The council of Maple County, concerned about the county's becoming overdeveloped, is debating a proposed measure that would prevent the development of existing farmland in the county. But the council is also concerned that such a restriction, by limiting the supply of new housing, could lead to significant increases in the price of housing in the county. Proponents of the measure note that Chestnut County established a similar measure ten years ago, and its housing prices have increased only modestly since. However, opponents of the measure note that Pine County adopted restrictions on the development of new residential housing fifteen years ago, and its housing prices have since more than doubled. The council currently predicts that the proposed measure, if passed, will result in a significant increase in housing prices in Maple County.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
The council of Maple County predicts that if the proposed measure to prevent the development of the existing farmland in the company is passed, the housing prices in Maple County will increase significantly. This prediction is based on the idea that reducing the development of farmland will limit the supply of new housing and the fact that when similar measures were taken in Chestnet and Pine Counties, the prices in bott areas increased since. However, this information is insufficiet to justify the council's position, and thus there are several questions that need to be answered before the council's position can be evaluated.
Firstly, to what extent would housing supply be limited by the restriction? If only 10% of Maple County is currently farmland that would become protected by the proposed measure, and 40% of the county is forest that remain free for development, the housing supply would not significantly suffer from the restriction. Similarly, even if the county is mostly farmland, but there are no big cities or reasons for new residents to immigrate into the county, the low demand means that the housing supply would still have suffient space to adjust in the short term, regardless of the restrictions.
Even if the housing supply does become limited, there is still no indication that housing prices must increase. It is possible that Maple County has other policies to limit the rise in hosuing prices, like rent controlled appartments or district wide housing prices. In this case, the prediction of higher housing prices would still be unjustified. However, suppose the housing prices do rise. The council has also failed to explore just how detrimental this would really be, though it is implied that they want to avoid this scenario. If the measure is not taken and existing farmland is devleoped into housing, would the county need to start importing food from other regions? This could raise food prices in the area, which is a recurring cost that may outweigh the possible increase in housing costs due to the proposed measure. A cost benefit analysis including this factor must be conducted before the council makes a decision.
Finally, the council argues that their position is justified based on the examples of Chestnut and Pine counties. However, it is unclear to what extent their situations match Maple County's current case. Do those two counties have the same ratio of developed land to farmland and same housing demand? Are they neighbours to Maple County or in another country all together? Additionally, as their policies were put into place 10 and 15 years ago respectively, can their changes in housing prices be accounted for by any significant economic trends? The increase in prices over this long time period could come from inflation, an increase in immigrants, or an increase in inverstors investing in real estate. There is insufficient information to evaluate how relevant the Chestnut and Pine cases are to the local situation, it is possible that while Pine County's prices doubled over the 15 years, Maple's tripled even without the policity in place.
Thus, to fairly evaluate this prediction, the council would need to gather data about the general economic conditions, ratio of farmland to other undeveloped, unprotected land, demand for new housing, and other factors motivating this measure in Maple, Chestnut, and Pine counties. Based on this, the council would better be able to quantify their predicted housing price increase, if any, and explore options to mitigate this while the measure could still be enforced in order to protect the existing farmland.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 589 350
No. of Characters: 2969 1500
No. of Different Words: 259 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.926 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.041 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.536 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 228 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 175 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 114 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.609 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.111 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.696 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.327 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.507 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.084 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 310, Rule ID: NON3PRS_VERB[2]
Message: The pronoun 'they' must be used with a non-third-person form of a verb: 'neighbour'
Suggestion: neighbour
...mland and same housing demand? Are they neighbours to Maple County or in another country a...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, however, if, may, really, similarly, so, still, thus, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 22.0 12.9520958084 170% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 37.0 28.8173652695 128% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 72.0 55.5748502994 130% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3042.0 2260.96107784 135% => OK
No of words: 589.0 441.139720559 134% => OK
Chars per words: 5.16468590832 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.92639038232 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.63316344214 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 276.0 204.123752495 135% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.468590831919 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 935.1 705.55239521 133% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 7.0 1.67365269461 418% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 68.1517821222 57.8364921388 118% => OK
Chars per sentence: 132.260869565 119.503703932 111% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.6086956522 23.324526521 110% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.13043478261 5.70786347227 72% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.294268808625 0.218282227539 135% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0980413617351 0.0743258471296 132% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0916392200551 0.0701772020484 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.191234771208 0.128457276422 149% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0583926118668 0.0628817314937 93% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.7 14.3799401198 109% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.94 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.84 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 148.0 98.500998004 150% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.0 12.3882235529 153% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.