Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by narrowrail » Wed, May 10, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #234

azernik wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really are. At least in California. One of many ways in which local government here is fucked up.

More like a common gripe for people who don't understand the role of government or the fungibility of money. My first political season spent in California I was shocked at how in the discourse some people used the phrase "general fund" as shorthand for political wrongdoing without any further elaboration. Ok, they pool the money, so what? If they spend the money for something else, we the people are still receiving g…

Most of my fellow classical liberals don't have an issue with state populations choosing to grow state governments, just the federal government (this fact is often overlooked by people who have not taken the time to understand the classical liberal point of view).

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

#282

Post by crowbahr » Wed, May 10, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

hkmurakami wrote: post #258

_archon_ wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like the sort of behavior which can be disincentivized with steep fines. You, a developer, built a large building not to code? You have to pay to have it re-worked, and in addition you pay the local town $1000 per domicile affected per day it's delayed. Made-up example, but you get the idea.

Createdmall development company, take the contract, deliver faulty building, accept payment, pay out funds to employees (subcontractors) and owners of the company, shut down company if the district comes after them. It would incentivize his sort of behavior too.

Also known as "Whoopsies I went bankrupt sorry!"

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

#283

Post by ThrustVectoring » Wed, May 10, 2017, 6:24 PM UTC

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #192

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 That would likely lead to a solution that's actually worse than the problem. Court cases to resolve these violations will take years to adjudicate and will in most situations lead to a settlement that still fucks over those who were victimized. A better approach would be to reform our legal system so that it isn't and/or hire more court employe…

Waiting in lines and paying by spending time is what you get when you can't pay for a service by spending money. The alternative is that the poor can't afford access to the legal system.

Basically, the wait is serving an important role in making court expensive in an egalitarian way.

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

#284

Post by ThrustVectoring » Wed, May 10, 2017, 6:27 PM UTC

coredog64 wrote: post #204

rplst8 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at all the 3 or 4 stories apartment buildings sprouting in the city right now. Most of them could be double the height without increasing construction costs per unit. I'm not sure that's correct. I think the reason that you see a lot at that height is because building codes change quite a bit as you go past a certain height and the costs go up as well.

IIRC, 3 stories is about the max that US building codes allow for stick built structures. Beyond that you have to go to steel. 3-4 is also where you need to start thinking about adding an elevator. That adds to the cost and reduces the area available for units.

AFAK this is what the codes are. When I see building frames under construction, I see an awful lot of "three floors of wood framing above a steel base" (usually mixed-use commercial 1st floor with residential above, but I'm assuming things here)

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

#285

Post by roughcoat » Wed, May 10, 2017, 6:29 PM UTC

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #187

mathperson wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it 100 a year? that seems quite affordable to me even if someone is making 8 dollars an hour.

It's not, though. I once observed that a few of my college-aged friends were subsisting on canned tomatoes and beans, and struggling to make ends meet. I suggested that they use my Costco membership to buy a months worth of supplies at once for roughly half to two-thirds or what they were spending. They patiently explained to me that part of why they lived this way was because they were already barely living within t…

Being poor is expensive, indeed. Most people don't realize that until they experience it. If they ever do.

If you never have much surplus money, you can rarely if ever do the things that save money in the long term. You can't invest in good clothes or household goods that might cost twice as much, but last more than five times as long as what you can afford, for example. You can't buy a freezer and stock up on food when it's on sale, or cook large cheap meals and freeze them to free up time later. Often, things like good benefits from banks and credit card companies are simply not available to you. Et cetera.

Obviously things like being unable to afford preventative health care and sort of health maintenance stuff like checkups and new glasses and so on can lead to much more expensive problems down the road. "Noncritical" health services like dental and vision are big things there. It's not like you can get a root canal or new glasses at the ER.

