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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

#251

Post by floatingatoll »

staticautomatic wrote: post #222
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…

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

No, it really doesn't. SF tried that with neighborhood commissions. It turns out that higher density housing is hideous to existing residents, regardless of the shell it's in.

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

#252

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#253

Post by shuckles »

lazide wrote: post #246
shuckles wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The people in Modesto are pissed! San Francisco’s housing prices have been spilling over into their city for years! And San Francisco imports almost its entire population’s worth of people during the day to work in and contribute payroll taxes to the city. It’s not the great argument you think it is to claim that none of these people have a stake in its land use. Additionally, Nevada and Arizona share a jurisdicti…

That’s nice and all, but none of those things but SB35 actually matters in any real way that I can tell - and SB35 passed in ‘17 and so far hasn’t changed anything important, or we wouldn’t still all be bitching about the exact same thing we have been since well before then! SB50 never passed, Modesto can ‘be pissed’ (why exactly?) at the higher property values and income all their residents who work in SF are benefi…

1. You are naive about how this process works. SB35 has already led to thousands of new units of construction, including - finally - the construction of 2k units at what was formerly Vallco mall, despite lawsuits and general objections by Cupertino city council. That is only the beginning, because it was paired with reforms to the Regional Housing Needs Allocation process which has 10x'd the planned minimum requirement of new homes. Beverly Hills and Palo Alto are both quite upset about having to let people build homes or lose local control. Some more information here: https://www.sfweekly.com/news/bay-area-takes-step-toward-maj...

These changes take years to make their real impact felt, and the crisis is half a century in the making. The future is _more_ state pre-emption of zoning, not less.

The funny thing is: the ignorance of local voters to the larger systems at play lead to lots of recent decisions that will soon backfire. For example, San Mateo recently re-affirmed city-wide height limits which more or less guarantee that their RHNA requirements will require their planning department end single family zoning in large parts of the city; there's no place for them to shove apartment towers!

2. SB50 failed due to conservative state reps from SoCal, in particular LA. It had plenty of support with reps in NorCal, and in any case its mere existence disproves your point that there is no basis for states short-circuiting local control.

3. I'm not going to explain how delegation works to you in detail, since I assume you are intelligent enough to get it. There are many powers that are delegated to city governments which can be taken away if cities prove themselves incompetent at administering it. City departments go under conservatorship of the state all the time.

4. I'm not sure why you assume the legal remedy is a lawsuit. Changes to how federal mortgages are backed; removal of subsidy on home insurance which makes sprawl math workout (albeit in the short term); a shift away from federally mandated highway spending; changes to how housing assistance programs are managed and qualified for at the federal level could all manifest as land use changes in cities without explicitly being about zoning. There are probably individual bureaucrats at the DOT or FHWA who are deciding which expansions of 101 or 880 are worthwhile to fund and which aren't. Federal law could easily let them prioritize funding for BART instead.

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

#254

Post by mastrsushi »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #188
zippergz wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is kind of the opposite of the (mostly joking) point I made that you replied to. But the thing I find bizarre is that people can't understand why other people oppose change in the place they live in. Most people choose places to live because they like those places. I think it's safe to say that the things they like extend beyond the four walls of the residence they buy or rent. They might like the walkabi…

Because it's quite xenophobic behavior, you say diversity but mean the diversity of people who you happen to like. It's rather easy to be tolerant if only things that you like apply. You can hear exactly the same things racists say about their small towns changing without all these sophisticated meaningless words.

>quite xenophobic behavior

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

#255

Post by piva00 »

staticautomatic wrote: post #222
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…

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

It doesn't need to be. Vienna has quite a few of higher-density council housing buildings that are architecturally pleasing, one example is Alt-Erlaa [0].

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wohnpark_Alterlaa

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

#256

Post by pharke »

lazide wrote: post #101
rhino369 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California, the only reason people can oppose new projects is because the government enables them to have a say in someone else's property. So you don't have to force development, but you do have to remove NIMBY's ability to veto projects. That starts with reforming permitting processes and zoning regulations.

‘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…

Resorting to voting in legislation to force your neighbours and, on a broader scale, the rest of the municipality to conform to some arbitrary rules should be considered a failure. It means that whoever the concerned group of people are were unable or unwilling to negotiate a reasonable compromise that suits all parties and have fallen back to using force to get their own way, so to speak. I think this is at the heart of the exodus from California, there is no common good will towards resolving disputes equitably. Everything is decided at the ballot box and so everything becomes a divisive issue with close to half the population being on the losing end no matter what the result. It's not surprising that people would up stakes to get away from this.

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

#257

Post by CincinnatiMan »

rayiner wrote: post #174
harryh wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

175k to 660k in 32 years is only a 4.25% increase per year. That's really not much at all.

It’s true it’s less than some other places, but it’s almost double the headline rate of inflation over that time. For a town that—let me tell you—truly has nothing going on.

What was the mortgage interest rate in 1989? As rates go down, prices go up, so unless the interest rate environment of 1989 was similar to 2021, I don't think it's fair to compare only the home sale price.

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

#258

Post by lazide »

pharke wrote: post #256
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…

Resorting to voting in legislation to force your neighbours and, on a broader scale, the rest of the municipality to conform to some arbitrary rules should be considered a failure. It means that whoever the concerned group of people are were unable or unwilling to negotiate a reasonable compromise that suits all parties and have fallen back to using force to get their own way, so to speak. I think this is at the hear…

If you are referring to the propositions as a failure of the state, I tend to agree. It’s also the only way to directly address other propositions (like Prop 13).

One thing I’ve seen in full force with for instance Prop 19 (which rolled back some of the egregious prop 13 issues such as broadly inheritable grandfathered property taxes), is that the easily accessible descriptions were all (charitably) misleading marketing fluff to sell the majority of the public on significant impacts to taxation on property that they would almost certainly not have passed if they had known the implications - people were scrambling even in Jan/Feb to figure out what it even meant for inherited real property. In most cases, it means it doesn’t actually make sense to do anything but sell it now; which is a huge shift from before, and will cost many children of regular middle class families hundreds of thousands of dollars long term (but correspondingly give 100’s of billions to the state, and close loopholes related to some commercial property or large family landlords)

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

#259

Post by lazide »

jandrese wrote: post #250
lazide wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re saying people who don’t live in an area...... don’t get to vote on the laws in that area? What else do you propose should happen? Should California allow Texans to vote on state propositions? Should Marin county voters decide on who the Santa Clara County Sheriff is? Since they haven’t moved there, how could you even decide which hypothetical future residence county they were voting for or eligible in? Woul…

I'm saying it's silly to say that it's the law is the reflection of the will of the people with regards to new residence when they have had no say in crafting the law.

It explicitly is though - the reflection of the will of the people living there right now (or at least those of them that get out and vote, which definitely isn’t everyone, but what else can you do?).

You seem to be trying to include the will of a hypothetical future set of people that may or may not arrive - practically though, how would that even work?

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

#260

Post by punchclockhero »

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…

Now I want NIMBYs in city builder games randomly preventing the player from creating and/or upgrading zones. Chances are they will be treated like the nobles in Dwarf Fortress, that's forced to leave or killed off in spectacularly creative ways.
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