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California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

nytimes.com

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Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#181

Post by marcell »

i_am_nomad wrote: post #100
Lendal wrote: post #93

This story reminds me of when I was a kid and the school bus would come. Often there were no seats because every seat was taken--one kid each. There was plenty of room there, but the kids who got on the bus first would ban together to prevent new kids from sitting. Today these kids have grown up and own homes in the suburbs. New kids need to move in, but the kids who got there first refuse to let them build. That's w…

Except the school bus is a public good. Are you saying that we should reframe housing as a public good as well and provide it as such?

It’s pretty simple. If I own property, I should be allowed to build a home for myself on it, subject to relevant zoning. You, and adjacent property owner, should not be able to deny my private property use.

Yet this is not the case in California.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#182

Post by WhompingWindows »

danbmil99 wrote: post #170

Go ahead and build, but make damn sure you are being rational about people's behavior when it comes to driving and transit. My ex moved into a condominium complex that has exactly zero parking spots or loading docks for visitors, and no parking for half a mile in either direction. It's an absolute total fail. Neighbors rat on each other to get each other's cars towed because they get so upset. It's literally impossib…

Wow, seems like there was a leaps-and-bounds approach instead of an incremental style with that building. Their rationale may have been to think of a car-less society?

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#183

Post by riantogo »

Fauntleroy wrote: post #142
riantogo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know why, right?

Yeah, we know why. Maybe a basic necessity like housing shouldn't be treated like the damn stock market.

That is correct. So people who got into the "stock market" are being protective about their investment. Unless there is a path to offer them relief they will always vote against diluting their hard earned money. Most of the people who didn't get in often approach the problem as, "yeah, screw them, make it good for me", and then act surprised as to why they don't get the votes. But it seems like you understand the issue.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#184

Post by bluGill »

majormajor wrote: post #91
pound wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure what exactly is 'short term' here, but simple example re. supply and demand and prices: 1) there is a 100 single family homes somewhere. 2) there are 300 people looking who need to live in that somewhere 3) on top of 100 single family homes now we have 400 units built .. Can it be that price of the units for sale may get reduced for competitiveness?

The price the NIMBY in the parent's example would care about is the price of the SFH they already owned. That price goes up - it's now harder to find SFHs, and the land value is also increased because it could be turned into 4 units that will add up to more value than the prior 1. https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2020-01-3... Here's an agent discussing this happening right now : > Traditional sales…

The hassles of having tenants make it not worth the extra income for a lot of people who would only have one. There are real examples of tenants destroying a place and moving out leaving the landlord a large cost to fix the place up. There are real examples of tenants using various discrimination and tenant rights laws on false claims to get months of cost free living. I make no claim as to how common it is, but if you are landlord stuck with the evil tenant it doesn't matter if is only 1 in a million who is that evil.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#185

Post by WhompingWindows »

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #11

How about we talk about building infrastructure? The whole Bay Area is building like crazy, and yet the roads are getting worse (more building? more traffic lights!). Public transportation is a big joke around here. Caltrain from South San Jose to Mountain View? We have the tracks, we have the train... the train just does not go this route on weekends. We have the same situation as a startup focused on developing a p…

Couldn't people just work remotely and then get together for occasional retreats or all-day meetings? It seems that coders could have their own offices at home and just occasionally use transport to get to work.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#186

Post by danans »

quotemstr wrote: post #32
pascalxus wrote: post #22

I completely agree with the sentiment to build more, much more housing. But, in order to make that happen, we also need to: - get rid of or modify zoning laws (at least in places where growth will happen) - reduce regulations on builders - ensure that there are plenty of builders for health competition (so that consumers don't get ripped off) - provide protections for builders from Sue happy NIMBYs (some kind of lega…

Another beneficial change would be repealing proposition 13. Because proposition 13 essentially bans property tax increases for property owners, it creates a perverse incentive to drive property values as high as possible with restrictive zoning. Without proposition 13, property taxes would rise along with the land's economic value, creating an additional incentive for property owners to let the market naturally shif…

There is an upcoming ballot initiative to repeal the commercial side of prop 13:

https://edsource.org/2019/school-groups-explore-15-billion-t...

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#188

Post by bluGill »

rossdavidh wrote: post #34
aty268 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Texas, and I don't understand the stigma against developers building more housing. It drives down prices, and increases competition. Why would California citizens ever be against this? Edit: The reason is because homeowners are competing with developers, so their own asset depreciates when supply increases. I was just thinking from the perspective of renters.

Speaking as someone who lived in Bay Area California for a few years, and Texas for several decades now, the first thing to know if that not all California has the same attitude on this, for much the same reason that Waco and Austin have different attitudes on a lot of things. In the Bay Area, there are geographical (water and hills) limits to expansion, whereas in Texas when you build more, it usually is out into th…

rebuttal https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/7/25/why-are-develo...

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#189

Post by bovermyer »

nostrademons wrote: post #152
bovermyer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either build very tall, high density housing to accommodate the population... or reduce the population drastically. A nuclear missile fired into the San Andreas fault, perhaps (this is a movie reference, folks, and not a serious suggestion).

What movie? It sounds vaguely entertaining.

This is from the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#190

Post by lthornberry »

downerending wrote: post #159

I might be hopelessly naive, but why not do the new growth somewhere else? The BA is pretty obviously "full" already, and adding more housing of any kind isn't going to make it better.

The BA isn't "full" by any reasonable measure. See this list of US cities by population density for comparison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_d.... San Francisco is 21st on the list, at 17,246 people per sq mi; the next densest city in the Bay Area is Daly City, which is 49th at 13,703 people per sq mi.

By contrast, NYC has 27,016 people per sq mi; the densest suburb of Boston (Somerville) has 18,431; West Hollywood has 18,297.

There's plenty of room for more people in the Bay Area, if denser housing is allowed.

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