Family Living Act of 2003

The Family Living Act (FLA), formally known as An Act to amend the Executive Law, Multiple Dwelling and Residence Law, the Public Housing Law, the Real Property Law, and the Tax Law regarding sale of homes to extended family bidding entities and the development of property for residential use, is a landmark Urcean law enacted by the Concilium Daoni in 2003 and signed into law by King Aedanicus IX on March 23, 2003. It represents the most significant pieces of housing and real estate law in the history of Urcea, and is considered one of the signature accomplishments of the administration of Procurator Michael Witte.

The legislation had wide-reaching aims, including impeding the growth of sprawl throughout the country, reintegrating families and estates, preserving greenspace, and building durable "small urban" communities now known as the Urban Town and Country (UTC) model.

Background
Urcea's relatively large population began to explode with the rise of modern medicine and industrial agriculture in the early 20th century, necessitating a rapid need to expand housing. This took various forms until the Second Great War, when public subsidies and incentives led to the creation of vast suburbs throughout Urcea and in the Valley specifically. From 1950 through around 1990, major new subdivisions were being constructed everywhere, and land area in Urcea was rapidly converted to suburban as the late 20th century progressed. Despite the growing population, supply eventually exceeded demand. The housing boom had fueled a major construction industry bubble which burst in the 1990s, ending the expansion of sprawl. While the economics of sprawl slowed, social reformers and academics alike began to call into question the benefit of suburban lifestyles, citing social alienation and the destruction of Urcea's natural environment. The 2000 platform of the Commonwealth Union under Michael Witte promised to stop the spread of sprawl under a platform item called "Rebuild Our Communities", which vaguely elucidated a plan to restore kinship living arrangements, end sprawl, and build durable communities not susceptible to economic exploitation or significant government welfare support. The housing and sprawl issue proved to be a popular one, with 14% of voters in the 2000 election citing it as their top issue that year. Witte and the Commonwealth Union won the election, beginning work in earnest on introducing comprehensive housing and development reform. These reforms would take root from ideas developed during the negotiations surrounding what would become the Family Living Act, but would also take language and ideas from development-reform legislation which had existed since the late 1980s.

Multiple structure first offer rule
The "multiple structure first offer rule" (MSFOR) is considered to be the core provision of the law. MSFOR provides that, when any individual, corporation, or any other firm or their agent purchase land with the intent to construct multiple single or multi-family houses for individual sale, that the individual or firm must first offer the entire property to the general public to what is known as an "extended family bidding entity" (EFBE), and, failing to receive an offer on the entire property, must subsequently divide it into smaller chunks to be offered to EFBE's, only after which time the individual or firm may sell individual houses to individuals.

MSFOR means, in practice, that any developer wishing to create a must offer for sale the entire subdivision to a family kinship group, or break up the subdivision for sale to multiple kinship groups, before being able to sell off homes individually. For the purposes of the law, "extended family bidding entity" has a number of definitions, though most relate to either a large extended family group (close cousins, siblings, parents, etc.) or a kinship group within the Urcean estate system.

MSFOR was devised as an answer to social and scholarly observations of the isolating effect of suburban life, particularly suburban single-family home living, on Urcean society. Prior to the 1950s, many Urceans lived either with or within a mile from a majority of people in their family within the fourth degree of (i.e. uncles, first cousins, grandparents, etc.), a situation radically altered by 1990. MSFOR was intended to reunite families and build communities that consisted of people of close relation, ensuring that community ties and "soft" social safety nets existed to help individuals in need. The "subsequent subdivision" rule within MSFOR meant that most major subdivisions built after the implementation of the law would include a handful of extended family groups.

As part of the implementation of MSFOR, developers are required to offer their properties on a National Property Exchange (NPE), which families could browse and bid on. The NPE was required to list the price, number of homes, average square feet per home, and other relevant real estate information. The exchange was established under the law as a public resource. From the implementation of the law until 2019, the exchange was listed online with requirements that all nearby new developments be placed as a in any newspaper within 20 miles of the development with a circulation of 25,000 or more. In 2019, the newspaper requirement was abolished, and the NPE became an exclusively online resource.

Homeowner subsidy
The Family Living Act created a new program of homeowner subsidies. This program was originally set to provide a scaling subsidy to anyone at or under 125% of, and in the final version of the legislation was paid in the form of vouchers. These vouchers could be used for a certain number of services under the law, including mortgage payments, property taxes, utility payments, and even a limited number of essential home items or repairs. In order to administer the program, the Act created a new administrative apparatus - the Department for the Royal Subsidy for Homeowners.

