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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

#221

Post by xyzzy123 »

yks wrote: post #215
pgsimp wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I'm pro density but the densification process really trips core parts of people's psyche. We're human beings.

It affects your _home_. You've lived in a place for 10 years and suddenly you have no privacy because a big block of units gets stood up looking right over you. Or they block your sunlight, build right up to the boundary, or your quiet leafy neighbourhood just isn't quiet anymore and that's after you lived next to a construction site for 6 months. These things can have impacts on people's relationships as well.

Of course the world changes, such is the price of progress, and _usually_ those affected can afford to wipe their tears with big stacks of cash.

But I don't think it's fair to characterise all NIMBYs as just greedy, a lot of people just want to live in the neighbourhood they thought they were buying into.

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

#222

Post by staticautomatic »

floatingatoll wrote: post #192
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.…

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…

It would help a lot if the dense housing being built wasn’t so hideous.

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

#223

Post by yks »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #221
yks wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I'm pro density but the densification process really trips core parts of people's psyche. We're human beings. It affects your _home_. You've lived in a place for 10 years and suddenly you have no privacy because a big block of units gets stood up looking right over you. Or they block your sunlight, build right up to the boundary, or your quiet leafy neighbourhood just isn't quiet anymore and that's after you lived ne…

I agree, it's not a pure calculated greed but some sort of a "mental denial of change" coupled with the historically unusual legal powers. Immediate property appreciation is more like blinders, it is very hard to swim against "number go up". End result for society is still the same though.

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

#224

Post by genocidicbunny »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #132
sokoloff wrote: post #8

I feel like I got served an appetizer and a small dessert, with no main course in between. California has a housing crisis in some cities. Californians are moving out of those cities. The cities that they're moving into are experiencing an increase in demand (directly restating the previous). That's pushing up prices (not shocking), which is preventing some people with less money from outbidding people with more mone…

> Single Family Zoning It is bad and yet is one of the only housing types that satisfies a lot of needs. Multi-unit housing has the following list of annoyances: 1. Far more available to rent than to own. Some states such as CO have some weird insurance related laws that makes selling condos more of a liability than leasing apartments. 2. Often not cheaper on a sqft basis so you are paying more for less. 3. If it is…

I don't know that townhomes really satisfy that -- not any of the ones I've seen built recently. The ones I'm thinking of are those 10-to-a-lot townhomes that get squeezed into previously unused spaces or a handful of parcels that the developer managed to buy up next to each other. They usually have little to no land (no front yard and a meager backyard), restricted parking (I have seen two-car garages where you would need to go out through the sunroof if you actually parked two small cars in there.) and are often built as cheaply as possible at the lowest cost.

Basically, a lot of the townhomes that I see being built here are effectively apartments and share many of the same annoyances you mentioned. With that said, it could very well be due to the same single family zoning issues -- it's very possible that getting permits for an apartment building in a predominantly SFH zone would be difficult. Getting permits for townhomes (which end up functionally apartments) is likely far more doable.

To the question you pose about the SFH replacement -- I don't think that there is one. Even if homes weren't an investment vehicle, I think to a lot of people the appeal of a SFH is the whole package; By the time you satisfy all the desires with something else, you've arrived back to a SFH.

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

#225

Post by rcpt »

lazide wrote: post #220
jandrese wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They don't get a say until they live there. Future residents have zero representation.

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

#226

Post by Dr_Staff »

shuckles wrote: post #51
majormajor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sorta just how private property works. At some point, land was unowned, structures were unbuilt, etc. Ever since then, we've put the "rights" in the hands of the current owners and/or the government they live under... Short of arguing from a purely socialist or communist approach, saying the current owner's preferences matter less than the hypothetical would-be future occupants of the area is the non-sensical…

And who was compensated when those rights were taken away from property owners by the invention of zoning in the early 1900s and down zoning in the mid 1900s? In addition, you are confusing owning a particular plot of land with rights over all neighboring plots. The latter is distinctly not your private property.

When government takes away our property it must pay us for the property. this right is recognized in the 4th amendment. "Zoning" is just a sneaky way of taking

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

#227

Post by souprock »

JJMcJ wrote: post #155
imtringued wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not supposed to build towers. You're supposed to incrementally upzone neighborhoods over time. detached single family housing to row houses, row houses to 2 story apartment buildings, 2 story apartment buildings to 3-4 story apartment buildings and so on. Building big towers does work, but only if they are surrounded by other, slightly smaller towers.

Incremental: Take an R-1 neighborhood. Don't necessarily allow 10 floor buildings, though that wouldn't be the end of the world. Maybe allow 25% of houses to be turned into duplexes, even less of a change than row houses. That alone would increase units available. Humor: The famous Painted Ladies, a block of Victorians in San Francisco, one end of the block has a 7 floor apartment building.

What about the fair share of on-street parking?

A normal home will have 1 to 3 cars, but most likely they go in a garage or driveway. The street is mostly left for visitors. There is room for a friend, a grandma, a kitchen renovator, a pool cleaning service, and so on. Spill-over happens when somebody has a big party or when the SWAT team shows up, but those are rare occurrences.

Add the apartment complex though, and spill-over becomes a daily occurrence. Every single day, the apartment dwellers claim most of the street parking. They didn't pay the other people in the neighborhood for grabbing an abnormal share of the community asset.

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

#228

Post by overlords »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #221
yks wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I'm pro density but the densification process really trips core parts of people's psyche. We're human beings. It affects your _home_. You've lived in a place for 10 years and suddenly you have no privacy because a big block of units gets stood up looking right over you. Or they block your sunlight, build right up to the boundary, or your quiet leafy neighbourhood just isn't quiet anymore and that's after you lived ne…

Weighing the Justice :

'I like they way my lawn is and i don't like construction noises'

vs

'I can't get a job because it's too expensive to rent or buy where the jobs are, so i live in poverty' (or i can't start family because i can only afford a room-share, or any number of other effects from NIMBYism)

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

#229

Post by closeparen »

lazide wrote: post #216
closeparen wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

This sort of “efficient markets” claim is fully general: you can use it to discourage any kind of activism. If voters wanted things to be a certain way, they would already be that way!

In practice we’re seeing engagement from people who weren’t previously engaged. NIMBYs are more loud and tenacious than they are numerous. Also support from people who perhaps thought (and perhaps still think) that developers are kind of slimy, but are now weighing housing supply effects as well. None of this was happening when only project sponsors and reactionaries cared.

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

#230

Post by lazide »

closeparen wrote: post #229
lazide wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

This sort of “efficient markets” claim is fully general: you can use it to discourage any kind of activism. If voters wanted things to be a certain way, they would already be that way! In practice we’re seeing engagement from people who weren’t previously engaged. NIMBYs are more loud and tenacious than they are numerous. Also support from people who perhaps thought (and perhaps still think) that developers are kind…

I guess you never heard of the Richmond city manager who got fired? [https://richmondbizsense.com/2021/01/20/richmond-planning-di...]

Are activists making some inroads? Sure. Things change! The generation with the largest vested interest is dying out and the changes snuck in during the last election that neuters a lot of the longer term prop 13 issues is going to help with some of the transition. I’m looking forward to when it happens.

Until one of those 3 items I talk about happens though, it ain’t, and this is still hot air - I’ve been in California nearly 30 years, and this hasn’t changed yet. I’m hoping sometime before 50 it will, but I’m not holding my breath.

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