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

nytimes.com

121–130 of 645 posts

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

#121

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,…

If they wanted to halt immigration, why would they build a border wall? That would be a highly expensive and ineffective way to halt immigration, for fairly obvious reasons.

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

#122

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…

I don't know a single long time home owner that is NIMBY because they want their house's value to rise. They're NIMBY because they want their neighborhood to stay the same.

> 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).

Tax rates are transferable in the same county, under certain restrictions (less expensive I think). Some counties have deals with eachother to transfer tax rates. I think a big benefit would be to have all counties to be able to transfer rates with eachother.

Another problem with transferable tax rates is most smaller housing units tend to be condos - and all they build new are 'luxury' condos. Even if you could pay for it outright, and get a transferred tax rate, you probably have an insane HOA attached to it. This alone can make it not worthwhile.

But still, I think the best, most realistic way out of the prop 13 mess is to get rid of it for newly bought homes, but allow the transfer rate for downsizing state-wide. And for the love of god, get rid of it from inheritance. Most of these people massively benefiting from it are in their 60s and 70s, so the circle of life will eventually take care of things. If we don't pass something soon the next generation of inheritors will force us to wait another lifetime to fix the problem.

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

#124
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you scrimped and saved to pull together a 5% down-payment on a "starter house" and new construction nearby takes your home value own by 20%, you're going to be stuck in that starter home for a very, very long time.

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Transit is much faster than driving if it wants to be. Airplanes normally reach 1000km/h (if you are rich you can do the same but very few are this rich). Even if we limit to ground based transport, most drivers on the autobahn self-limit themselves to around 130km/h, trains routinely go 250km/h (only a few routes, but the ability is there to do it safely).

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

#126
post #85
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Those numbers seem very unlikely. Ignoring that California is a nonrecourse state. If someone ended up owing 1.2 mil on a 500k house, they could walk away and only be out the house and whatever payments they had already made on the loan. The risk of massive correction simply isn't borne by the individual (especially if they've bought the property in the past 5-10 years).

“Only be out the house and whatever payments” isn’t negligible in most cases, why are you hand-waving that away?

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

#128

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…

"I get that some people like it, but I don't, so it needs to go away."

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention water, sewer, electrical capacity, schools, parks, police and fire services... You can’t just plop a 100-unit apartment down and then say you helped with the housing problem.

The reason Bay Area cities can't afford their water and sewer and roads is because they are not dense enough. Apartment dwellers demand far less water, and drive on roads much less than people who live in detached homes. Density is the _solution_ to infrastructure funding.

Long term you are correct, but in the near term the current water system needs to be upgraded to pipes large enough to get water to the new apartment before the apartment can go in.

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

#130

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 instea…

It's not just building housing, it's building more of everything including transit and infrastructure, as other commenters have noted. Not to mention, housing cannot be built fast enough. See this earlier discussion [0]. And for what? Why should people happily established in a place have to cater to the whims of people that are not in that place? It's like allowing people in India to vote in American elections so that they can lobby for their own immigration rights. It's patently ridiculous on the scale of a nation and it's still ridiculous on the scale of a state.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120479

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