Earlier versions of the legislation had not included a homeowner subsidy. Many proponents of the legislation also favored some kind of subsidy, but it was viewed as a separate issue - the broad strokes of the act were intended to change the way Urceans built and planned housing, not to necessarily make it easier for individuals to reside in homes. However, during the run-up to passage of the legislation, Michael Witte's administration negotiated the change in. The intention of the subsidy was not only to help impoverished people keep their home, but also to help transition poor Urceans out of, which was specifically condemned in the written legislative intent of the Act. In order to pay for these subsidies, the Act provides that a gradual scaledown and reduction of benefits under the King's Housing Program, the nation's 1950s era public housing program. The mandatory scaledown was repealed in a subsequent act in 2004, but subsequent governments nonetheless began efforts to transition people out of public housing and into subsidized private housing in future legislative and budgetary actions.

Deference to preservation zones
The Family Living Act created a new planning apparatus known as a "preservation zone", distinct from preexistant environmental conservation areas. Preservation zones were defined broadly to include any areas that the public interest demanded be free of urban sprawl, and that all preservation zones would be identified by resolution of the provincial governments and approved by the Concilium Daoni. Preservation zones, as established under the FLA, did not prohibit construction on individual pieces of property by individual owners or firms, nor did it affect the overall pre-extant planning and zoning systems. Instead, it provided that construction of multiple residences and subdivision thereof on property by a single individual, firm, or group of firms would be prohibited within a preservation zone. The FLA provided for a specific exemption process approved by the Agency for Environmental Conservation, which was given additional funding and resources under the Act to ensure compliance. The exemption process was stated to have a specific preference for UTCs and other, very-low-density types of construction. The FLA identified all pre-extant environmental conservation areas as preservation zones, and subsequent legislation passed between 2004 and 2012 expanded the zones to cover much of the non-sprawl parts of the Valley. The intention of the preservation zone model was to ensure the end of new suburban sprawl throughout the Valley and rest of Urcea; though market forces had already slowed their growth by 2003, advocates sought additional legal means to slow the growth of sprawl.

Housing construction limits
The Family Living Act included a set of basic parameters for the construction of a subdivision which required 75 feet between each home and a certain width of roadway coming to and from the home. These provisions also included that provinces and localities could introduce more exacting requirements. These provisions also specifically provided that its requirements only applied to subdivisions and developments and did not apply to any individual piece of property. The intent of these laws were to establish additional greenspace on individual properties within subdivisions.

Incentives for UTCs
The FLA made alterations to the tax law to provide incentives for developers to construct subdivisions which also included new or rehabilitated mixed-use structures, creating a legal framework for what would later be known as the "urban town and country" model. The incentive scheme would grant as much as a 58% real property tax exemption for any subdivision which would include at least 20% mixed use development, a figure that would increase to 67% if such subdivision included preexistent and historic structures. The incentives also involved significant tax write-offs for construction-related expenses. The latter provision was intended to incentivize developers to build new developments around older, near-abandoned small towns or villages that were left behind following the downturn in the nation's industrial economy. Under the provisions of the law, the mixed-use structures had to actually be completed as mixed-use instead of being eventually transitioned to all-residential; in that case, the law stipulates a claw-back of exempted taxes from the developer by the Department of Administration of Tax Collection and Receipts, which the law provided with additional funding to help ensure implementation.

Protections for Proprietor Communes
Proprietor communes were legal entities established by the Urcean government in the 1950s to provide a legal framework under which historically non-enclosed lands could continue to function. The Family Living Act enhanced proprietor communes' legal status by introducing a comprehensive set of laws prohibiting banks from discriminating against proprietor communes with respect to the issuance of mortgages. The Act also provided how mortgages would be assumed by the whole commune and paid back by any individual home resident through the use of separate accounting.

Effectiveness
The Family Living Act set its effective date as January 1 2004. However, it stipulated that prohibitions on preservation zone construction, as well as a requirement for MSFOR compliance, would take effect immediately. The law exempted any project for which provincial and municipal permitting had already been obtained. This had the effect of ensuring that a small number of legacy suburban subdivisions in the advanced planning stages as of March 2003 would be brought to completion over the course of the late 2000s.

Government overreach
In addition to objections to the content of the legislation, opponents of the Family Living Act also argued that such a sweeping mandate related to housing and planning violated. This argument contended that zoning and planning had traditionally been the domain of local and provincial governments, and for the first time the Concilium Daoni was infringing on their traditional rights.