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

Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

darrellowens.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 134 posts

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#121

Post by jjav »

jltsiren wrote: post #101
russellbeattie wrote: post #92

My son just went through this and got super lucky to find a place, but out in Capitola. UCSC's campus is absolutely massive with huge areas of unused, unforested land [1]. There is more than enough space for more dorms and apartment houses as well as the accompanying utility systems needed. If they're going to continue to increase enrollment, they need to bite the bullet and put up some goddamn buildings. They simply…

The university wants to build new student housing, but many people in the university and many locals don't. There are concrete plans to build housing for a few thousand additional students on campus, but the plans have been on hold for years as people oppose them for environmental and aesthetic reasons.

> The university wants to build new student housing, but many people in the university and many locals don't.

UC is an independent entity from the city and they can build housing on their plentiful land whether locals like it or not.

UCSC just doesn't want to solve the problem and prefers to look the other way and dump the students onto a town that has no space.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#122

Post by bombcar »

millimeterman wrote: post #109
bombcar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the people who live and vote there want the city to remain as it is - certainly it would be a successful city if it were as dense as Paris, but it wouldn’t be Santa Cruz anymore, but Paris West or something.

> The problem is the people who live and vote there want the city to remain as it is There's no good reason that Santa Cruz should specifically stay the way it was 50 years ago or whatever. Personally, I would have liked for Santa Cruz to remain the way it was before people came and tore up all the nature to build a bunch of suburbs, but I can't get what I want either. Culture is inherently ever-changing; Santa Cruz…

Which brings us full circle to the whole question of government and local government in particular; Californians in general and certainly Santa Crucians would be directly opposed to Texas voting to redevelop Santa Cruz into a highrise metropolis - so who has the say and who gets to make that decision? Obviously the people who want to live there don't live there, but should it be a county decision? State? Federal? World?

Even many of the people who are rabidly pro-transit will be at least mildly against "transit right through my bedroom"; most people don't like being eminently domained.

This usually results in the solution being "motion" of some sort; a city that is run down or out of the limelight begins to modernize and upgrade, and it becomes the new center, and the towns that don't chance ossify and eventually die off.

It may be that the "California problem" is solved because everyone eventually moves away.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#123

Post by millimeterman »

bombcar wrote: post #122
millimeterman wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is the people who live and vote there want the city to remain as it is There's no good reason that Santa Cruz should specifically stay the way it was 50 years ago or whatever. Personally, I would have liked for Santa Cruz to remain the way it was before people came and tore up all the nature to build a bunch of suburbs, but I can't get what I want either. Culture is inherently ever-changing; Santa Cruz…

Which brings us full circle to the whole question of government and local government in particular; Californians in general and certainly Santa Crucians would be directly opposed to Texas voting to redevelop Santa Cruz into a highrise metropolis - so who has the say and who gets to make that decision? Obviously the people who want to live there don't live there, but should it be a county decision? State? Federal? Wor…

Why should development be a matter of formal voting and government mandates? Why should it be any more complex than private entities buying land and then constructing what they want on that land? (Within reason - zoning is still important to keep housing away from industrial waste or garbage dumps. But the externalities of disallowing dense and mixed-use development are profoundly negative.)

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#124

Post by bombcar »

millimeterman wrote: post #123
bombcar wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which brings us full circle to the whole question of government and local government in particular; Californians in general and certainly Santa Crucians would be directly opposed to Texas voting to redevelop Santa Cruz into a highrise metropolis - so who has the say and who gets to make that decision? Obviously the people who want to live there don't live there, but should it be a county decision? State? Federal? Wor…

Why should development be a matter of formal voting and government mandates? Why should it be any more complex than private entities buying land and then constructing what they want on that land? (Within reason - zoning is still important to keep housing away from industrial waste or garbage dumps. But the externalities of disallowing dense and mixed-use development are profoundly negative.)

That's likely to be involved in at least part of the solution, but you could still have the situation where everyone refuses to sell to developers (or enacts HOA-like contracts that forbid it).

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#125

Post by millimeterman »

bombcar wrote: post #124
millimeterman wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should development be a matter of formal voting and government mandates? Why should it be any more complex than private entities buying land and then constructing what they want on that land? (Within reason - zoning is still important to keep housing away from industrial waste or garbage dumps. But the externalities of disallowing dense and mixed-use development are profoundly negative.)

That's likely to be involved in at least part of the solution, but you could still have the situation where everyone refuses to sell to developers (or enacts HOA-like contracts that forbid it).

