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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

#151

Post by notJim »

fra wrote: post #127
i_am_nomad wrote: post #115

YIMBY should more properly be called YITBY (yes in their back yards).

Many of us are homeowners. Speaking for myself, I simply believe affordable housing for all is more important than my property value.

Also a homeowner, and I'm a YIMBY (or PHIMBY) for selfish reasons as well. My neighborhood is mostly old white people, because they bought their houses years ago and stayed put. Not that I have anything against them, but I'd love to have a more diverse, younger neighborhood. More neighbors also means more customers for local businesses, which means more shops and restaurants in walking distance. More neighbors would eventually also mean better public transit, because the ridership would demand it. I think the selfish benefits of more housing are often overlooked due to fear of change.

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

#152

Post by nostrademons »

bovermyer wrote: post #86
gdubs wrote: post #61

Honest question: how do we address the housing crisis in the Bay Area without turning it into Los Angeles?

Either build very tall, high density housing to accommodate the population... or reduce the population drastically. A nuclear missile fired into the San Andreas fault, perhaps (this is a movie reference, folks, and not a serious suggestion).

What movie? It sounds vaguely entertaining.

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

#153

Post by ghaff »

wiremaus wrote: post #51
aty268 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what would be a good where increased supply drives up cost? I can't reason any off the top of my head.

That would be Giffen good, which may not exist at all. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good

Not really. Probably closer to a Veblen good (which does exist) but, in any case, those are about increased price driving up demand, not increased supply driving up price.

(I suppose increased supply could drive up price if providing that additional supply increased the overall costs but you'd presumably still be constrained by the overall supply/demand curves of the market.)

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

#154

Post by goatinaboat »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #50
goatinaboat wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its NIMBYism at its finest People whose wealth is in company stock say that people whose wealth is in other asset classes should give it up, for their benefit. How about we pay for all this new housing by a 90% tax on RSUs? No?

This doesn’t make any sense because owning stock in one company doesn’t prevent another from also rising or prevent ones own company stock from rising.

In theory perhaps but in practice a) it’s unreasonable to tell people for literally decades that homeownership is the path to security in retirement then move the goalposts and b) tech-driven wealth disparity is fully the root cause of this situation and if it were “corrected” through taxation we wouldn’t even have this problem

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

#155

Post by bluGill »

zamfi wrote: post #58
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…

> We have the tracks, we have the train... the train just does not go this route on weekends. This is the easy one to fix — when there is demand, they can just run more trains. Much harder is the transbay commute at rush hours. There is almost no spare capacity, and it’s not clear how those extra thousands of people in Lafayette will make it in to SF every morning before we build a second transbay tube for Bart — and…

The problem is they need to create the demand. Anybody who wants to get around and checks transit knows it isn't an option so they find an alternative. If CalTran wants to be useful transit for more than commuters (My understanding as someone not in the area is CalTran runs only a few trips during rush hour - if I'm wrong that invalidates some of my reply...) they need to run more service for a while so people start to think they can count on it.

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

#156

Post by thedance »

bluGill wrote: post #129
thedance wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can get developers to build the infrastructure and finance it on their future taxes. You wouldn't believe the incremental tax from building real buildings in the Bay Area. In one particularly egregious case a single apartment building replaced several detached homes that were paying a total of $1200/year in the city of Berkeley. The apartment building pays over a million dollars per year.

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

#157

Post by hcknwscommenter »

jdhn wrote: post #112
rndmize wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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, California homeowners who are 55 or older get a one time chance to sell their existing primary residence, and transfer its property tax assessment to another house[0]. Only catch is that the valuation of the new property has to be equal or less than the p…

"if you live in the Bay Area you probably meet that qualification"

Only if you are leaving the Bay Area. Often, these older houses have a lot of deferred maintenance and the retired seller wants to downsize into something in the Bay Area that is newer build/renovated.

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

#158

Post by irq11 »

notJim wrote: post #123
i_am_nomad wrote: post #115

YIMBY should more properly be called YITBY (yes in their back yards).

Ahh the classic NIMBY move, whether it's homeless folks or just people who want bike lanes: "These people aren't from here!"

I’m not a “NIMBY”, but I believe the YIMBY moniker is counter-productive to your cause.

It automatically frames the question in a sophomoric way, where the “other side” is an evil force to be mocked and dismissed. In reality, there is no such thing as a “NIMBY”, just a collection of people with differing - often rational - interests concerning any given project. Until and unless you address these interests, calling people names and yelling ”just build, dammit!” will not get you what you want.

I think, if you talk to most of these folks, you find that many/most abstractly support the idea that building is required. It’s the specifics where the problems lie, and calling people names doesn’t resolve fundamental issues. This is why the “Yes in your Backyard” line is such a devastating rhetorical criticism: everyone favors development of projects that don’t affect them.

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

#160

Post by i_am_nomad »

thedance wrote: post #87
themagician wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rezone the area around Golden Gate Park and turn it into a dense metropolis. You could 10x the density around there and be able to support the population. You’ve got wide streets, services, and it isn’t landfill. Honestly though, I feel like it isn’t really a crisis. It’s mostly rich people fighting with other rich people over whose backyard to build in. There are no real YIMBYs, just people who want to live in certa…

Every property within 1/4 mile of the N-Judah streetcar line should have over-the-counter, by-right zoning approval for 7-story buildings with zero parking and no setbacks.

I used to live right near the park, 1/4 mile from the N-Judah. The infrastructure in that area can barely support the housing stock that exists right now.
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