Like many other problems in California, this one can be largely traced back to a single source: Proposition 13
Which was created to combat the problem of grandma kicked out of her house because she can't afford her property taxes. How do you get around that?
Increased density to reduce the upward pressure on the housing market. Basically you have enough homes so the prices don't get bid up to insane levels.
It's basic economics. If you have a somewhat fixed demand and artificially restrict supply, the price is going to shoot through the roof.
So how does the process of adding housing units work? If there's space as the article claims, and plenty of demand, whats holding things up? Bureaucracy? I'd like to see reasonable prices sometime in my life !
This is a complex question, but here are some resources to get started: http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/hou... http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/
What's wrong with knocking down existing houses? If the homeowners want to sell to developers that will build higher-density housing on their land, what exactly is the problem? I mean, probably every dense neighborhood in the world was at one time lower-density, and had its old buildings knocked down and replaced. This isn't anything new.
I didn't say there's anything wrong with that but it's certainly a hurdle to clear (what if one person refuses to sell?).
Then the developers offer the holdouts more money. If that doesn't work, they buy homes in a slightly different part of the city to develop on. This is how it works in parts of the countries with looser zoning regulations on density, and it works just fine.
Which was created to combat the problem of grandma kicked out of her house because she can't afford her property taxes. How do you get around that?
She can take the payout and buy some place more affordable, perhaps even an apartment in the building that replaces her house. Not the best outcome for her, I'm sure, but beats the hell out of starving municipal and state governments of revenue, broken infrastructure, and forcing everyone else to pay extortionate rents and mortgages just to live there. If the law allows it and the regulatory compliance costs are low…
Any argument that boils down to "grandma should move to make room for the techies" lacks perspective and will never gain any political traction. Moving is not just something you "do" after building a life somewhere for 40 years.
Allow residents of those existing houses to add additional floors, convert garages, add a granny flat, et cetera. Large parts of Boston consist of nothing but 3-story, 3-unit apartments, often with a live-in landlord, and it's quite dense.
I don't think there's enough people in the valley with the money and the desire to convert and rent out part of their house to do much of anything about the demand.
I disagree, but either way, looser zoning would allow it to happen, not force it to happen. If people don't want to sell, well, nobody would make them.
Could you pack people into shared flat- without them noticing? As in - selfre-arranging Walls and Furniture, and Set-Furniture (Kitchen/Bathroom) that quietly pops up even before the user arrives?
Why are people so adamantly opposed to density? Well, I know the reason is to prop up the value of their homes, but if you think about places like New York, London, and Paris, that argument doesn't exactly hold. Those cities are incredibly dense and expensive, but people love living there enough to pay the high prices. People who can live anywhere choose to live there. I'm willing to bet that SV could triple its popu…
I think it's a question of local optimization. New housing units increase supply and lower the clearing price. Once people move in, new amenities such as more and better cultural institutions, restaurants, hobbyist clubs, retail establishments, public transit systems, etc. become feasible. So in the long run, the city becomes more civilized and desirable. Clearing price goes up relative to regions that are less-developed. But generally speaking people tend to make short-term and selfish decisions rather than thinking about what could be if many people behave altruistically, forgoing short-term gains and temporary inconveniences in order to reap long-term benefits (global optimization).