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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

#191

Post by logfromblammo »

nostrademons wrote: post #152
bovermyer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Superman (1978), starring Christopher Reeve.

It involves Superman traveling at faster than c to save the day, rather than breaking a promise made under duress, which makes flunking ethical calculus into a super-vulnerability.

Movies based on comic book characters have come a long way. And even movies based on DC characters have advanced slightly.

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

#192

Post by pruneridge »

What happens when more people move into the area from the rest of the country and start driving to work from their newly built housing units? Silicon Valley has, at best, poor coverage of Caltrain and no coverage for BART in South Bay. If let’s say 10,000 more families move to San Jose into new housing units and they all need to commute to Palo Alto for work, how exactly would they do that without choking up the already clogged freeway network? Caltrain is already packed beyond imagination during rush hour. Each year, the rush hour commute time between Palo Alto and San Jose increasing by 5 minutes and that’s with limited net population growth in the area. Imagine if the population influx increased 2X or 5X. Housing is not an isolated problem. Due to decades of lobbying by the auto industry and a crippled public transportation strategy, what America really has is a transportation and infrastructure problem. Without solving that, the housing problem will never be truly solved and building new housing will degrade the quality of life of everyone in the area - both newcomers and existing residents.

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

#193

Post by subsubzero »

Fun Fact: if three cities(San Jose, San Francisco, NYC) in America were to loosen up housing planning rules, America's GDP would be 4% higher, that is incredible in of itself, source: (paywall - https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/01/16/the-wests-bigge...)

Although I think California especially needs new housing, the bay area in particular has a housing issue which is somewhat artificially created due to a number of large (google, facebook, etc) and smaller tech companies requiring a "buts in seat" mentality and a philosophy that all "important" jobs be based in the bay area near their HQ's. Its really quite sad as a job that can be done anywhere is forced to be located in one of the most expensive areas on earth.

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

#194

Post by mertd »

dv_dt wrote: post #167
bluGill wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is only in your backyard it is better for your property value in the long run: eventually someone will offer you a ton of money to replace your house with a large apartment complex. If it is everywhere that can build, than the builders can take whatever property comes up - and because they have to compete with other developers for renters they are likely to build smaller so on both counts property values don't…

That's what I don't understand, increasing density usually means price / sqft for all real estate in the area goes up. I often wonder if the analysis on why people shoot down zoning changes is incorrectly attributed to price or property tax, and is mostly people resisting any change.

Not every NIMBY is motivated by greed. Some just want to stay put, pay property taxes like it's 30 years ago and drive to their favorite burger shack in under five minutes. That particular generation also holds on to the doctrine that density is bad for environment.

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

#195

Post by jsharf »

danbmil99 wrote: post #170

Go ahead and build, but make damn sure you are being rational about people's behavior when it comes to driving and transit. My ex moved into a condominium complex that has exactly zero parking spots or loading docks for visitors, and no parking for half a mile in either direction. It's an absolute total fail. Neighbors rat on each other to get each other's cars towed because they get so upset. It's literally impossib…

I think YIMBY is about city restrictions and ordinance. This sounds like the private building developers just wanted to save money and cheaped out on building additional parking space. Unless the city itself imposed a restriction on parking

That being said, I'm not aware of any YIMBYish laws that outright restrict parking in residential areas. The only thing equivalent I can think of is the Market street law in SF, but that's not a residential area, so it actually makes sense.

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

#196

Post by bobbydroptables »

irq11 wrote: post #169
bobbydroptables wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really hard to wrap your head around whether a city is building a lot by looking at a raw number. But fewer than 7,000 building permits in a city of 8 million is frighteningly little. You need to compare it to population growth, decades of building backlog, job growth, etc.

New construction in New York can have hundreds of units. I don’t know why you would automatically assume that 7,000 is a “frightening” number.

I probably could have made my comment clearer. I'm not assuming anything. It's well documented that NYC is building frighteningly little housing per capita.

I was just pointing out the the linked post shows how NYC construction is stagnant, not "active". It was unclear if he meant "active" as in "they're building a large quantity" or as in "currently happening".

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

#197

Post by nradov »

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.

Any possible increase in BART ticket revenue would be a drop in the bucket for the capital funding necessary to significantly increase system capacity. The popular routes are already at capacity so they would have to build more tracks and stations. This would cost hundreds of billions of dollars mostly from federal and state budgets. The planning, land acquisitions (eminent domain), environmental reviews, legal battles, and construction would take decades. We can complain that this is unreasonable, and that it ought to be cheaper or faster. But that's the reality and it isn't likely to change.

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

#198

Post by Denvercoder9 »

thedance wrote: post #56
samatman wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that this detracts from your points, but transportation is responsible for 29% of CO2 emissions[0]. It's the single largest sector, but not a majority contributor. [0]: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

In California, transportation by itself is 41% of GHG emissions and oil production and refining are another 11% so it is a supportable statement that transportation is the majority of this state's CO2 production. https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/inventory/pubs/reports/2000_2017/g...

The highest figure I could find for oil usage by sector gives ~60% for transport, so even that gives only ~47% of GHG emissions for transport in total. Then start to discount for all non-local transport, and you won't get anywhere close to a majority.

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

#199

Post by bluGill »

bradlys wrote: post #143
neurocline wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current house is apparently worth $2 million. Even with California construction costs, replacing it with a new house would cost less than $350,000. If someone could build a lot of houses nearby, it would drive the price of my house down to something realistic. I’m in favor of lots of construction, because it’s the right thing overall. But it would hit me hard. I’m willing to accept that, so I lobby for new constru…

I doubt your place will drop even 20% even if construction goes up drastically. Until it happens - you can't really say your home price would drop drastically. Realistically, it won't. The new supply will be apartments - not single family homes. It's not like people will all want to sell and move into apartments or that the desire for homes will go down. It just means competition for apartments will improve.

Sure it will. Housing is about compromises. If you can rent a 3 bedroom apartment for $900/month would you pay $9000/month (plus taxes and insurance) to buy a house?

The above numbers are realistic. You have a choice to nice 3 bedroom apartments for $900/month in the Des Moines Iowa area. The payments on a 30 year loan for a 2 million dollar house are a bit over 9000/month.

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

#200

Post by foota »

danbmil99 wrote: post #170

Go ahead and build, but make damn sure you are being rational about people's behavior when it comes to driving and transit. My ex moved into a condominium complex that has exactly zero parking spots or loading docks for visitors, and no parking for half a mile in either direction. It's an absolute total fail. Neighbors rat on each other to get each other's cars towed because they get so upset. It's literally impossib…

...Bellevue?
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