Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

darrellowens.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 289 posts

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

#241

Post by BirdieNZ »

jjav wrote: post #146
BirdieNZ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upzoning increases land prices. It only results in a decrease in per-unit average house prices if it is accompanied with development (more housing units per square metre of land). Upzoning doesn't guarantee increased development as developers only build when it makes financial sense to do so, and flooding the market with more units would decrease the potential profit they can make. Existing residents who don't develo…

> Now, they still might revolt for other reasons, like not wanting undesirables like people poorer than themselves to move in next door, or not wanting to see as many houses in their morning walk, but from a financial sense, upzoning is a big positive for existing landowners. This is a very uncharitable take. People choose a place to live based on criteria they like. If you want to live in a super dense city you migh…

I'm basing the reasons for why people don't want development in their neighbourhood off real-world observations; I didn't intend to be uncharitable, just realistic. To be honest, I toned back the reasoning quite a bit from some of what I've heard before.

Maybe the underlying truth is merely "I don't like change", but the actual literal reasons given by many people when blocking development in their neighbourhoods in my city are not saying they don't want change, it's far more targeted at the kinds of people who will move in. I tend to operate on the assumption that the true reasons they have for not wanting development are worse than what they will voice in public, and at least certainly not better.

> Except for house flippers, people don't care about the financial sense.

I agree that typically this isn't the issue; the person I responded to did seem to think it might be though.

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

#242

Post by BirdieNZ »

astrange wrote: post #180
BirdieNZ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upzoning increases land prices. It only results in a decrease in per-unit average house prices if it is accompanied with development (more housing units per square metre of land). Upzoning doesn't guarantee increased development as developers only build when it makes financial sense to do so, and flooding the market with more units would decrease the potential profit they can make. Existing residents who don't develo…

> Upzoning doesn't guarantee increased development as developers only build when it makes financial sense to do so, and flooding the market with more units would decrease the potential profit they can make. This doesn't really matter; developers aren't a cartel and they don't care if the margin on new projects goes down. They only have to care that the smaller margin goes to them and not someone else. (To the extent…

Developers aren't a cartel, but they respond to incentives just like anyone else.

https://www.fresheconomicthinking.com/p/upzoning-predictions...

For one example of how upzoning alone doesn't result in developers exceeding the market saturation rate.

To be clear, I support upzoning but I think it should be accompanied with an increase in the holding cost of land, so landowners are incentivised to develop now rather than later.

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

#243

Post by CalRobert »

jjav wrote: post #238
CalRobert wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good reason to charge appropriately for street parking.

> This is a good reason to charge appropriately for street parking. How would that solve it? There still aren't enough spots. If you do unreserved spaces through parking meters or resident window stickers, people are still stuck doing all the same things (circling for hours, getting into fights). To solve that you'd need to have reserved street spots so people are guaranteed which spot is theirs. So now you have to s…

So if someone wants to live in a home without parking, it should be illegal?

Anyway pricing means that people can allocate the scarce resource of land in a city efficiently.

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

#244

Post by cyberax »

apsurd wrote: post #135
cyberax wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

cyberax, did you read your own article you linked to? In short, the "abandoned houses" are abandoned BECAUSE they're rural. I can't understand how this serves your view about dense urban cities being bad.

And why rural houses are abandoned? Always ask the next quesiton.

They are abandoned because there are no jobs around them. And there are no jobs because they have all concentrated into dense city cores.

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

#245

Post by cyberax »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #126
cyberax wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tokyo's crowding is absolutely due to Japan being an island with essentially zero natural resources. Literally everyone wants to go to tokyo because there are no other jobs.

> Literally everyone wants to go to tokyo because there are no other jobs.

Natural resources have nothing to do with it. Extraction industries employ comparatively few people, even in resource-rich countries. If anything, resource-rich countries experience even more densification.

Case in point: Moscow. Its population density is 5200 people per square kilometer. Tokyo is at 6100 people per square kilometer.

The reason is that it's easier for companies to create jobs in cities. It's not impossible for them to do otherwise, but a company with one huge office in the Downtown will likely have a competitive advantage over a company that has multiple distributed offices.

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

#246

Post by earthwalker99 »

fasthands9 wrote: post #229
earthwalker99 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to make a point? If so, what is it? The Sierra Club are liberal activists with zero historically left wing affiliations or common causes. It's entirely irrelevant as far as I can tell.

I do not like the Sierra Club - but in the political scene it is 100% on the left wing side. If you are saying it's "not truly left wing" then that scenes like a high bar. Sure, there are plenty of orgs to the left of them, but they seem even more anti new housing. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/the-only-thing-worse-... https://knock-la.com/of-course-republicans-are-yimbys-5a2ef0... I am optimistic things are…

It's not a "high bar." It's fundamentally different. The Sierra Club is a quintessentially liberal organization, not even nominally left wing in any way.