And it's very difficult to fight back against mistakes other people make that screw you over when you have few resources on hand. Problems with your bank? In my experience, if you have money a bank is a lot more likely to help you than if you're poor. I was treated a lot better when I had thousands of dollars in the bank than I am now, when I'm scraping by. And that's if you can even open a bank account at a reputable establishment at all. That is not a given.

Then there's renting vs owning property. Owning property isn't for everyone perhaps, but if you're handy and don't need to pay a professional to do everything the house needs, it's a lot cheaper to own than rent. Plus there's the general freedom you have on your own property vs rented property which opens all kinds of doors for saving money or just better quality of life in general.

Having money means you have the freedom to live very frugally by making smart choices and thinking long term. Not having money in the bank, free to spend on the right investments and opportunities, makes that enormously more difficult. And it's only getting worse with time.

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

#286

Post by enf » Wed, May 10, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

ericd wrote: post #177

enf wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rezoning gives nothing but the right to rebuild your own property as you wish to. No one is being forced to sell.

I think it depends on how strict the zoning is. The US has a tendency for relatively strict command economy style exclusive zoning.

That is still a permission to build, not an obligation to build, no matter how strict the zoning is.

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

#287

Post by ThrustVectoring » Wed, May 10, 2017, 6:46 PM UTC

rplst8 wrote: post #279

CuriouslyC wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should society subsidize someone using a piece of land, when another potential tenant will pay taxes on its true value? The government has to fund itself, so a reduction in property taxes means increases in other taxes. If the replacement taxes apply to everyone equally, that means wealth is effectively being transferred from average people (who are likely in debt with little savings) to people who completely own…

> Why should society subsidize someone using a piece of land, when another potential tenant will pay taxes on its true value? Subsidize? I think your concept of private property rights is under developed.

They're subsidized by building infrastructure. If the state builds a bridge that allows a homeowner in town A to commute to work to town B, this directly increases the land value in town A. The state paid for this bridge, not the homeowner. This is what the subsidy is - having access to state-provided infrastructure by virtue of location. Why should the homeowner have exclusive right to that increase in land value?

This is the gigantic pitfall of overly-individualistic property rights - that socially beneficial infrastructure development doesn't happen, because nobody has the power to siphon off enough of the value created to make it worth doing.

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

#288

Post by ThrustVectoring » Wed, May 10, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

rplst8 wrote: post #184

hpaavola wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 inc…

> That unearned rise in the property value should be taxed away. That is so wrongheaded I don't know where to start. Increasing property taxes is the exact reason you have older folks be forced out of their homes after having lived there most of their life. No one should have a continuously growing tax burden over time.

This idea is pretty hard to square with economic incentives for infrastructure development. If the state builds a freeway or a fire station or other development, one major effect is that it enables a lot of valuable economic development. For public goods, it's hard to capture that value - even though it makes society better off, it's not worthwhile for any one economic actor to do it.

Property taxes (specifically on the unimproved value of the land) offers a way out of this dilemma. If you can do more valuable economic activity with a piece of land, you can and should pay more for it, so it'll be worth more. So if you spend $10MM/yr in financing for building a bridge, and it increases land value in the catchment area by $100MM, and you have a 12% land-value tax, the state responsible makes more money.

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

#289

Post by dang » Wed, May 10, 2017, 7:11 PM UTC

akvadrako wrote: post #147

dang wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't break the HN guidelines by downvote-baiting. Also, please don't unsubstantive, provocative comments; that's a trollish combination. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304869 and marked it off-topic.

I thought the top-level comment made a good point and your reply is just snarky. Maybe you should follow your own advice.

I'll try!

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

#290

Post by ThrustVectoring » Wed, May 10, 2017, 7:18 PM UTC

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.

Obvious-to-me solution: developers can't sell the building until the information in the affidavit gets verified. Basically, the entire scope of my proposal is to turn the "am I allowed to build here?" question into something that can be determined without the uncertainty of "how much effort will the local community put into fucking with the project".