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California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

nytimes.com

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Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#211

Post by ashtonkem »

aeternum wrote: post #205
ashtonkem wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can you possibly be surprised that people don't want the things they like about the place they live to change? People can and should obviously get upset (or excited!) about specific changes. What I'm more surprised at is the idea that some people have that any change at all is unacceptable. It's not like the town that one loved sprung up into existence as is, it took change to get the parts that you like in the…

Assuming that people are against any change at all seems like quite the strawman. Perhaps those people support building some change, perhaps they just want to ensure that public transit, utilities, road infrastructure can handle the added density. Very few people are are against any new growth in cities. We could likely have a more productive discussion if we framed it around the optimal rate of growth of a city.

> Very few people are are against any new growth in cities.

It seems you’ve never met a NIMBY.

“No new people in my city” is actually a pretty surprisingly popular position. Usually these people are super pro growth, as long as that’s somewhere else.

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#212

Post by wildrhythms »

pgsimp wrote: post #208
floatingatoll wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NIMBY problem suggests that it's not so much your fault at all - the locals would have passed zoning laws preventing housing for you from being built, as they did in SF ("protect our views" and such) - but actually the fault of the locals for resisting density upgrades. Imagine, in SimCity terms, if your Low-Density High-Wealth Residential citizens passed a ballot measure preventing you from building Medium-Densi…

I think it is understandable if people don't want the surroundings of their property cluttered with buildings.

So, they are opposed to urbanization, but don't leave because they want to reap the benefits of urbanization?

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#213

Post by rayiner »

Guest42 wrote: post #151
tqi wrote: post #141

Why is this always framed as a problem caused by people looking for a place to live? I moved to SF for a job. I'm not the one who decided to not build enough new housing for 30 years. I'm not the one who decided to approve all those new office buildings. Yet I was the problem for renting an overpriced apartment from an SF native who bought in the 90s, and now pays less than $8K/yr in taxes on a place worth over $1M.…

I find it pretty ironic that in Idaho they would oppose a scenario that is aligned to “free market” principles and that Oregon would oppose immigration. I once took a job in Portland and had stuff thrown at my car because of the CA license plate along with screaming “go back to your own state.” Opinions change very quickly once they involve people personally.

“When California sends people north to Oregon, they’re not sending their best and brightest. They’re drug dealers and smugglers. Some, I assume, are good people.” — my sixth generation Oregonian wife.

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#214

Post by ashtonkem »

mpg33 wrote: post #111
jeffbee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's handy to say "nowhere is building" but it's not really supported by the data. Look at Dallas and Houston compared to San Francisco. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6Tc

Texas is also a good example of that density only matters if there is a land scarcity problem. There are areas in Canada where building massive towers has been premature and also led to increase in costs.

Density doesn’t matter right up until you hit the limits of what the highways will handle. Then you’ll suddenly wish you’d built dense enough for light rail to alleviate the load on common routes.

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#215

Post by yks »

pgsimp wrote: post #208
floatingatoll wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NIMBY problem suggests that it's not so much your fault at all - the locals would have passed zoning laws preventing housing for you from being built, as they did in SF ("protect our views" and such) - but actually the fault of the locals for resisting density upgrades. Imagine, in SimCity terms, if your Low-Density High-Wealth Residential citizens passed a ballot measure preventing you from building Medium-Densi…

I think it is understandable if people don't want the surroundings of their property cluttered with buildings.

It is understandable that people are selfish but why society as a whole should pay for that? It is a relatively recent development, no more than a century, that people actually have such a power to derail urbanization while at the same time profiteer off of it. Society just pays [1] those people basically because they were born at the right time.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-05/nimbyism-...

