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Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

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Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#151

Post by pjc50 »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #16

IMO, it's gotten bad enough in the Bay Area that local control of zoning ought to get abolished. Make a new regional zoning commission, put together some clear and consistent rules about what can be built and where, and rubber-stamp everything that meets those rules. Literal rubber-stamp here, as in "you give us an affidavit saying that your plan meets the specified rules, and you get a permit to build the same day,…

> if stuff gets falsified on the affidavit we go after you after-the-fact

You'd better be prepared to demolish a lot of buildings if you're going to play it that way. A developer can have the buildings up, sold, the money moved offshore and the shell company responsible for the building wound up before the court case about lying on the affidavit completes.

Also, you'd better have a plan to deal with the angry voters.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#152

Post by linkregister »

sbov wrote: post #130
beering wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't rent and a monthly mortgage end up being about the same? The value provided by one unit of housing to its tenants should be about the same as the value to an owner living there, so an investor buying a unit shouldn't expect to reap huge returns relative to someone buying a unit with a X0-year mortgage, right? I think owning property would be much more expensive than renting in the case where the value is bas…

In the last housing bubble rents and mortgages disconnected pretty severely. My friends and I were renting a million dollar house in Los Gatos for just $2400/month. Not sure how things are nowadays though.

In the overall Bay Area, rents are moving up with house prices. Median rent in Los Gatos is $5.5k per month.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#153

Post by [deleted] »

fmboingo wrote: post #131
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #16

IMO, it's gotten bad enough in the Bay Area that local control of zoning ought to get abolished. Make a new regional zoning commission, put together some clear and consistent rules about what can be built and where, and rubber-stamp everything that meets those rules. Literal rubber-stamp here, as in "you give us an affidavit saying that your plan meets the specified rules, and you get a permit to build the same day,…

I always find it interesting to hear what people believe they deserve. In these comments you can hear the "I deserve to live in a house with my family of 4 in Palo Alto". Do you really deserve that? Says who? That would be like me showing up in NYC and saying I deserve to live in a penthouse on 5th Ave. No I don't. There is plenty of wide open space outside the Bay Area.

[deleted]

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#154

Post by dalbasal »

fmboingo wrote: post #131
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #16

IMO, it's gotten bad enough in the Bay Area that local control of zoning ought to get abolished. Make a new regional zoning commission, put together some clear and consistent rules about what can be built and where, and rubber-stamp everything that meets those rules. Literal rubber-stamp here, as in "you give us an affidavit saying that your plan meets the specified rules, and you get a permit to build the same day,…

I always find it interesting to hear what people believe they deserve. In these comments you can hear the "I deserve to live in a house with my family of 4 in Palo Alto". Do you really deserve that? Says who? That would be like me showing up in NYC and saying I deserve to live in a penthouse on 5th Ave. No I don't. There is plenty of wide open space outside the Bay Area.

I suppose that's what this discussion is about. Who deserves what.

I don't think anyone really has suggestions that enable anyone to by a family home in Palo Alto. But, the question is do local residents deserve the right to keep out newcomers.

Who has what rights (who deserves what) is not an abstract truth we discover. It’s decisions we make.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#155

Post by thejteam »

tomcam wrote: post #37
cjensen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under existing rules, developers do not pay enough fees to allow the School Districts to build new schools to support the new housing. Now you'd like to rubber stamp this? For example there's a new development in Fremont of a few hundred houses: the school district had to zone it as "we'll provide school for you, but it'll be wherever we have space across the entire city." That's not good. To me the idiocy is this: t…

Wait, developers should pay for schools? What are property taxes for?

Where I live the developer has to pay an "impact fee" per unit as part of the permitting process that is supposed to offset the cost of road and school construction. Right now it is about 4500 for a single family home (in semi-rural Maryland).

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#156

Post by mamon »

It recently occurred to me that NIMBY policies probably are secretly promoted by US government as a way of protecting cities against nuclear attack: thanks to them cities get spread on the largest possible area, minimizing potential casualties and damages by exploding nukes.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#157

Post by wink »

joeframbach wrote: post #82
rebootthesystem wrote: post #20

Rule number one of using acronyms: Do not assume everyone knows what they mean. NIMBY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY

You've gotta live under a nice large rock if you're on HN and you don't know NIMBY.

Not everyone is American.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#158

Post by hpaavola »

timr wrote: post #138
skewart wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is 99% developed. Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco. Just because there's already, say, a parking lot or a Burger King with a drive-through on a block in the city doesn't mean that it wouldn't be possible to build apartments there instead. Geography and existing land use do not prevent building more housing in SF. Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason w…

"Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco." "Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason why the housing supply is so restricted." Prove your claim. The GP is right that there is essentially no undeveloped land in SF; a huge part of the housing moratorium debate centered on the fact that there are only a half-dozen or so vacant parcels in the Mission. This is true across th…

"or the owner of the land doesn't want to redevelop it"

I don't know the English terms here, but that kind of situation where individuals are earning massive profits because everybody else built city around them, is just wrong. That unearned rise in the property value should be taxed away.

So, just zone more apartments in that area and put big enough property tax on underdeveloped land area. That way the economic incentive of the property owner aligns with the interest of the whole city.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#159

Post by solatic »

pjc50 wrote: post #151
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #16

IMO, it's gotten bad enough in the Bay Area that local control of zoning ought to get abolished. Make a new regional zoning commission, put together some clear and consistent rules about what can be built and where, and rubber-stamp everything that meets those rules. Literal rubber-stamp here, as in "you give us an affidavit saying that your plan meets the specified rules, and you get a permit to build the same day,…

> if stuff gets falsified on the affidavit we go after you after-the-fact You'd better be prepared to demolish a lot of buildings if you're going to play it that way. A developer can have the buildings up, sold, the money moved offshore and the shell company responsible for the building wound up before the court case about lying on the affidavit completes. Also, you'd better have a plan to deal with the angry voters.

Precisely this. Especially in a market with a humongous appetite for development like the Bay Area, if you unleash the flood gates, you're going to get a lot of charlatans who cut dangerous corners, and they will mysteriously disappear before they will be held to account. In the meantime, their victims will pay the price, either in blood or in the financial losses incurred from losing property that must be destroyed because it's unsafe.

Regulation isn't so much the problem as regulation which is slow to the point where it effectively kills development. There is a balance.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#160

Post by muninn_ »

wbl wrote: post #127
muninn_ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how many people are going to move there to live in a bus? I certainly wouldn't. If property values get too high I'll just not move there. I don't understand this mentality where everybody thinks they should be able to afford to live in the best cities in the country, especially in California. It's just simple supply and demand. If housing prices get too high and people can't afford to live there they will live so…

Why should existing residents have the power to prohibit the construction of apartment buildings, duplexes, and town houses by their neighbors?

Why shouldn't they?
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