97% of California Cities Failed to Meet State Housing Goals

Post by phkahler » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

ebikelaw wrote: post #42

phkahler wrote: post #25

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…

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

adrianmonk wrote: post #161

eweise wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people view their home as part of their retirement plan. Buy house, raise kids, retire and sell house. Buy new house outside of work center. House prices in places like Redding CA are in the 200K range. Same house in the bay area is around 1million.

What advantage does that offer compared to just having cheaper housing and putting the difference in other investments? To me it certainly seems worse than other retirement approaches. You are forced into making a single asset a huge percentage of your net worth, which utterly destroys your diversification. Real estate is also notoriously illiquid, so if something forces you out of the area, you could take an enormou…

Post by YokoZar » Wed, Feb 14, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

DataWorker wrote: post #59

gwbas1c wrote: post #43

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.

Markets don’t restrict themselves based on the income level of buyers. As long as there are more people who want to come to California than there are houses, all house prices will increase. You can build a cheap home, but unless you means test buyers, it could be purchased by Bill Gates and rented out for twice the mortgage rate.

Post by gwbas1c » Thu, Feb 15, 2018, 3:14 PM UTC

tmh79 wrote: post #100

rsync wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think everyone's realizing that the solution to various housing crisis is to build more homes for all income levels." Of course this is correct. However, it is also correct that many, many of these are badly mischaracterized as "crises". It is not a crisis that you cannot afford to live in Aspen. It is not a crisis that you cannot afford an apartment in the very specific neighborhood in the very specific borough o…

it is a crisis that cities like Cupertino are building office space for 12k workers, but not building housing for them. It is a crisis that the bay area has created office space for 8 new jobs for every 1 new unit of housing built.