Impact Fees and Housing Affordability

Approximately 60 percent of U.S. cities with more than 25,000 residents now impose impact fees to fund infrastructure needed to service new housing and other development. In 89 jurisdictions selected for study in California, the state in which impact fees are most heavily used, the average amount of fees imposed on singlef amily homes in new subdivisions in 1999 was $19,552, with fees ranging from a low of $6,783 to a high of $47,742. Although California jurisdictions impose fees highe —perhaps much higher—than those in other jurisdictions, impact fees are an increasingly important cost of development, especially in the fastest growing areas of the United States.
The increasing use of impact fees and the costs that they may add to the development process raises serious concerns about the effect using impact fees to fund infrastructure will have on the affordability of housing

Vicki Been

Cityscape

2005

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