Local leaders aren’t used to looking at thinking about the needs of their community in terms of age, but they should.

Consider how all of us benefit society. In our young lives we symbolize hope and optimism. As enter our working years we keep the engines of industry and commerce going. As we enter our golden age we can share wisdom and a less harried calm with our fellow man.

At least that’s the way it is in a perfect world. In real life everyone struggles to get by and we compete for finite resources to improve the lives of our families — whichever age we fall into.

That’s why good zoning is so important. A community with mostly children may forget its seniors. A community with mostly seniors may forget its children. Communities which favor one group or another do so at their collective peril.

Consider Brown Deer for instance. A village of 12,000 in Milwaukee’s northern suburbs has, over the last 10 years built two very large apartment buildings with the requirement that they be only used for senior living. Another is being built on one of their last few parcels — changing it from commercial to residential.

But why is this not good?

Although we all have needs as human beings, we are not all treated the same by our government. Consider this — children do not have the right to vote. They rely entirely on others for their livelihood. Our taxes pay for schools and everyone pays. Seniors do not have the same ability to productively work at the same level as their younger years. Both groups, our young and our old need some sort of aid. Just as children have schools, seniors are the beneficiaries of medicare and social security. But a key difference in both of these groups is that seniors get to vote and that vote, when it comes to children, is cast locally and since schools are a local issue and taxed locally, the decisions of seniors can be the deciding factor.

As a side note, social security and medicare are paid federally zoning does not come into play.

Communities like Brown Deer who haphazardly approve housing which favors one age group over another do so at their own peril. In Brown Deer, school referrendums have gone down in flames in large part because of an organized senior population which has united to oppose additional school spending.

Young people who are looking for a new home want the best for their children. They are looking for a home in a community with good schools. Communities which reject school spending will have fewer young people wanting to purchase homes in those communities. That will drive down property values which in turn will increase the burden of essential services on those who remain.