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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

#231

Post by davidw »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #225
notJim wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. Hmm, here I am thinking I don't really care about the skin color of my neighbors. It's none of my business. But, I try and not judge people on immutable characteristics like color and age.

> I don't really care about the skin color of my neighbors.

That's a nice sentiment, but if you dig a bit, there are probably reasons why his neighborhood is full of "older white people", and there's a good chance that it wasn't a natural process of sorting.

Recommended reading: https://amzn.to/2St6rOM

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

#233

Post by lthornberry »

_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…

I'd settle for suburban development not being required (through maximum density zoning laws) or subsidized (through disproportionate spending on suburban infrastructure).

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

#234

Post by logfromblammo »

komali2 wrote: post #121
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,…

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.

One could halt immigration--or at least the kind of immigration that most anti-immigration people complain about--in a naive and oversimplified fashion by raising the minimum hourly wage of noncitizen permanent residents to the median annual household income divided by 2000 (~$32/h), raising the minimum hourly wage for temporary residents with a work-permitting visa to 125% of that (~$40/h), and raising the minimum wage of persons without any official immigration status to 150% (~$48/h) of that. In order to get a job that pays less, a person would have to show their visa, residency card, or proof of citizenship. For jobs that pay more, who cares, as long as they support local business and pay taxes?

Don't deport anybody. Don't build a wall. Just make any businesses that hire at lower wages, without first verifying citizenship or immigration status, pay the workers all their back wages.

The economics shape and are shaped by human behavior.

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

#235

Post by c0nfused »

aSplash0fDerp wrote: post #224

As mentioned in the comments, housing/shelter has a different meaning depending on your perspective (renter/owner, single/married, young/old or import/local resident). Unless we define housing types/building codes for specific subsets, it'll most likely be just more of the same development/investments. With many major metro areas bursting at the seams, I think they need to break ground on new 21st century cities and…

The answer was and always will be to increase density not increase transit to the suburbs. This is how you get 2 hour commutes. The idea that you are not doing the driving doesn't make a 150 mile commute seem better to me.

You can cap density by height like most European cities do or go up forever like Shanghai. But simply arguing suburbs + highways were the 1950s answer and will be the 2050s answer is missing the point.

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

#236

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

bluGill wrote: post #177
xamuel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If the city up zones your suburb can empty out making things better for you. It is only those who like their level of busy not far from downtown that will get pushed out.

>making things better for you

Ah, surely there is nothing open interpretation there.

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

#237

Post by pc86 »

mertd wrote: post #194
dv_dt wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's only a generational correlation because the 80 year old retiree is much more likely to own nice property with low property taxes (if you live in a state that only reassesses at sale) than the 28 year old with a young family. Young couples with money can be just as viciously NIMBY-esque as old couples with money.

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

#238

Post by sct202 »

neurocline wrote: post #62
spankalee wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me where any house would be worth 40% of its current nominal value because of nearby building. That's completely unrealistic conjecture.

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…

If it makes you feel any better, I live in an area that was built with a mix of SFHs and low rise apartment/condo buildings. The SFH are all $1m+ while condo prices range from $160k for a studio to $500k+ for a new 3-4 bedroom. If you figure that to build a new house they have to tear down an existing house, the minimum price for a new construction SFH or multi-unit is greatly increased.

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

#239

Post by _hardwaregeek »

sokoloff wrote: post #128
_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…

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

More like this thing that people like is energy inefficient, produces pollution and leads to more homogeneous, less diverse communities. And therefore it should go away.
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