1/The concept of getting something of value at a low price and then receiving the benefit of an increase in value of that thing is going to be important for San Diego voters: https://images.app.goo.gl/ymakhRTma8ANkSt7A

2/We can apply this concept to property when changes in rules cause the value of that land to go up or down. If you buy it before the change, maybe even in anticipation of the change, you have individual opportunity to realize that value increase

3/There's a ton of work written about this phenomenon - this change in the value of land that can result from changes in the rules applied to that land. Here's one: https://www.urban.org/debates/land-use-regulation-whats-it-worth-anyway

4/We could ask ourselves, though, if the local government drives a rule change that dramatically increases the value of a property - or a whole community of properties - should some of that increased value be used to improve government functions that benefit people?

5/Take a practical example, if the City of San Diego made it dramatically easier to build homes on a community of properties where there currently aren't that many homes or new buildings, should the City of San Diego get to hold back some of that increased value?

6/Put this in the context of a tax structure that severely limits the way the City can pay for core services. If it can increase ability to pay for these services by capturing some added value from changing these rules, is that something that should be supported?

7/An easy, if wildly unlikely, example would be if the region up and moved the airport some place other than downtown. All of the sudden that land - and the adjacent land in western Mission Hills - would go up in value.

8/Staying with the airport example, if, prior to making that change the City of San Diego struck a deal that any new development on the now higher value property had to pay for part of homeless housing and street maintenance, would that seem an acceptable trade off?

9/The question becomes, if a government rule change leads to increasing value, what do we as the community believe ought to happen with that value? Ought it to be solely realized by the property owners fortunate enough to own at that time?

10/Or, perhaps, in a scarce resource environment, ought we to consider the ways that value could be shared between the fortunate property owner and the community via enhanced government services?

11/A third option, aside from property owner and gov't service enhancement, could be to share that value more directly for the benefit of community members whose lives are impacted. That could be workers who build new projects, neighbors within that changed, zone, etc.

12/Plenty of advocates on either side of this issue can argue their view. Here is one article I found:

https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/communities-and-banking/2017/spring/do-community-benefits-agreements-benefit-communities.aspx