No new house around me was sub 1500 sq ft... guess bigger is better. But all the other houses in the area built between 1950-1990 were all under that.
California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
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Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
OR decent mass transit. But forget that in California.
Now, I'll grant it's only very specific corridors, but the densest parts of California do have passable mass transit. The majority of Californians don't have access to this, but the most crowded parts do.
Mass transit exists but it's really bad -- e.g. Muni and BART and Caltrain in the San Francisco area. Constant delays, mechanical failures, and overcrowding.
Now that Coronavirus and social distancing are the new normal, I expect some of those transit systems to lose funding and perhaps even shut down.
I'm a huge fan of public transit and I'd love to see good transit systems exist in California, but I have no hope that it will happen.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#23Amongst the various human rights, the right to build a house should be fundamental, but somehow it was lost to political forces.
Housing seems to me to be one of the most government-planned markets due to the strict zoning laws, but I've only seen fairly lefty orgs advocating for relaxed regulation. I'm surprised there isn't more movement from libertarians along the lines that property owners should have more rights for what they can build on their land.
I think there are few true libertarians, and a whole lot more people who call themselves libertarians but instead subscribe to the 'rules for thee but not for me' mindset shared among many neoconservatives.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#24> Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots. How did it ever get here? Requiring more than 2 parking spots per apartment is insane.... especially for "affordable housing".
Low-income families often pack many people into a small apartment, so it's not unrealistic for one apartment to need 3 parking spots for two working parents and a working child, just as an example. I lived in a household like that growing up
You can look at this in a couple of ways:
Forcing poor people to pay for parking makes their housing more expensive and is part of what is causing huge problems in California. When I lived in Austria, my wife and I lived in a place with no parking included, by choice. We found a public place about a kilometer away that was free. Kind of a hassle, but it was a good compromise for our finances back then.
The government choosing parking minimums is a huge market distortion and antithetical to the freedom of the market to provide a diversity of solutions. There are boatloads of houses in the US with huge 3 car garages. Give people the freedom to live with zero parking!
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#25Amongst the various human rights, the right to build a house should be fundamental, but somehow it was lost to political forces.
The city was given control of limited lands. The solution is to either be involved with the democracy of the city, or be outside of the city.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#26The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking. That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots.
From the article: "“Low-income people tend to own cars that are in disrepair and ride motorcycles adding to the noise of a ‘lights out at 8 p.m. community,’” Marylyn Rinaldi, a neighboring condominium owner, wrote in 2011 in a letter to the City Council that was later cited in a lawsuit over the project." Nimbyism at its finest.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#27Amongst the various human rights, the right to build a house should be fundamental, but somehow it was lost to political forces.
If the right to private and personal property is in place (basically having some money) and trading. Then the right to build a house is a consequence.
As long as you by land that doesn't have a lien on it you can build a house.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#28What can't be discounted besides the usual suspects of bad zoning, high cost of land etc. is construction costs. Basically an area gets so expensive that it prices out construction workers and their families. This is being seen in the bay area now as a typical single family home goes for over 1M in the pennisula/SF/South Bay area. Go farther out to the east bay, far south bay(gilroy etc) and prices are still 700/800k…
This seems reasonable but I don't think it's a significant contributor to the price of construction.
None of the developers seem to mention it as an issue, and there are plenty of employees that exist in San Francisco that are paid wages that are similar to construction workers.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#29The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking. That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots.
Obligatory plug: https://yimbyaction.org/about/
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#30The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking. That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots.
Absolutely crazy. 53 parking spaces for 10 units? Every unit gets 3 spaces and 2 guest spaces?