Wal-Mart rise like islands from an ocean of pavement, and late-model SUVs gleam in the midday sun. Homes with red-tiled roofs line up like stucco boxes on a giant supermarket shelf. There's little to distinguish this from the hundreds of square miles of housing developments that have sprouted around Las Vegas and San Diego. If it weren't for the palm trees, you could be in suburban Salt Lake City.
But only Surprise has the Radiant Church. Inside this 55,000-square-foot behemoth, 50-inch plasma-screen televisions display huge images of American flags. Starbucks-trained baristas serve up frothy espresso drinks, and the casually dressed congregation nibbles Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The pastor, Lee McFarland, wears jeans and rides a Harley. His uncanny ability to tap into the exurban zeitgeist made this the fastest-growing megachurch in one of the nation's fastest-growing metro areas.
Radiant symbolizes the breakneck growth and prosperity that have come to define Surprise and its Western siblings. Since it was incorporated in 1960, Surprise -- an exurb of Phoenix -- has burgeoned from 500 people to over 100,000 people spread over 100 square miles. Most of that growth happened in the last decade, and it happened largely independent of any economic base, such as manufacturing, mining, farming or even high-tech industry. Instead, growth created its own economic base. To the members of Radiant Church, it must have seemed like a miracle.
Now it seems more like a mirage. On a warm day a few months back, about 200 people -- mostly female and Spanish-speaking -- stood in line in front of the church. Many held small children, or scolded older ones for throwing the ubiquitous red landscaping rocks. They weren't here for a sermon, or even for the doughnuts. They came to take advantage of the church's economic relief program, which distributes food, gas cards, and small cash payments to help with utility bills. The church began the program last October, after it became clear that a profound shift had occurred in Surprise and the neighboring communities.
After a decade of riding high, the exurbs are in crisis. In California, Nevada and Arizona, thousands of foreclosed homes sit empty, weeds reclaim vacant lots in new subdivisions and big-box stores are shutting down. The local newspaper warns of roof rats infesting abandoned neighborhoods and mosquitoes colonizing unused swimming pools. Many observers believe that this is only a slump, albeit a deep one, and that the old patterns of growth will someday return. Others aren't so sure. It's possible, they say, that even after the national economic crisis subsides, the Western urban urge to expand rapidly and without limitation may have ended.
"I'm not sure that the era of sprawl is over," says Ed McMahon, senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute. "But the paradigm of unlimited suburban and exurban growth has definitely shifted."
...
The pattern of this remarkable growth, which was mimicked by other Western cities, was apparent from the beginning. As early as 1959, a Phoenix planning task force worried about the city's tendency to "leapfrog" outward, leaving huge tracts of land vacant close to its center -- a trend that has just become more pronounced. In spite of efforts to encourage infill development, most homebuilding has happened farther and farther out on the fringes, gobbling up desert land at alarming rates. Surprise, for example, was just a little town, separate from greater Phoenix, in 1990. Now it's been swallowed by sprawl.
Though this tendency to grow away from the city center, its jobs and its amenities seems counterintuitive, it makes sense from an economic and even a cultural viewpoint. Western cities typically have plenty of private land onto which to grow. If they run out, they develop ways to convert public land -- Las Vegas has grown onto once-federal land and Phoenix and Salt Lake City co-opt state land (see related story, page 14) -- much as early settlers homesteaded and staked mining claims on public land. Many of Phoenix's newcomers -- especially between 1970 and 2000 -- were retirees, so there was less need to build housing near employment. Most importantly, though, the farther you go from the city, the cheaper land tends to be.
And that's the only way to keep these exurban growth machines running. People are not flocking to Arizona's urban fringe to grow oranges or build computers; they're coming because it's cheap. In a 2004 survey by the Behavior Research Center of Arizona, 86 percent of respondents listed affordable housing as "somewhat" to "very important" factors in their decision to move to the Phoenix area. Just 67 percent rated jobs as important, and only 59 percent cited the weather.
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Just because a place is relatively cheap doesn't make housing affordable, however. That brings us back to the Guerros. They wanted a nicer house than they could afford, so their lender offered a solution: An adjustable-rate mortgage. Their monthly payments were $2,700. Of course, the bank would jack up their rates after two years, but it didn't matter. With home values climbing steadily, they could refinance before the rate reset, pull out enough cash to buy a jetski or a new car, and keep their mortgage payments in check. In other words, the banks were creating affordable housing where it didn't really exist; with easy and tricky loans, they were creating purchasing power, or demand. Tens of thousands of such loans were issued in Arizona, and the major homebuilders even got into the game, offering financing in a manner more often associated with car manufacturers.