The DSA, however, might be a better candidate for a relative comparison, but it is still effectively just a liberal organization, despite it insisting otherwise. No historically left wing agenda would take any side in the shortsighted NIMBY/YIMBY dichotomy, both of which presume capitalism marks the end of history, which is definitionally a right wing position insofar as it effectively reinforces the established order (capitalism). A left wing agenda under a capitalist society must pursue progress while also undermining profit. The NIMBY/YIMBY dichotomy simply offers no capacity for that, meaning it is right wing by default.

These are of course contextual political categories but, by virtue of the enlightenment that produced them and the inherent forward direction of history, they can only become more complicated over time rather than more simplified. The definitions you're insisting on are strictly deteriorations of meanings and distinctions; they add nothing whatsoever to the discourse. With all due respect, their contribution is mere idiocy. It's the propaganda of American exceptionalism, a well documented anti-history that thankfully hasn't penetrated in every part of the world. I hope we can keep it that way for a bit longer.

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

#247

Post by astrange »

jjav wrote: post #240
astrange wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a very uncharitable take. You should go to a city council meeting and see how NIMBY homeowners behave. It is impossible to be worse than they are and it's impossible to describe them uncharitably. You can say "they just like their neighborhoods" all you like but they hate poor people, young people, richer people, anyone who might park a car in front of their house, anyone who might use all the parking spots…

> but they hate You paint with a very broad brush. I have no doubt that for each aspect you list, you can indeed find an example of some extremist who hates it. But the average regular person doesn't particularly hate any of these, they just want to live in their home in an area they like. > You can say "they just like their neighborhoods" I assume you have selected place(s) to live? Did you have any criteria for sel…

> You paint with a very broad brush.

No I don't, this is realistic. You can easily experience it anytime you like. They're also on Nextdoor if you can't go to any planning meetings.

> I have no doubt that for each aspect you list, you can indeed find an example of some extremist who hates it.

The problem is the political system is set up to only listen to these people, because urban planners are embarrassed about when they did urban renewal, and now they make up for it for every new project by delaying it until someone like this tells them to cancel it and then cancelling it.

> I assume you have selected place(s) to live? Did you have any criteria for selecting the area?

Walkable to a grocery store. Obviously it can close, but I can't stop that from happening.

And we're not supposed to care what these people want; they have influence over their property. They don't have influence over the "neighborhood" because they're not paying for it.

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

#248

Post by astrange »

delfinom wrote: post #181
astrange wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spacious apartments aren't nearly as possible in the US because of various deficiencies in our building codes, one major one being that single stair buildings aren't allowed, which means apartment buildings have to be built like hotels.

Seattle allows single stair buildings. US building codes aren't national but local. The local may point to one of the national association standards like the IBC or NFPA standards and such. But they then add/remove from those standards as they like. This is a problem people need to take up on local level.

> Seattle allows single stair buildings.

I know. Nobody else does though.

They still have enough other changes that we can't build something like a cavernous old NYC apartment, though I don't remember the other issues. I think it might be related to nobody wanting to build condos because they'll get sued for it.

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

#249

Post by caskstrength »

NoPedantsThanks wrote: post #223
matrix87 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent news! Less property value for you! Next stop, no more prop 13 either

Yay, and then you can join the homeless when your taxes double overnight and render your life savings worthless!

With several millions of dollars from selling your house? Those Cali homeless are apparently quite rich...

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

#250

Post by jjav »

CalRobert wrote: post #243
jjav wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a good reason to charge appropriately for street parking. How would that solve it? There still aren't enough spots. If you do unreserved spaces through parking meters or resident window stickers, people are still stuck doing all the same things (circling for hours, getting into fights). To solve that you'd need to have reserved street spots so people are guaranteed which spot is theirs. So now you have to s…

So if someone wants to live in a home without parking, it should be illegal? Anyway pricing means that people can allocate the scarce resource of land in a city efficiently.

> So if someone wants to live in a home without parking, it should be illegal?

That's a good question, difficult to answer in the general sense.

At the individual level the answer seems very easy. Of course I wouldn't want it to be illegal to live however you want or configure your apartment however you like, with or without parking! You do you.

But what about the next owner? If the very first owner gets to spec the apartment however they like (before it gets built) and opts for no parking that's fine. But later they sell it and the next owner needs a car so now they join the street parking scene. Multiply this by all the units and over time it's a problem.

Because ultimately housing lasts for a very long time. That new building is likely to stand there for a century or more, so those initial decisions of how many parking spots it has vs. units will last for a very long time, far beyond the preferences of the first buyer. So it's not that easy.

Post reply on HN