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#216

Post by lazide »

closeparen wrote: post #204
lazide wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Having a say in someone else’s property’ is really ‘voters voting for the rules and laws they want’. As long as the rules benefit most people who vote, why would they want to change it? And right now, that is exactly what is happening - it isn’t changing because most people who vote are benefitting from it. It’s a pretty fundamental part of a democracy. Until either 1) more people who don’t benefit from the current…

San Francisco did not make a law about how much housing to have and then enforce it. It crafted a system of discretionary reviews, lawsuits, and other project-level activism that turns each building permit into its own little lawmaking exercise. A major pro-housing goal is to shift the system towards one that's more law-governed, where the requirements are written down in advance and a building that meets the require…

That system at city hall exists because the Mayor (elected) and Board of Supervisors (elected) wish it to be so, and they wish it to be so, so they stay elected.

All the measures you’re talking about are about point #3 - talking about housing abstractly so they don’t notice how it will impact them on their block, for instance, or shifting the ‘balance of interest’ to state wide so they don’t/can’t connect the laws they are voting for to their local impact.

It might work - locals will be angry when they figure it out though, and there will be a backlash.

The reality is, if the people living in San Francisco wanted development, they’d get it. If they don’t, you can try to trick, cajol, force, or ignore them until you get development - but don’t expect them to go along quietly.

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#217

Post by takklz »

rcpt wrote: post #193
nutshell89 wrote: post #100

The problem is that not only is there zero appetite to phase out housing-as-investment boosting policies like the mortgage interest deduction, imputed rent exemption, and cap gains exemption at the federal level, en vogue affordable housing strategies have focused on keeping interest rates low, providing 1st time home-buyer tax credits, and strengthening fair lending regulations. The U.S.(western nations with high ho…

Since this article is about California you can't leave out Prop 13. I'll argue that's done more for real estate investors in the state than all those other policies combined. https://www.taxfairnessproject.org/ for the unfamiliar

This is pretty cool!

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#218

Post by lazide »

shuckles wrote: post #144
lazide wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He isn’t- but if enough others agree that is what they want, why shouldn’t they be able to? That’s literally what democracy is! It’s not their responsibility - not anyone’s! - to take a shot in the nuts so someone else can be happy, despite any guilt tripping.

This only works if you slice and dice the polity. Who says zoning in the Bay Area should be decided by current residents? The super commuter service workers from Modesto should certainly have a say. So should the families displaced to Phoenix or Las Vegas. In addition, it is not a fair characterization to describe apartment buildings as "a shot in the nuts."

Why should Modesto have a say in what gets built in San Francisco? I’m pretty sure the folks in Modesto would be pretty pissed if San Francisco was dictating building rules to them!

And Phoenix or Las Vegas aren’t even in the same states or legal jurisdictions. If you told them San Francisco was going to be able to tell them what to build or how, you’d just get laughed at.

If you think building a high density apartment complex in the middle of a single family zoned subdivision against the residents wishes wouldn’t be taken as a ‘shot to the nuts’ of someone who had bought and lived there for years, you probably don’t know too many people who have?

Fair or not, you can’t walk in and dictate to someone in that situation how they are going to take it, or what is reasonable and expect anything but well deserved anger.

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#219

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #213
Guest42 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it pretty ironic that in Idaho they would oppose a scenario that is aligned to “free market” principles and that Oregon would oppose immigration. I once took a job in Portland and had stuff thrown at my car because of the CA license plate along with screaming “go back to your own state.” Opinions change very quickly once they involve people personally.

“When California sends people north to Oregon, they’re not sending their best and brightest. They’re drug dealers and smugglers. Some, I assume, are good people.” — my sixth generation Oregonian wife.

[deleted]

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#220

Post by lazide »

jandrese wrote: post #138
lazide wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Having a say in someone else’s property’ is really ‘voters voting for the rules and laws they want’. As long as the rules benefit most people who vote, why would they want to change it? And right now, that is exactly what is happening - it isn’t changing because most people who vote are benefitting from it. It’s a pretty fundamental part of a democracy. Until either 1) more people who don’t benefit from the current…

Of course the people who want to move in don't get a vote.

The renters do - but they often don’t vote. And realistically, would you want to be subject to the laws passed by someone who doesn’t live in your area? Even if they say they’d like to?

It’s bad enough with things like federal marijuana laws vs state ones, and those don’t control where you can live or what gets built next to where you already do.

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