Longtime Davidson town commissioner Margo Williams is retiring after eight terms on the commission. David Boraks of DavidsonNews.net provides a glowing review of her 16 years on the commission. According to the article, Williams is proud of Davidson’s “smart growth” land use plans that ban big box stores and drive-through restaurants. She is also proud of the planning policies that require developers to pay for greenways and public parks.

Glowing profiles of smart growth policies rarely provide any hard evidence that they work and almost always leave out negative consequences of restrictive land use policies. Let’s look at some of the evidence.

For the most part, smart growth policies are championed by officials who serve the wealthy elite to the determent of middle- and low-income citizens, especially minorities and newcomers. Census data show that over the last 20 years, Davidson has become a place where only high-income people can afford to live.

In 1990, the median value of owner-occupied housing was $188,200 adjusted for inflation. By 2010, home values increased by about 123 percent to an incredible $419,700. During the same period, North Carolina home values increased only about 24 percent.

Since Davidson experienced rapid growth over the last 20 years, housing prices skyrocketed largely because the town’s smart growth policies restricted the supply of housing at a time of increased demand. Housing prices were driven up artificially, making homes unaffordable for low- and middle-income families.

On the other hand, if you were a longtime homeowner, the smart growth restrictions were a financial gift because those policies more than doubled the value of your home.

What do local officials who are blinded by smart growth ideology do when their town undergoes such drastic changes? In Davidson, commissioners combated the high housing prices they created with policies that, in Williams’ words, promoted “economic and social justice.” The town’s ideologically driven “affordable” housing policies are intended not only to reduce housing prices, but also to promote racial and economic diversity.

The town’s “affordable” housing policy is one of the most coercive in the state. The town requires any new development to have 12.5 percent of the housing units sold at prices — defined by federal guidelines — that are below the market price.

Again, ideologically driven town commissioners see only what they want to see. They ignore the fact that developers, for the most part, pass the discounted costs of the low-income units to the homebuyers who pay the market price; this artificially boosts the $419,700 median home value. The town commission has passed a hidden tax on all new homebuyers in Davidson.

Have the town’s efforts to improve racial diversity through affordable housing policies worked? Census data show that in 1990 the town was about 82 percent white. Now the town is 88 percent white. Over that time, the state has become more not less racially diverse, going from about 76 percent to 68 percent white. In other words, town commissioners give lip service to improving racial diversity as their policies encouraged racial and economic segregation.

Perhaps Davidson’s town commissioners should heed the words of John Adams when he defended British soldiers after the 1770 Boston massacre. “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

The next time you drive through Davidson, please take note of what you don’t see; minorities, low-income families, and affordable houses. This is the inevitable and entirely predictable result of Davidson’s ideologically driven policies.

Dr. Michael Sanera is director of research and local government studies at The John Locke Foundation.