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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

#101

Post by toasterlovin »

compiler-guy wrote: post #21
aty268 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Texas, and I don't understand the stigma against developers building more housing. It drives down prices, and increases competition. Why would California citizens ever be against this? Edit: The reason is because homeowners are competing with developers, so their own asset depreciates when supply increases. I was just thinking from the perspective of renters.

If you own a house, you don't want the prices to be driven down. If you had an idyllic childhood in a sleepy town not unlike Mayberry, it is entirely reasonable to want the same things for your kids. None of that is realistic anymore--the world is a changed place. But these are not irrational preferences to have.

> None of that is realistic anymore

It's not realistic when you have unrestricted immigration, as the US states have between each other.

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

#102

Post by rayiner »

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.

Yes, but it moves more people. Driving doesn’t need to compete with public transit for speed—transit is immensely slower than driving even in places with excellent transit.

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

#103

Post by rndmize »

pascalxus wrote: post #22

I completely agree with the sentiment to build more, much more housing. But, in order to make that happen, we also need to: - get rid of or modify zoning laws (at least in places where growth will happen) - reduce regulations on builders - ensure that there are plenty of builders for health competition (so that consumers don't get ripped off) - provide protections for builders from Sue happy NIMBYs (some kind of lega…

Ahead of most of this, you probably need to remove or heavily adjust Prop 13.

The primary problem, as detailed in the article, is that homeowners have every incentive to be against new construction and no incentives to be for it. If property taxes rose appropriately with property values, homeowners would have an interest in maintaining housing prices rather than doing everything they can to keep them rising.

There's also a range of beneficial secondary effects. For example, I've talked to retired folks that have considered leaving the bay due to the increased cost of living. But because they have owned their house for decades + P13, if they bought a _cheaper_ house elsewhere in CA to downsize, they'd be paying _more_ in property taxes, to the point of the move not being worth the cost. (I believe there's been talk of transferable tax rates to fix this specific problem, or maybe something was even passed, but it just goes to show the distortions P13 has beyond the obvious).

Aligning incentives (where possible) is, imo, almost always a better way to do things than creating a new batch of regulations/laws to deal with a problem.

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

#104

Post by _hardwaregeek »

Having been born and raised in a major city, I'm certainly biased, but I truly believe that suburbs should go away. Every part of a suburb seems so insular, so wasteful, so outmoded. A one family house requires maintenance, heating and wiring that would be so much more efficient with even the smallest apartment complex. Lawns are ridiculous, especially in the parts of the country where grass is not indigenous. Why the hell are we spending so much water and energy to maintain a goddamn green rectangle?

HOAs don't seem to do much besides execute petty laws. Neighborhoods, while they can be diverse, will never approach a city in terms of allowing people of different backgrounds, races, etc. to interact. There's a particular reason cities vote more democratic than suburbs: It's hard to vote for such hateful policies when you interact with the people effected every day.

I get that there's this nostalgia or rather inertia about suburbs. I get that people grew up in a one family house with a lawn in their nice homogeneous town. But it needs to go away.

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

#105

Post by bathtub365 »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #104

Having been born and raised in a major city, I'm certainly biased, but I truly believe that suburbs should go away. Every part of a suburb seems so insular, so wasteful, so outmoded. A one family house requires maintenance, heating and wiring that would be so much more efficient with even the smallest apartment complex. Lawns are ridiculous, especially in the parts of the country where grass is not indigenous. Why th…

Forcing everyone into cities is also a form of homogenizing. The idea that a city mindset is the only one is just forcing people to conform in a different way.

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

#106

Post by thedance »

manfredo wrote: post #89
zamfi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We squander the capacity of our main commuter railroad (BART) Out of curiosity, do you ride Bart at commute hours? At 5pm, the platforms at Embarcadero and Montgomery are dangerously packed. I didn’t think there is much excess capacity for commuting. All other times? Absolutely yes.

You're putting the cart before the horse. More commuters creates more ticket revenue, which gives BART more resources to expand capacity. They're not going to expand capacity until there's more demand.

BART ridership is currently maxed out in the peak direction at peak hour, and carries triple the design number of passengers. They don’t need to expand, they need to profit from the currently underused directions (eg berkeley to Fremont).

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

#107

Post by davidw »

Getting involved with a local YIMBY group is pretty easy, fun, and one of the best things you can do on several fronts:

* It's good for the economy, as "legitster" points out.

* It's good for the environment if people can drive less (or even walk or bike!) because they live closer to things.

* It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might like to move to a more productive place for a better job.

It's much easier to make a difference locally: in many places it's not hard to get to know your city councilors, or state reps/senators. One of my prouder YIMBY moments was turning out 5 people on a weekday morning to speak to our state rep, who ended up voting in favor of HB 2001, which legalizes up to 4-plexes throughout most Oregon cities.

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

#108

Post by xamuel »

compiler-guy wrote: post #21
aty268 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Texas, and I don't understand the stigma against developers building more housing. It drives down prices, and increases competition. Why would California citizens ever be against this? Edit: The reason is because homeowners are competing with developers, so their own asset depreciates when supply increases. I was just thinking from the perspective of renters.

If you own a house, you don't want the prices to be driven down. If you had an idyllic childhood in a sleepy town not unlike Mayberry, it is entirely reasonable to want the same things for your kids. None of that is realistic anymore--the world is a changed place. But these are not irrational preferences to have.

Or you could have PTSD or just vanilla noise-sensitivity and just living in a quiet neighborhood could be extremely important to you. You might have made very significant personal sacrifices to afford to move to a suburb for exactly this reason. Should you just be forced to go live in the woods as a hermit, cast out by society?

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

#109

Post by aggie »

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #11

How about we talk about building infrastructure? The whole Bay Area is building like crazy, and yet the roads are getting worse (more building? more traffic lights!). Public transportation is a big joke around here. Caltrain from South San Jose to Mountain View? We have the tracks, we have the train... the train just does not go this route on weekends. We have the same situation as a startup focused on developing a p…

> The whole Bay Area is building like crazy,

I'm wondering what your frame of reference is here. As someone who has lived in the Bay Area for most of my 30 years, and lived in Atlanta for a couple years recently, where they are actually building like crazy, the Bay Area seems to be at a total standstill.

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

#110

Post by timerol »

Invictus0 wrote: post #88

If California were its own country, would it try to build more housing or would it put up a border wall and halt immigration? It's clear to me that Californians would choose the latter, and I don't really blame them. Deep down, everyone hates change, especially the type of transformative change that is taking place in these California suburbs. What does Lafayette owe the people of San Francisco?--or more accurately,…

Building more housing would result in that revolving door just being an entrance. CA would still get the influx of "wealthy young software developers", but would also be able to keep all of the "middle/lower class native Californians," since there would be room for all of the newcomers to live. CA could stop playing this horrendous game of musical chairs, where every techie that moves in displaces a local, and instead have enough room for everyone to live.
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