Time for valley to attend Growthaholics Anonymous

Staggering and bleary-eyed from yet another "inevitable" growth binge hangover, valley residents are still trying to assess the costs of their latest housing boom.

One effect is in the form of a new kind of eyesore -- "brownies," abandoned houses where the yards and gardens have died and the lights are either never on or never off. But things might be even worse than they look.

In Modesto, the City Council is struggling to manage yet another budget shortfall. The solutions are likely to include a reduction in the number of police and fire positions -- this in a city routinely ranked among the highest in the nation for such crimes as auto theft.

To make matters worse, national studies indicate fallout from the mortgage and lending crisis will make things worse before they get better.

These dire effects follow directly an "inevitable" growth boom that, in keeping with the "growth is good" theory, should have had Central Valley cities and counties hip-deep in dollars.

Somehow, the prosperity never materialized, and now abandoned houses are sending the message that negative effects on retail and service industries could become far more serious than anyone wants to imagine.

But even while the twin specters of layoffs and bankruptcies loom, political leaders are setting the table for yet another round of "inevitable" growth. With the clear intention of stimulating another growth binge, Stanislaus County supervisors only recently beat back attempts to let voters decide whether or not to put thousands of houses in Salida.

And before winter's end we should all expect the half-cent sales tax to put on an attractive spring outfit and sashay from door to door with fluttering eyelashes and promises of smooth roads to prosperity.

The sad truth is we need better roads and highways. We need a strong housing market and stable financial institutions. But we have never learned how to have these things at a sustainable pace.

Our insistence on building roads to sprawling housing tracts interspersed with strip malls and shopping centers is only a little less insane than our insistence on hyping growth with bargain-basement developers' fees, pie-in-the-sky promises of economic benefits (remember the Diablo Grande "economic engine"?) and creative financing.

Anything that has to be hyped with interest-only financing, balloon payments and promises of ever-rising equity is hardly inevitable. But it is inevitable that if valley citizens continue to swallow over-promoted housing schemes and developers' dream plans, even more painful hangovers are in the offing.

Two things could help: One, we need to endorse regional planning; two, we need to maintain our infrastructure from the inside out. It is senseless to keep building roads from the cities outward while our interior streets and roads crumble.

For now, the growth boom is still a throbbing headache. But if the past is precedent, we'll soon forget. And as soon as our current headaches end, count on another round of housing shots with strip mall chasers. Addiction is a hard thing to overcome.

Caine, a Modesto resident, teaches in the humanities department at Merced College. E-mail him at columns@modbee.com.