This artificially inflated demand did the trick. In just five years, Surprise gained another 50,000 people, and added more than 7,000 homes in 2005 alone. Maricopa County -- which contains the bulk of the greater Phoenix metro area -- grew faster than anywhere else in the country, and the Phoenix area issued more than 62,000 residential building permits. The economy responded: In 2006, Arizona's gross domestic product grew by 6.7 percent, compared to 3.1 percent for the nation as a whole. The construction industry provided 9 percent of all non-farm jobs in Arizona, making it by far the biggest employer in the state. Those jobs drew more people, who took out more loans to buy more houses, creating more demand … you get the picture.
Housing prices soared -- nearly doubling, on average, over two years -- to create almost instant wealth. Speculation was so rampant that it threw population estimates for a loop. Last year, with the bust in full swing, state and local officials discovered that their method of counting people -- by starting with 2000 census numbers and then estimating population using the number of houses built and sold -- didn't work. They had assumed an occupancy rate of 98 to 99 percent, when in fact at least one of every 10 new homes was sitting empty, even before the bust. A lot of people were making a lot of money. A lot of people would lose money, too.
By the time the Guerros' mortgage reset, this frenzied feedback loop was spiraling in on itself. Gas prices had soared, people couldn't pay their loans, and the housing bubble couldn't inflate itself anymore. Even as their home's value plummeted, the Guerros' loan payment increased by $1,100 a month. Bob tried to talk the lender into lowering the payments, but the bank wouldn't budge. He then paid a "mitigation company" some $3,000 to renegotiate the loan. "But everything they were doing I had already done," he says. "Basically, they did nothing for us except take our money."
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[excerpted for length]
Tell me again that the Sub-Prime crisis was not brought about by lending to Illegal Aliens?
These two er reporters should go back to writing about and pushing the gay agenda.
Interesting, but true this piece. If the suburbs aren’t dead, the Exurbs certainly are and the suburbs may soon follow if the Dems have their way with Cap’n’Trade. Ah, and the most touted option is so lovely. Crammed into the ugly urbanscape of disease and crime that is the typical American city.
Just call it:
Surprise, Mexico.
My sister and brother live out there, about 5 miles apart - I guess I need to ask them if it really is largely Hispanic now.
It wasn’t a couple of years ago...
That is the great untold story of modern American journalism.
It’s all about a peculiar agenda.
The gay agenda pushers posing as journalists with the Dinosaur Fishwraps, hate the Exurbs.
The Exurbs have been in most cases largely conservative families who go to church and work. They avoid the liberal agendas and focus on raising their families.
Often those living in the Exurbs refuse to subscribe to the local or region fishwraps and have satellite tv to avoid the local liberal cable bs.
Their kids often belong to the Boy or Girl scouts as well as participating in the many local organized sports.
The parents don’t look to government or the mediots for guidance on how to live or raise their kids.
That makes Exurbites a big target for the left wing gay agenda pushers. The last thing these liberals want is more Exurbs with good people not wanting the bs from the mediots.
That’s correct. I’m sure you remember we’ve both examined this sort of thing in the past. There are a lot of people in the news business who have the gay agenda as their main motivation, it seems.
So many of the elite over educated gays have drifted into the so called news business.
They never write about or report the real news.
Their so called articles go out the way like this article to poke fun or blast normal people.
Then later they will write articles pushing how wonderful the gay life style is and how wonderful and patriotic the gays are while they are trashing middle America.
Ping!
How on earth did this article rate only a ‘religion’ keyword?
Anyway, Queen Creek is just as bad as Surprise, if not worse. At least in Surprise, they have good roads.
Anyone tried traveling the Hunt Highway, lately?
Not sure. I put business and az as keywords when posting.
Yes, I see. I guess that was a rhetorical question and aimed at you because you posted #1...
Arizona still has Krispy Kreme??
Follow the money and political lobbying influence trail on ALT-A and subprime loans and see where it takes you.
Pretty sure there are still some in the Phoenix area.
Tucson stores have been closed for quite some time.
More proof of the idiocy of the “consumer economy”
The solution is to consume less, produce more, save more and less debt for everyone from government to businesses to families. Which is how America was for decades
Couldn’t agree more. Well said.
ALSO-——
Surprise Arizona had same plan for prosperity that Florida had. “Growth” was the biggest “industry” here. More people move here....MEANING more jobs and money for everyone already here. More money for the contractors, for bankers, for real estate brokers, for car salesmen, for appliance salesmen and so on and so on
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