Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
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Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
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Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#2I shared this because it's the best concise summary of many things that are going wrong with housing in the bay area that I've read in a while.
I'm on the Strong Towns board (though I didn't write the article). Happy to answer questions if anyone has them.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#3It's being overdone. A solid wall of railroad flats (cheezy "luxury" condos) is going up for miles along the Caltrain tracks. Those wooden multistory buildings are the slums of tomorrow.
It's about time for the next Bay Area recession. Some of those buildings will never be fully occupied. Remember 2008? 2001?
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#4It's being overdone. A solid wall of railroad flats (cheezy "luxury" condos) is going up for miles along the Caltrain tracks. Those wooden multistory buildings are the slums of tomorrow. It's about time for the next Bay Area recession. Some of those buildings will never be fully occupied. Remember 2008? 2001?
> Some of those buildings will never be fully occupied. Remember 2008? 2001?
Aren't those buildings fully occupied today?
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#5It's being overdone. A solid wall of railroad flats (cheezy "luxury" condos) is going up for miles along the Caltrain tracks. Those wooden multistory buildings are the slums of tomorrow. It's about time for the next Bay Area recession. Some of those buildings will never be fully occupied. Remember 2008? 2001?
Haha - only someone in the bay area would say something like this.
I used to live in the "slums" of the bay area back in 2008. Trust me - by now even those slum houses are going for at least 2008 prices before crash and better and the neighborhood I lived in in SF is crazy expensive.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#6"Two others (out of five) had recused themselves because they own property within 1000 feet of the proposed project, and those recusals apparently counted as "no" votes."
I wonder: did they just not know the rules? Or was this a cowardly way to vote no without _actually_ voting no: it seems like if you really wanted to recuse in this situation, you just agree to do paired voting, one no and one yes.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#7It's being overdone. A solid wall of railroad flats (cheezy "luxury" condos) is going up for miles along the Caltrain tracks. Those wooden multistory buildings are the slums of tomorrow. It's about time for the next Bay Area recession. Some of those buildings will never be fully occupied. Remember 2008? 2001?
I am about to move into one of those and the demand seems very high... very crowded open houses and hopefully sometime before then there will be a sort of zoning/regulatory intervention and developers can finally start building highrise luxury condos
If you want to see slums I can share some pins of places in the East Bay and the hinterlands of SF, and you can tell me if you think midrise condos on the caltrain/camino real corridor in the peninsula will ever look like that. I'll even take out a 15 year bet with you
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#8It's being overdone. A solid wall of railroad flats (cheezy "luxury" condos) is going up for miles along the Caltrain tracks. Those wooden multistory buildings are the slums of tomorrow. It's about time for the next Bay Area recession. Some of those buildings will never be fully occupied. Remember 2008? 2001?
> It's about time for the next Bay Area recession. Some of those buildings will never be fully occupied. Remember 2008? 2001?
Yeah, and every office park that felt empty in the fallout of 2008 is now bursting with businesses and people. Why are you so worried about the threat of a recession and unoccupied land that you don't want to add housing in a region with record homelessness numbers? This feels extremely conservative.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#9"Two others (out of five) had recused themselves because they own property within 1000 feet of the proposed project, and those recusals apparently counted as "no" votes." I wonder: did they just not know the rules? Or was this a cowardly way to vote no without _actually_ voting no: it seems like if you really wanted to recuse in this situation, you just agree to do paired voting, one no and one yes.
Yes, this seems like a critical part of the story. I take it the actual vote was 2-1 in favor of the permit, but you need at least 3 votes to pass something in San Bruno, no matter what? If so, the city council's rules don't deal appropriately with recusal and those should be changed ASAP.
At the same time, whether or not this project succeeded or failed, the larger story about how hard it is to build housing remains fundamentally true (and broken).
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#10I shared this because it's the best concise summary of many things that are going wrong with housing in the bay area that I've read in a while. I'm on the Strong Towns board (though I didn't write the article). Happy to answer questions if anyone has them.
Is housing "going wrong" simply because it is expensive? Maybe it is overall a good thing that tech companies are now expanding into cities outside the bay area due to high housing costs.
At least housing prices are transparent to those thinking about moving in to the bay area, allowing them to make an informed decision. High traffic, insufficient public transit capacity, and over-capacity public services are less transparent. If we build more housing, do we just push problems elsewhere?
How do we determine the optimal amount of new housing?