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A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed

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Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed

#101

Post by thephyber »

s73ver wrote: post #64
kqr2 wrote: post #50

Earlier 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.

It's fine to examine the negative effects of repeal, but you also have to consider the negative effects of not repealing.

Prop13 is a monster that will continue to exacerbate inequality. Families that owned homes in affluent areas pre-1970 will continue to pay artificially suppressed property tax rates in perpetuity, so long as they only transfer the house within their immediate family. In that way, Prop13 is a perverse incentive to suppress real estate transactions, which exacerbates the real estate issues we already have.

Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed

#102

Post by zaroth »

thephyber wrote: post #100
zaroth wrote: post #90

How can 4,400 homes net only $1 million in property taxes? Tell me where I can sign up to pay $227 in annual property taxes!

As mentioned elsewhere, gross is not net. Once you factor in city services costs for those new residents, the net change is far lower than the gross property taxes per new resident.

Ah, well in that case, property taxes in theory should be neting exactly $0! The government isn't supposed to be for-profit after all...

Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed

#103

Post by true_religion »

closeparen wrote: post #93
true_religion wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider, the discussion of San Fransisco housing seems incredibly polarized. Are advocates of new housing talking about disenfranchising their parents, grandparents, and older aunts and uncles? Are they actually talking about tearing down their old family homes that they grew up in and putting up apartment complexes instead? If so then... wow that's a level of forward-thinking that's truly rare. If not ... the…

You don't get to criticize us for being temporary when it is the policies you write that force us out. And yes, if for some reason millions of people wanted to move to Wisconsin, I'd rather they built on the site of my family home than lived in RVs and mega-commuted. People's well being matters more than the sentimental value of manufactured goods. I didn't win the genetic lottery to be born in a place with economic…

People's wellbeing would be served equally well by the California government designating land for development outside of the intractable San Fran polity, and encouraging tech companies, restaurants, and commercial entities to invest in the area.

The essence of democracy is allowing people to determine their own future, not forcing it upon them due to outside interests.

We aren't 14th century serfs, and closer to home---we aren't waitresses, maintenance workers, or migrant farmers. We are tech workers in a market were demand vastly outstrips demand, so the notion that we are forced to move to San Francisco alone for work lacks perspective.

People want to live in San Fran, not merely because of work, but because of the character of the city, the trendy restaurants, etc. People want San Fran for its luxuries, and its that which I do not believe trumps the ownership stakes of the residents whom already live there.

Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed

#104

Post by closeparen »

true_religion wrote: post #103
closeparen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to criticize us for being temporary when it is the policies you write that force us out. And yes, if for some reason millions of people wanted to move to Wisconsin, I'd rather they built on the site of my family home than lived in RVs and mega-commuted. People's well being matters more than the sentimental value of manufactured goods. I didn't win the genetic lottery to be born in a place with economic…

People's wellbeing would be served equally well by the California government designating land for development outside of the intractable San Fran polity, and encouraging tech companies, restaurants, and commercial entities to invest in the area. The essence of democracy is allowing people to determine their own future, not forcing it upon them due to outside interests. We aren't 14th century serfs, and closer to home…

A local's desire for a quiet street doesn't morally outweigh another American's desire to live on that street.

>The essence of democracy is allowing people to determine their own future

Precisely! We The People determined that it would be our future to have freedom of movement, via the Privileges and Immunities Clause. When we ratified the 14th Amendment, we further reiterated that every American citizen is entitled to equal status under state laws.

That's why prosperous cities resist growth through ham-fisted but plausibly-deniable proxy measures like zoning, rent control, and environmental review. Their goals could be achieved with more elegance and fewer damaging side effects by establishing immigration controls, but they can't, because the American community says that's off-limits.

Subsets of America closing themselves off is a perversion of the right to self-determination, same as it is when people and corporations decide not to pay their federal taxes. It doesn't matter that San Franciscans don't want more neighbors, any more than it matters that the tax evader wants to keep his income. The democratic process ordained that you have to share.

Americans trying to move around America are not outside interests, they are members of the community. Local NIMBY policies transfer wealth to small subsets while harming the community in aggregate, which is right down the middle of behaviors that governments should and usually do shut down.

