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Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

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Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#101

Post by ajmurmann »

theluketaylor wrote: post #9
thereisnospork wrote: post #2

A surprisingly progressive proposal coming from Berkeley, but of course they are still playing games with parking minimums maximums, setback requirements, and income segregation. Seems like it would be a step forward at least.

This is a real danger lurking among the zoning reform efforts we are seeing all over the english-speaking world. There are so many levers baked into the zoning code to prevent development that it's easy to produce a policy that appears to unwind the restrictions without actually permitting any real progress. My city upzoned the entire city from 1 to 3 units per lot across the whole city a few years ago, which is grea…

The entire parking minimum mess only exists because we have street parking for which we pay a very high price, but the average voter thinks of as free. I wish we could get rid of it entirely, but that would never fly because it's completely unimaginable to voters. Policy is fun and great; politics is cancer...

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#102

Post by babyshake »

aorloff wrote: post #95

Berkeley is where 1/4 of the elected City Councilmember quit in the last month, one due to harassment and threats (People's Park appearing to be the exacerbating issue) and the other because she is fed up with Berkeley politics, not so much that she isn't still running for mayor, and not because of the protestors who were kinda talking over her big announcement, and also not because of threats like the other guy. We…

Can you speak more to the comedy and jazz in Berkeley and where to find it? Also feel free to suggest any food spots, especially ones that aren't as obvious as Viks, Cheeseboard, Chez Panisse, etc.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#103

Post by cyberax »

apsurd wrote: post #94
cyberax wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it's not mutually exclusive. Yes, it is. It's a zero-sum game, and dense cities are more economically advantageous for companies. They allow them to offload their externalities onto their employees, via increased living costs. Tokyo is a GREAT example. It's now so dense and expensive that some people are forced to live in microapartments, where you can cook your food while sitting on a toilet. And of course…

i really do take you seriously. and i learn from you. but also: come on, Japan is the planet's most economically significant TINY ISLAND. you don't have to reach for capitalist conspiracy theories to reason about Japan's issues. and i say this as a kind of inevitable anti-capitalist!

Tokyo's issues are not caused by it being on a tiny island. As I said, Japan has literally millions of empty houses right now: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/realestate/japan-empty-ho...

And there's nothing "conspiracy" about what I'm saying. There's no secret global cabal that wants to push people into cities. It's simply caused by a toxic confluence of ideology and economic forces.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#104

Post by ipaddr »

ajmurmann wrote: post #99
ravetcofx wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will prevent developers from keeping old poor habits around of bad land use

If there is concern about underutilizing land, pass a land value tax and the market will figure out what's the best way to improve the value of the property itself beyond the windfall from the unimproved land going up in value due to surrounding economic activity. When it comes to housing the US seems to suffer some kind of disability that makes it impossible to not be tempted to steer towards a planned economy.

Let the people with the most money decide?

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#105

Post by Exoristos »

apsurd wrote: post #94
cyberax wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it's not mutually exclusive. Yes, it is. It's a zero-sum game, and dense cities are more economically advantageous for companies. They allow them to offload their externalities onto their employees, via increased living costs. Tokyo is a GREAT example. It's now so dense and expensive that some people are forced to live in microapartments, where you can cook your food while sitting on a toilet. And of course…

i really do take you seriously. and i learn from you. but also: come on, Japan is the planet's most economically significant TINY ISLAND. you don't have to reach for capitalist conspiracy theories to reason about Japan's issues. and i say this as a kind of inevitable anti-capitalist!

What makes you so confident in your opinion?

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#106

Post by cyberax »

theluketaylor wrote: post #100
cyberax wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brooklyn's population density is only half of that in Manhattan, and there's plenty of new construction there. Guess what it does to prices?

You're reading the demand/supply situation backwards. Even with all the construction in Brooklyn, supply is failing to meet demand, therefore prices are going up. We've failed to meet supply in urban spaces for several generations now and have a massive deficit to pay off before adding any supply can actually drive prices down; we're barely adding enough units to affect the rate of increase of prices.

