Problems in the bedroom community

Again and again, it comes up: “We’re really just a bedroom community for Chattanooga.” The sentence is spoken in commission, commerce, and planning meetings. It is spoken with a sigh and a sense of sad resignation. Politicians springboard from it, officials vow to battle it, and residents moan about it in the shadow of every tax hike.

A bedroom community is a region characterized by residential rather than commercial growth, so that most people who live there must commute to a nearby metropolis for work. Sometimes this occurs because of an industry shut-down. Along I-75 in north Georgia, it happens the other way around: Chattanooga and Dalton attract employees, who then search for nearby communities where the living is easier. Catoosa County, for example, saw 16 percent population growth from 2000-2006.

Is living in a bedroom community really a problem? And if so, what should be done about it?

Life in a bedroom community has many perks. The focus on suburban life generally leads to better schools, more community involvement, and lower crime rates. For the residents moving to a bedroom community, life is grand.

It is the existing residents who feel the pinch. An overbalance of residential development creates a strain on every public system from sewers to schools. With too few businesses in the tax base, the community relies on residents to foot the bill. Existing residents complain as tax rates continue the inevitable upward trend. They find themselves paying more money for the same services.

Potential new residents weigh these increasing costs before they buy. Existing residents do not have that luxury. They are already established here, and have little choice but to keep paying taxes. They watch as more farmland is converted to housing all around them, resentment building faster than the development itself.

Assuming that being a bedroom community is a problem, what is the solution? The reactionary response is to clamp down on building. Officials saddle builders with impact fees to discourage the construction of new subdivisions. They turn down the developer who appears at a county meeting, plans in hand for a 200-home development. Sometimes they simply place a moratorium on homebuilding, or abolish the zoning and planning board.

These “solutions” only create further problems. A moratorium on homebuilding essentially shuts down the largest industry in a bedroom community. It puts contractors and subcontractors out of work, forcing them to look outside the community for jobs –further skewing the residential overbalance. It also robs lenders, realtors and hardware stores within the community. If the moratorium continues, those businesses move out of the community or shut down altogether. Thus, instead of curing the ills of a bedroom community, the moratorium actually feeds the problem.

A prolonged attack on developers results in falling home values. Growing families will not find newer, larger homes to move into. They will be forced to remain in “starter homes.” Since many middle and upper income families are unwilling to stay in small or outdated homes, they will move to houses in outlying areas. As the homes grow older and wealthier citizens move away, the standard of living in the community falls, the median income falls, property values fall, and the tax base fails. Instead of living in a bedroom community growing too fast for their comfort, residents now find themselves in a slum or a ghost town.

It is time to approach the problem from the other end. If we have two many houses compared to the number of jobs, then we need more jobs, not fewer houses. If our tax base relies too heavily on residential properties, then we need to add business properties, not attack our largest tax revenue source as though it were an enemy.

A slum will not attract the businesses we need. A ghost town will not entice them to site their next location here. Businesses are attracted by healthy, growing communities. Perhaps we will not attract many billion-dollar manufacturing plants. That’s okay. Ninety percent of Georgians are employed by small businesses. The clientele for small businesses already exists right here in this bedroom community. The land is here, ready to be developed into prime business property. The lenders are here, ready to extend funds to anyone with a strong business plan.

All the energy spent battling the “bedroom community” demons should instead be spent leveraging our strengths. We could be launching new businesses and strengthening existing local companies.

One way to support new ventures is through a publicly supported business incubator like the Business Development Center (BDC) in Chattanooga. The BDC houses 53 start-up businesses who benefit from cheap space and shared overhead like office equipment and clerical support. Eighty-seven percent of incubated businesses survive the five-year mark (compared to 20% of businesses founded without incubator support), and 85% remain in the community where they were founded.

In 2004, the Catoosa County Chamber of Commerce commissioned a study to determine if the county was ready for such an incubator. The study group concluded that Catoosa residents were highly entrepreneurial, with over 2,500 microbusinesses (companies with 1 to 4 employees) in the county. However, the study also found that no strong connection existed between Catoosa governments and businesses to foster growth within those Mom-and-Pop shops and make them larger employers tomorrow. The Chamber was advised not to launch the incubator, on the premise that the county was happy being “just a bedroom community.”

Interestingly, the study revealed that the largest sector of microbusiness in Catoosa consists of construction companies. We should be strengthening this sector, not seeking to destroy it with impact fees, moratoriums, and the boast that not a single new subdivision has been approved in the last year. How will we ever grow beyond our status as a bedroom community? Certainly not by blowing up the bedroom.