61–70 of 187 posts
California always amazes with its goals, decade after decade of leadership among the states. Building is promoted to improve affordability. Building is discouraged to preserve the environment and maintain a local culture. Building is promoted to provide new transportation options. Building is discouraged to reduce congestion, contain sprawl. Building and not building at the same time helps California maintain its uni…
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>> ...seen hundreds of properties for a fraction of Bay Area prices. Anything under 300K? How about 200K? A fraction of the Bay area doesn't necessarily mean affordable.
You look at, say, Fresno and there are properties for sale under $200K (although that's below the median of $300K+). I assume those are not the most attractive places but they certainly exist. That's the 5th most populous city in California so it's not exactly the middle of nowhere.
Anecdotally, a of my friend moved from the Bay Area to Fresno and explicitly claims it's in the middle of nowhere.
The part about increasing density near public transit was interesting. It's true that high density is a must to make public transit viable. However, I presume there is little vacant land near public transit. In that case, a mandate to increase density would be telling people to demolish and rebuild with higher density than what's there. If that's the case then the comparison to Putin might be justified - and perhaps…
It isn’t a mandate to increase density. The proposed law removes limits. It doesn’t mandate anything. Existing limits are preventing market forces from working. In Berkeley there is a subway station surrounded by a five-acre parking lot. The owner of the parking list wishes to build there, but the city refuses to rezone the land, which is presently “U - Unclassified”. This law would remove Berkeley’s authority in the…
Basically, the city outlaws any building taller than 40' above grade at its highest point. Between that, and minimum setbacks from the frontage line and other property lines, 90% of the work to prevent densification is already done. Once a building plan has grown to completely fill its legal envelope, there's nowhere else to go but down, and that becomes prohibitively expensive fast.
The remaining 10% can be handled by mandating a minimum square footage per residential unit that is slightly more than half the theoretical maximum from a building at maximum height and minimum height on the mean lot size for that zone. Then no amount of building up or out can allow you to squeeze another unit onto your property. You have to resort to tricks like lowering ceiling heights.
If you enact a law at the state level that triggers automatic lessening of restrictions on building heights or setbacks every time a municipality fails to grow enough housing, zoning boards will be a lot more tractable when a developer wants to build.
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It’s as though California is a giant state with a diverse population, both politically and geographically, with lots of competing interests that, over time, has gone through various political and leadership changes that reflect that diversity.
Apparently not, because 97% of the NIMBYs are winning.
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It isn’t a mandate to increase density. The proposed law removes limits. It doesn’t mandate anything. Existing limits are preventing market forces from working. In Berkeley there is a subway station surrounded by a five-acre parking lot. The owner of the parking list wishes to build there, but the city refuses to rezone the land, which is presently “U - Unclassified”. This law would remove Berkeley’s authority in the…
A very common limit around the entire US is the municipality-wide building height restriction. Basically, the city outlaws any building taller than 40' above grade at its highest point. Between that, and minimum setbacks from the frontage line and other property lines, 90% of the work to prevent densification is already done. Once a building plan has grown to completely fill its legal envelope, there's nowhere else t…
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So, a couple of questions: 1. What do you consider modest prices ? 2. What exactly do you do to check out the local real estate scene ? Because I recently left California to get off the street after moving around California a bit in search of affordable living and doing like 3 years of research, and my point of view and yours are so not on the same page, they aren't even in the same book.
He referred specifically to the California interior . Most counties not on the coast or bay have very affordable areas; I've driven the northern 2/3rds of I-5, most of US50, and all of I-80 in CA and seen hundreds of properties for a fraction of Bay Area prices. Things look different once outside of a Bay Area (or San Diego) bubble.
I would still be interested in the OPs answer. I wasn't just living on the coast or researching coastal communities before finally looking elsewhere and ultimately leaving.
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>> ...seen hundreds of properties for a fraction of Bay Area prices. Anything under 300K? How about 200K? A fraction of the Bay area doesn't necessarily mean affordable.
You look at, say, Fresno and there are properties for sale under $200K (although that's below the median of $300K+). I assume those are not the most attractive places but they certainly exist. That's the 5th most populous city in California so it's not exactly the middle of nowhere.
This is part of why I want details. I need a house under $100k. After looking at what that kind of money buys in Cali -- anywhere in Cali -- and looking at what it buys outside of Cali, I eventually concluded it made more sense to go elsewhere. If you can't afford at least $200k in Cali, you can expect it to be a shithole. It would undermine my fragile health and also need ten's of thousands of dollars worth of work. I am happy to buy a fixer, but not one that will ruin my health and my finances.
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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
For what it's worth, I partially agree with jnordwick's comment. I've noticed an uptick over the last couple of months in the comments that receive public callouts feeling ideological in nature. It may just be based on who flags posts, since a lot of non polemic low quality posts seem to go dead after a few hours without any flagging, but it may be worth looking into this pattern, because I imagine you don't want to…
Here is the last political story from yesterday where he reprimanded a commenter:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16349565
The comment is certainly more productive than many others, but it commits the sin of calling the article "Communist apologia" and dang jumped on it. (I flagged dang's scolding for being inappropriate.)
I think everyone's realizing that the solution to various housing crisis is to build more homes for all income levels. Artificially manipulating prices via rent control mechanisms; or only building homes for a specific income level doesn't work.
I disagree. The housing crisis is caused by economic inequality concentrating capital to a handful of cities. Housing costs rise because that's where the money/power/jobs are. Instead of slapping a bandaid on it by increasing housing(which would just lead to further capital concentration and political polarization), we need to address capital concentration. edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Wa…
The problem we’re trying to solve here is that people are artificially denied access to the (jobs, infrastructure, culture) benefits of concentrated capital.
If you think we shouldn’t have cities, that’s one thing. If you think they should be reserved exclusively for the people who already live in them, that’s quite another, and you’re simply creating a new form of structural inequality based on birthplace (even within the US).
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A very common limit around the entire US is the municipality-wide building height restriction. Basically, the city outlaws any building taller than 40' above grade at its highest point. Between that, and minimum setbacks from the frontage line and other property lines, 90% of the work to prevent densification is already done. Once a building plan has grown to completely fill its legal envelope, there's nowhere else t…
That's what SB827 does. If a property is within the given radius from a transit station or a high-frequency bus line, minimum height limits are imposed (between 45 and 85 feet, depending on other factors) and all design controls (parking requirements, floor area ratio, setbacks, bulk) are rendered ineffective.