As people with disposable income, tech workers find a way: redirect some of it to rent. The real victims of opportunity hoarding are the others in the economically stagnant towns we come from would like to follow us but can't. And of course, locals who remain subject to the pressure-cooker housing market, because NIMBY policies are imperfect and ensnare some natives too (those who didn't lock in rent control or mortgages in time).

Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed

#105

Post by closeparen »

DanAndersen wrote: post #69
rbanffy wrote: post #62

Earlier 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…

Flooding as quickly as possible into hyper-connected and rapidly changing beehives of activity ("cities") is one of thew few constants of the history of human civilization.

The absurdity is that we have such low need for agricultural labor, and such sophisticated technology for skyscrapers and subways, and still live so far from each other, in such small clusters. The absurdity is that there are still, in 2017, substantial numbers of humans that don't live in major cities.

Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed

#106

Post by closeparen »

pizzetta wrote: post #85
deathanatos wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (as someone who supports building more in the Bay Area) don't want the onus to be just on Brisbane. I want it to be on the whole Bay Area , and all of its townships. That one of the major issues I think the Bay Area faces: each township passes the buck to the next: "Why should we build housing, when township X is completely unwilling to do so?" Yes, and they say the same thing about you! With this attitude, nothing…

I think we should recognize that SF and Brisbane are not in the same league. Anything Brisbane would build would be a drop in the bucket. SF can potentially add a hundred thousand units --two hundred thousand units, no problem without changing the character from village to full-blown city. 4,00 units more than doubles the pop of Brisbane. If we added 200,000 units to _only_ SF, that would add 25% to their pop. Anothe…

Oakland seems to be approving residential towers at a decent clip. I'm not sure it belongs in the same breath as SF and SJ.

Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed

#107

Post by DrScump »

oneshot908 wrote: post #97
DrScump wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sensible urban planning Downtown San Jose ? Are you serious? Try walking downtown on a typical evening. Say, Market to 6th, Santa Clara St. to, say, Reed. Feel the vibe. Research how many businesses (restaurants, bars, clubs, shops) have failed there even during the "recovery". Then do the same in downtown Santa Clara. Then Willow Glen (Lincoln Ave). Then Mountain View (Castro St.). Then Palo Alto (University Ave). A…

It's funny, because you're dead-on about this IMO. Individual cities responding individually to the commuter calamity of the South Bay have done a better job than any high-fallutin' 20-year plan could have. As for downtown San Jose, it looks like it's about to get a lot better if Google follows through on building a campus there. Meanwhile in my hometown of Santa Cruz, it's bums, needles, and out of business signs th…

  if Google follows through on building a campus there
I wouldn't count on that. They just bought (final) some $600 million worth of real estate in North Sunnyvale.

Those parcels in San Jose were originally acquired for the ballpark that never happened, either. I suspect they offered them to Google at far below their value, as with the A's.

Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed

#108

Post by glibgil »

getemback wrote: post #56
glibgil wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the town. That's the industrial park. The town is just south of there. It's made up of houses, not warehouses. Even including the industrial park, Brisbane is small, a town, not sprawling, and is completely detached from SF by water and a couple miles of rail yards. Tunnel Ave is really long and no one drives on it. It is effectively a country road that leads from SF to Brisbane. Go drive it or bike it or…

You obviously have no idea what the boundaries of Brisbane are.

Here you go. It's EXACTLY as I described. http://www.zipmap.net/California/San_Mateo_County/Brisbane.h...

Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed

#109

Post by rbanffy »

santaclaus wrote: post #73
DanAndersen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but pass the buck on housing those employees to other municipalities.

And this is the key argument to be made here. Building stores and offices has a cost - the people who work on those offices and stores must be housed somewhere. A regional empty homes/unhoused inhabitant number could be used to guide a global rule for new developments. If you want to build offices at some place, you need to build k * offices houses at a nearby location.

Re: A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed

#110

Post by mylons »

chaostheory wrote: post #60
mylons wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the quote from Michele Solomon of Brisbane is disgusting.

She may have worded it poorly, but here's the context: > Still, some Brisbane residents say they don’t trust regulators will get it right, because what’s known about the toxicity of chemicals can change over time. Even though they won’t live in the Baylands, opponents believe they have a responsibility to shield those who might. I don't agree with them but that's still a valid concern

"fuck you, I got mine." that is what she's saying.
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