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California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

nytimes.com

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Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#91

Post by majormajor »

pound wrote: post #84
majormajor wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really wouldn't. Not any time soon. A developer being able to build a 4-unit place on top of a single family home would increase the value of that land cause now they can sell it to four times as many people. So it's gonna be that much harder for a "regular" person to buy anything in the short term.

not sure what exactly is 'short term' here, but simple example re. supply and demand and prices: 1) there is a 100 single family homes somewhere. 2) there are 300 people looking who need to live in that somewhere 3) on top of 100 single family homes now we have 400 units built .. Can it be that price of the units for sale may get reduced for competitiveness?

The price the NIMBY in the parent's example would care about is the price of the SFH they already owned. That price goes up - it's now harder to find SFHs, and the land value is also increased because it could be turned into 4 units that will add up to more value than the prior 1.

https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2020-01-3...

Here's an agent discussing this happening right now:

> Traditional sales comping remains relevant, but it should no longer be the single factor when determining price. Recent legislation allowing additional dwelling units (ADUs) is a game changer, as savvy investors and agents understand that accurate comps should now include not only neighborhood sales prices but also potential revenue from future ADU development.

> Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a slew of bills that will allow property owners to build a backyard home of at least 800 square feet or convert a garage, office or spare room into an additional living space. Single-family zoning effectively evaporated on Jan. 1 when the new laws went into effect.

If NIMBY's only cared about money this would be a fucking gold mine for them.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#92

Post by maccam94 »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #71
xvedejas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that the roads really support more peak traffic at this point. Rather, we can reduce the traffic and train crowding by building more housing near jobs so that workers need not embark on 50+ mile super-commutes each day. Housing _is_ infrastructure, and it's the piece of infrastructure we're most sorely missing.

Adding extra lanes to a road just increases the amount of people driving on them, instead of easing traffic. So I would bet the same is true of public transit.

True, traveling on public transit is just more efficient in terms of space and energy.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#93

Post by Lendal »

This story reminds me of when I was a kid and the school bus would come. Often there were no seats because every seat was taken--one kid each. There was plenty of room there, but the kids who got on the bus first would ban together to prevent new kids from sitting.

Today these kids have grown up and own homes in the suburbs. New kids need to move in, but the kids who got there first refuse to let them build. That's what this story is about.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#94

Post by rjkennedy98 »

samspenc wrote: post #40
rjkennedy98 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show the stats that Bay Area is building like crazy. I am so sick of people saying things like New York and Bay Area and California are building like crazy. No they are not. There is not one stat that shows that. Period.

I'm not sure about the Bay Area, but at least for New York, it looks like building is picking up: https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-sees-biggest-home-buil... "Despite a weak outlook for residential real estate, the number of building permits issued in New York City for new homes surged last year to the highest pace since 2015. It was the second-highest total since the end of the last big building boom in 2008. Pe…

So New York is building a lot because they are building more than any time since 2015? Almost as much as they built in 2008? Is this a joke?

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#95

Post by readarticle »

staplers wrote: post #76

Articles like this and the subsequent comments always reinforce to me that the human domain will never, or perhaps can never support wildlife and fauna. As much as we like to grandstand against mass extinction of wildlife and deforestation, we will always cave to economical and social pressures of modern life which almost exclusively require resource extraction and destruction of the biosphere.

There isn’t a single pro wildlife/forest view expressed in this article, what’s being explicitly fought against here by YIMBY, and later Falk, are:

... letters to elected officials, and at the open microphone that Mr. Falk observed at the City Council meetings, residents said things like “too aggressive,” “not respectful,” “embarrassment,” “outraged,” “audacity,” “very urban,” “deeply upset,” “unsightly,” “monstrosity,” “inconceivable,” “simply outrageous,” “vehemently opposed,” “sheer scope,” “very wrong,” “blocking views,” “does not conform,” “property values will be destroyed,” and “will allow more crime to be committed.”

If preserving wildlife and forests can be equated with preserving suburban lifestyles and property values, then yes, it’s perhaps already lost and we should all be quite sad.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#96

Post by christiansakai »

riantogo wrote: post #83
christiansakai wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home ownership generally slows growth for everything else around that area. Every home owner has this "not in my backyard" mentality and will veto any possible developments in their area.

You know why, right?

Yeah. I will do the same thing.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#97

Post by aresant »

legitster wrote: post #39

There is a study that came out this year that I have been obsessed with: If zoning laws in San Francisco and New York City (just two places!) were frozen in place in 1964, the average American income today would be on average $3700 higher. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/mac.20170388?fbc...

Super interesting study and to further clarify:

"Our point is that a first-order effect of more housing in Silicon Valley is to raise income and welfare of all US workers."

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#98

Post by fortran77 »

snarf21 wrote: post #18
fortran77 wrote: post #8

The answer _is_ building more. (I'll say this before the people on Hacker News who are opposed to all private property suggest that "prop 13" is the problem. It's not.) The problem is they don't build enough. Build build build! They need the California State Government to overrule local zoning limits. We need to allow dense housing near rail lines and major roads. And I think that anywhere a single-family detached ho…

I'm not saying building isn't the problem but how do you solve for someone who is in a loan at $1.2M and in one year it is worth $500K on the open market due to all the building. This is something that has to happen incrementally and why people dig in so hard. That property is the main store of wealth for a lot of people. The wrong scheme could bankrupt them and destroy their retirement. Additionally, super dense hou…

I own a house in 940xx and am all for more building.

It won't bankrupt anyone. If you bought a house you could afford for "x", and you budgeted as if it cost "x", you still have a place to live if you keep paying the mortgage. All your plans remain exactly the same. If the "value" of the house goes down, you'll save on property taxes.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#99

Post by xamuel »

Lendal wrote: post #93

This story reminds me of when I was a kid and the school bus would come. Often there were no seats because every seat was taken--one kid each. There was plenty of room there, but the kids who got on the bus first would ban together to prevent new kids from sitting. Today these kids have grown up and own homes in the suburbs. New kids need to move in, but the kids who got there first refuse to let them build. That's w…

That analogy isn't exactly accurate. To make it accurate, the kids sitting in the current seats would have to have paid a significant amount to purchase those seats. Also, throw in some kids who, for neurological reasons, become extremely distressed if they're forced to sit next to very loud kids. Because of this, they (or their parents) made a big sacrifice to secure single seats for them at great expense.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#100

Post by i_am_nomad »

Lendal wrote: post #93

This story reminds me of when I was a kid and the school bus would come. Often there were no seats because every seat was taken--one kid each. There was plenty of room there, but the kids who got on the bus first would ban together to prevent new kids from sitting. Today these kids have grown up and own homes in the suburbs. New kids need to move in, but the kids who got there first refuse to let them build. That's w…

Except the school bus is a public good. Are you saying that we should reframe housing as a public good as well and provide it as such?
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