> You're reading the demand/supply situation backwards.

No. I'm reading it exactly right. Density _causes_ higher prices. It makes it easier to create jobs near dense locations, which in turn makes it more attractive for people to move in. This in turn increases housing costs.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#107

Post by AlbertCory »

cheriot wrote: post #44
tzs wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if things work the same way in California as they do up here in Washington, but up here I see a large number of complaints from current home owners about rising house prices. That's because rising house prices means rising property taxes.

California loves its Reagan era laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

Prop 13 was 1978. Jerry Brown had been governor for 4 years.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#108

Post by ajmurmann »

kuchenbecker wrote: post #45
ozzydave wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately prop 13 broke that dynamic, among other ill effects.

My neighbors bought their house in 1975, pay $3k in property taxes. I pay 9k in property taxes. If I bought today I'd pay 17k. I will not get a larger house because my property taxes would triple if I wanted another bedroom. A marginally larger house is not worth the marginal cost to move. And with my 2.8% refinanced mortgage and 60% equity, and current rates today, there's no chance I'd sell. It's a dream of mine to…

And then you have probably lots of people who didn't move to better jobs because it meant they'd buy a new home and all the people who couldn't move to a new, better job because people already there aren't selling even when they are retired because they want to keep that sweet property tax rate locked in. Prop 13 is poison for the economy.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#109

Post by josuepeq »

I like the idea!

I also like Dingbats. And parking.

Removing parking minimums is a noble idea, but one thing I have noticed is that the new “parking free” apartment buildings in San Francisco, such as the Tenderloin and SOMA, are having a hard time getting all of their units filled, even with prices slashed. This is a problem that buildings with parking seem to not have. Even with good transit, the city is much easier to navigate by car. People who have the means to drive, will mostly drive when factoring decisions like this:

Today I went from Church/Market to Chestnut/Fillmore in the Marina on public transit, which took me about 40 minutes. If I was going to drive my car, 15 minutes.

In Berkeley, there are also buses that traverse every major street, BART cutting through downtown and then over to North Berkeley, but it is significantly more difficult to get everything done without a car - food deserts abound, and the main retail and entertainment areas are also lopsided on the east side of town, with the other being 4th street, which is more like a destination retail area - CB2, Apple.

Without a 1:1 ratio of parking, we gain an abundance of traffic congestion in people circling blocks to find a parking spot on the street.

If parking is available for rent in less than a 1:1 ratio, the affluent - with the deeded parking space in their market rate apartments - usually end up with the few parking spots in a development, on the idea that they can afford to pay premiums for it. Below Market Rate units usually only have a few spots available for multiple residents to pay for at full price.

Parking imbalances give credence to the idea that cars are exclusive, everyone else should take the bus. Its not easy to force people to give up their cars.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#110

Post by cyberax »

theluketaylor wrote: post #89
cyberax wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF has not built anything, but rents decreased much more than in MN: https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/sf-rent-price... Rents right now are an unreliable indicator because they are heavily affected by the downtown blights that are spreading in many cities. Sale prices are much more reliable, and Minneapolis prices (as expected) grew: https://www.redfin.com/city/10943/MN/Minneapolis/housing-mar...

Zoning alone can only affect prices when there is an arbitrage opportunity to build something in location A that isn't possible in nearby location B. When entire cities upzone across the board like Minneapolis there is no arbitrage opportunity, so prices are not going up specifically because the zoning was changed. Prices are increasing because there is a chronic shortage of places to lives near economic opportunity…

> Prices are increasing because there is a chronic shortage of places to lives near economic opportunity and high demand to live somewhere you can make a living.

Yes. And the solution is not to drive people into dense slums, but to make sure that jobs are available outside of city cores.

It will require concerted action, probably something like cap-and-trade for dense office space.

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