Rio Verde Foothills is an unincorporated rural community in the wilds of Maricopa County, Arizona. As you may know, Arizona is largely desert, and deserts are well-known for lacking abundant water.
Arizona law requires homebuilders in active management areas to secure a reliable source of water expected to last at least a hundred years. However, there’s a loophole: the law only applies to subdivisions of six homes or more. You can guess what some clever developers do: they simply build lots of “subdivisions” each consisting of only five homes.
These so-called “wildcat” communities are all over the state. They’re miniature havens of freedom, perfect for stubbornly independent libertarians who want to get out from under the thumb of government bureaucrats telling them where they can and can’t live. Rio Verde Foothills is one such.
But then they made an awful discovery. It turns out, even when you find a way to skirt regulations about water… humans still need water .
The conclusion is good but the first example they use shows they don’t actually understand how unincorporated communities in AZ work.
They don’t have a water district because it’s literally too expensive to build and not because some taxes Boogeyman. Tons of people in AZ live in unincorporated areas and haul water. It’s a pretty normal thing in the rural west.
They should’ve just opened and stuck with Grafton. It’s a perfect example.
This is nonsense. It’s precisely because of a belief in a “taxes Boogeyman.”
Necessities “too expensive to build” for individuals are what taxes are for: water, sewer, roads, fire departments, etc. Individuals buying into 5-house developments without water are finding out the consequences of their philosophy – and don’t like it. And rather than recognize the predictable outcome of their belief, they demand necessities from nearby people more responsible than themselves.
Its not though. This isn’t a community of dumbfuck libertarians. They expect to haul water. They’re poor people buying cheap housing in the desert, they’re single houses not 5 house developments, and then suddenly having the price of water double on them, it wasn’t poor planning, it was Scottsdale, a haven of rich fucks you REALLY shouldn’t sympathize with, bumping costs to buy water. Fuck I’ll find the NPR story on this exact community later.
It doesn’t matter how rich some other town is, doesn’t make sense to build somewhere in the desert and not have a secure water source. Whether that’s libertarianism or not I don’t know, but not smart.
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i dont understand why one would pick a desert in the middle of nowhere vs a forest in the middle of nowhere (which likely has some flowing river nearby). all the extra heat just sounds like unessessary upkeep costs
Sounds like the free market at work! Surely if the price is unreasonable then a private company should have a clear profit motive to swoop in and provide the service at a lower cost. Otherwise that’s simply the cost the market has determined for this product. 🤷
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/09/1211949655/building-in-arizona-with-no-water