> you could still have the situation where everyone refuses to sell to developers

There's nothing wrong with this - no one is obligated to sell their land to developers. But considering that NIMBYs have to fight hard and continuously to block new development that would have otherwise proceeded, clearly that's not the case.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#126

Post by jltsiren »

jjav wrote: post #121
jltsiren wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The university wants to build new student housing, but many people in the university and many locals don't. There are concrete plans to build housing for a few thousand additional students on campus, but the plans have been on hold for years as people oppose them for environmental and aesthetic reasons.

> The university wants to build new student housing, but many people in the university and many locals don't. UC is an independent entity from the city and they can build housing on their plentiful land whether locals like it or not. UCSC just doesn't want to solve the problem and prefers to look the other way and dump the students onto a town that has no space.

Lawyers think otherwise.

It's not enough to own the land and have the political permission from the relevant entity. You also need all kinds of legal permits before you can start construction. And each of those permits provides opportunities for people who don't like the project to sue you to delay or prevent the construction.

In my home country, those lawsuits are cheap and their outcomes are predictable, because they are handled by the administrative court system. The judges are not allowed to consider the substance of the argument. They can only determine if the decisions were made according to the proper processes. Matters of substance are left to politicans to decide.

Here in the US, the lawsuits are handled by civil courts, where judges have more latitude to choose which factors to consider. That makes the lawsuits more expensive and their outcomes unpredictable, which is a major reason why NIMBYism is so effective in the US.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#127

Post by zeruch »

rcpt wrote: post #52
zeruch wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given he stated he was a native, why would he (your pedantry aside)?

For the environment, and to not "ruin the city". Or is your belief that the city was the exact perfect size when his bloodline moved in and it's only people who showed up later that are undeserving?

LOL. The self-righteous hyperbole is just downright use-net circa 1996 adorable, but it doesn't make your statements any more compelling, nor does it show that you grasped the point very well.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#128

Post by PubliusMI »

millimeterman wrote: post #113
nradov wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who live (and vote) in Santa Cruz prefer to be in a low density area. While I understand that some people actually like to live in denser cities, the majority prefer some space and privacy. This is not unreasonable. Places like Santa Cruz have never had any real intentional urban planning, so building a lot of additional housing is going to overload the infrastructure. They would need to upgrade all the u…

> Most people who live (and vote) in Santa Cruz prefer to be in a low density area. While I understand that some people actually like to live in denser cities, the majority prefer some space and privacy. Sure, there's nothing wrong with that. What _is_ unreasonable is fighting tooth and nail to prevent anyone without a sufficiently large bag of money from moving to Santa Cruz to try and preserve that low density. > P…

>What _is_ unreasonable is fighting tooth and nail to prevent anyone without a sufficiently large bag of money from moving to Santa Cruz to try and preserve that low density.

Why? Why shouldn't locals be allowed to set development restrictions to their liking? Even if their desire is to intentionally stop population growth.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#129

Post by millimeterman »

PubliusMI wrote: post #128
millimeterman wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people who live (and vote) in Santa Cruz prefer to be in a low density area. While I understand that some people actually like to live in denser cities, the majority prefer some space and privacy. Sure, there's nothing wrong with that. What _is_ unreasonable is fighting tooth and nail to prevent anyone without a sufficiently large bag of money from moving to Santa Cruz to try and preserve that low density. > P…

>What _is_ unreasonable is fighting tooth and nail to prevent anyone without a sufficiently large bag of money from moving to Santa Cruz to try and preserve that low density. Why? Why shouldn't locals be allowed to set development restrictions to their liking? Even if their desire is to intentionally stop population growth.

Because there are major societal losses incurred by preventing development. I see no reason why governments should enable locals to enjoy the benefits of high property values and low density while externalizing the costs of that behavior onto others.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#130

Post by llampx »

millimeterman wrote: post #111
johnea wrote: post #96

So, I have to agree there is a major shortage of affordable housing. But, I have to disagree that this is due to a lack of building. 20 years ago, there was no housing crisis. Period. In 20 years, did the population suddenly increase by 20%? No, of course it didn't. In fact the US population is very flat in recent decades. What changed? Short term rental!!! A huge portion of the housing stock purchased, much by corpo…

While some comments have pointed out that the population has increased, that doesn't actually matter. Because what's being discussed here is an increase in demand for housing in a specific city. Even if the country's population stayed the same, an increase of people wanting to move to Santa Cruz will drive up demand for housing in Santa Cruz. When you have sustained increases in demand over multiple decades but local…

THIS. Housing is very local. Even within a city or metropolitan area, you can have areas which have increased demand.

Not to mention the other factors such as compounding of population growth, short-term rentals, housing stock being destroyed or serving fewer people than before (widows, empty nesters.)

Post reply on HN