Build up, not out.
Easy solution.
A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed
71–80 of 111 posts
Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prop 13 is the big elephant in the room. Repealing Prop 13 and rent control would probably align everybody's incentives to keep housing "affordable". Owners would probably welcome higher density housing to help keep property taxes down. Renters would likewise welcome more housing to increase the rental supply. However, there doesn't really seem to be a way to actually repeal any of these laws.
Problem being, a lot of people would get absolutely screwed by that, and end up losing their home. There needs to be a way to fix that, without going back to the original problem Prop 13 was intended to fix, which was people being unable to afford the property tax on homes that they had been living in forever.
Why wouldn't phasing it out across 10 to 15 year period to mitigate the effects, not take care of the bulk of the problem?
If we'd begun a phase out in 2000, during the height of the tech boom, then by now Prop 13 would be gone and the housing situation would be much different.
Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Either way it's for them to assess, not you. Until the state decides to apply eminent domain so more people can better use the space available. > As if they have some inalienable right to live in places like Brisbane. As if anyone had an inalienable right not to have neighbors.
With attitudes like this, why wouldn't the existing owners feel their existing way of life is being threatened? Not everyone loves living in a high-density environment, and some people would tend to want their community and home to have the same properties that made it attractive to them in the first place. When you suddenly get an influx of new population that wants to change the character of a community and starts…
> Not everyone loves living in a high-density environment
No one is suggesting that Brisbane should be paved and turned into Manhattan. People are asking Brisbane to approve development in some fallow fields. Brisbane residents (like many of the small towns in the Bay) benefit financially from office space, but pass the buck on housing those employees to other municipalities.
Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed
#74Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed
#75I think the issue as it stands is that the current residents have only 2 options:
A.) Approve high density housing and then see the value of their current house drop (and rental income drop if they are landlords) and their schools, grocery stores, parks, open space, parking, favorite restaurants, fitness centers and traffic become all be super crowded
B.) Approve high density office and then see the value of their current house skyrocket, see additional community benefits from developer concessions and no impact to their current community amenities.
What happens if the developer proposed a third option of profit sharing so the current residents each benefit as individuals:
C.) Build high density housing and high density office and give a significant share of the profits to the existing residents. For 4400 units, the profits could easily be in the $500M to $1B range. With only ~2350 (4700/2) households, profit sharing of $50 to $100K per household would be $120M to $235M. That could be a nice down payment for a house in the Central Valley if they want to have that small town feel. Profit sharing on the annual office rent could also provide some UBI income for the residents and keep apartment rents stable.
Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed
#76I think the issue as it stands is that the current residents have only 2 options: A.) Approve high density housing and then see the value of their current house drop (and rental income drop if they are landlords) and their schools, grocery stores, parks, open space, parking, favorite restaurants, fitness centers and traffic become all be super crowded B.) Approve high density office and then see the value of their cu…
> B.) Approve high density office and then see the value of their current house skyrocket, see additional community benefits from developer concessions and no impact to their current community amenities.
The state of California needs some sort of Beds for Butts in Office Chairs legislation. Want to build office space and expand your tax base? Pony up the space to house those employees.
Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prop 13 is the big elephant in the room. Repealing Prop 13 and rent control would probably align everybody's incentives to keep housing "affordable". Owners would probably welcome higher density housing to help keep property taxes down. Renters would likewise welcome more housing to increase the rental supply. However, there doesn't really seem to be a way to actually repeal any of these laws.
Problem being, a lot of people would get absolutely screwed by that, and end up losing their home. There needs to be a way to fix that, without going back to the original problem Prop 13 was intended to fix, which was people being unable to afford the property tax on homes that they had been living in forever.
> Problem being, a lot of people would get absolutely screwed by that, and end up losing their home.
Would there be many? Certainly, there were some cases pre-prop 13, but prop 13 wasn't narrowly focussed on protecting homeowners. Those were exploited as pretext, they weren't the motivation.
And you could make it protect homeowners while fixing the local government incentives by providing a refundable state income tax credit for 100% of the property tax due to assessed value increases beyond the existing Prop 13 limits. You could do this without or without, modifying the 1% fixed rate.
If you don't want that big of a subsidy, you could just allow homeowners to defer without penalty the excess amount until transfer of the property. Still stops people from being priced out of their homes.
Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
A "small town" ... 7 miles from the center of a major global city and metro area ... even closer to a major international airport. These people are assholes.
There's nothing wrong with small villages 7 miles from a major city or even a capital city, if the principal city is built properly. If you walk 7 miles from the center of Zurich, Switzerland you'll probably find yourself in the middle of a vineyard or pasture.
You can find both grazing cows and vineyards WITHIN the city limits of Zurich, less than 3 miles from the center.
Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed
#79I think the issue as it stands is that the current residents have only 2 options: A.) Approve high density housing and then see the value of their current house drop (and rental income drop if they are landlords) and their schools, grocery stores, parks, open space, parking, favorite restaurants, fitness centers and traffic become all be super crowded B.) Approve high density office and then see the value of their cu…
> B.) Approve high density office and then see the value of their current house skyrocket, see additional community benefits from developer concessions and no impact to their current community amenities. The state of California needs some sort of Beds for Butts in Office Chairs legislation. Want to build office space and expand your tax base? Pony up the space to house those employees.
Agreed! Even then though you still need to get it past the existing NIMBY population. I think buying them out via cash payments is really the only way to get existing NIMBYs on board with high density residential units which were not zoned when the bought into the community.
Basically the issue is that the developers are changing the rules of the game AFTER the existing NIMBYs bought into the community.
Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Either way it's for them to assess, not you. Until the state decides to apply eminent domain so more people can better use the space available. > As if they have some inalienable right to live in places like Brisbane. As if anyone had an inalienable right not to have neighbors.
With attitudes like this, why wouldn't the existing owners feel their existing way of life is being threatened? Not everyone loves living in a high-density environment, and some people would tend to want their community and home to have the same properties that made it attractive to them in the first place. When you suddenly get an influx of new population that wants to change the character of a community and starts…
I agree. When someone moves to a small town by choice there is nothing wrong with wanting it to remain similar as longs the majority of residents like it that way.
There are many new residents to San Francisco that also prefer living there over places like Manhattan precisely because they enjoy open spaces and non-overbearing buildings. Suppose these new tech employees finally convince housing changes and get some condo buildings put in place of the single residence structures. Fast forward 50 years and now the newest generation that wants to move to the city asks these condo building to be replaced with Tokyo style super dense micro-apartment buildings. Those condo owning old-timers might resist that, no?
And yes, I too fail to see the need for the centralized tech hubs that created this dynamic. Spread it out or build new hubs where land is cheap.