The only problem with "to each according to their need, to each according to their ability" is that need is infinite and ability is finite.
Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
311–320 of 1001 posts
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
> don't want to deal with people deciding together that they want their community to have certain guidelines, move to the country Shouldn’t this be the message to a suburban homeowner clinging to the past? Move to the country. Buy land around you. Don’t tell others what they can and cannot do on property you don’t own.
Devil’s advocate: they did. 50+ years ago they moved to a sleepy suburban town that through no fault of their own became a center of a worldwide tech revolution. Things change, sometimes dramatically. A place in the country you move to today can also transform 50 years in the future if you’re unlucky.
There's no right to be free from change. You may need to keep moving around if you're after a specific ethos or aesthetic on the land you don't own. Your early arrival shouldn't have permanent supremacy over your neighbors plot of land. Don't want a building there? Buy the land. Can't afford it? Prepare some welcome gifts for your new neighbors.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#313This has the real possibility to destroy wealth and land value. I understand the desire for more housing, but you absolutely need people in the community to be making these decisions. State-level officials don't have the ability to make informed decisions on important local issues like this. Unfortunately, I have first-hand experience with this. The state decided to build a (very) small bridge over a creek in my neig…
> This has the real possibility to destroy wealth and land value.
Good.
Treating increasing unaffordability as a good thing is an insane part of American culture. We didn't celebrate car prices going through the roof during the pandemic, and neither does it make sense to celebrate skyrocketing housing prices.
The ideal price of housing would be zero, same as other products.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#314There is a developer in Cupertino who has been fighting with the city for years, who got awfully quiet lately. Now I know why. I suspect they have a plan for an absolutely massive high rise behind my house that they will be submitting at 8am tomorrow morning. My neighbors are going to be pissed .
would be great if you let HN know the outcome!
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#315I grew up in Santa Monica and live here now. Except for getting around the height restriction, this really is good news. Here's one big reason why.
Maybe half the houses and apartments in the city were built to last 30 years. They are literal tear-downs and should be replaced. It's that simple. There are lots of valid points to debate here but crap houses made of rotting sticks just need to go.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#316Wow that's great news! The level of bureaucratic creep that has been imposed on property owners is actually unbelievable to me. I obviously understand some regulations (you can't built a chemical processing plant in a residential neighborhood, obviously), but cities have creeped themselves into all-powerful overseers. Most cities now have the power to tell you what kind of house you can build, how you can paint it, h…
> If you don't want to deal with living near other people, move to the country. The reverse could also be said - if you don't want to deal with people deciding together that they want their community to have certain guidelines, move to the country. You can do pretty much whatever you want in rural areas without significantly impacting your neighbors. People living together in a small area do get to decide together wh…
An important caveat here is that these small groups are only "nuked from orbit" for the time period that they're out of compliance with a law that has existed for 50 years.
I totally agree that "people living together in a small area" can pretty much do what they want. The only issue is when that starts to screw over other folks, and when all the other small areas get together to do the same.
Then it's pretty reasonable for the state to go "you can't just never build houses. That's a decision that screws the rest of the state" and enforce that decision
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
not sure if its going to "fix" the housing market, but its a step in the right direction, away from nimbyism.
My understanding is that California is short around a million housing units. Truly a staggering number that will take very long to catch up on. Not sure how many units are being allowed by builder's remedy but it surely isn't the full million.
It’s not short anything. Other states have housing.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
> don't want to deal with people deciding together that they want their community to have certain guidelines, move to the country Shouldn’t this be the message to a suburban homeowner clinging to the past? Move to the country. Buy land around you. Don’t tell others what they can and cannot do on property you don’t own.
Devil’s advocate: they did. 50+ years ago they moved to a sleepy suburban town that through no fault of their own became a center of a worldwide tech revolution. Things change, sometimes dramatically. A place in the country you move to today can also transform 50 years in the future if you’re unlucky.
Not sure if I'd consider an unprecedented explosion in property-based generational wealth unlucky...
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cities should be able to plan their own growth. They are able to plan their own growth, but they aren't able to refuse to grow. Or at least, not through zoning; being located where potable water or sewer/septic are at capacity is probably still valid to restrict new building.
Why not? if a low density community wants to plan to remain low density, who are the rest of us to stop them?
I see a lot of validity in this line of thought and agree with it in principle, but in practice it has led to a lot of problems in California.
For one, California is split up into many smaller towns/cities in large metro areas, so each having their own policies leads to locally-optimal but regionally-suboptimal policies of trying to get as much commercial development as possible with as little residential development as possible. This is a direct contributor to gentrification (if you are “lucky” and able to soak up the commercial demand without increasing residential supply, you’ve created a mismatch between jobs and people in your area), ghettoisation (the people priced out of where they were before have to go somewhere), traffic (people have to commute into their jobs), and affordability (even the bad communities can’t increase housing much because they have the weakest tax base, plus all the restricted supply where jobs and taxes actually are).
The right solution to this problem is to recognize the whole local-optimization problem and make it so every municipality has to solve the problem at once, to prevent the adverse selection of solving the problem in only one municipality. Which is what the state of CA is doing.
This could also be addressed from the other side, which is a complete political non-starter, of trying to limit job growth. Obviously nobody wants to do that. But the problem by and large is not just that CA has a lot of low density communities that want to remain that way, but also that those low density communities are creating more jobs than they can house.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
> don't want to deal with people deciding together that they want their community to have certain guidelines, move to the country Shouldn’t this be the message to a suburban homeowner clinging to the past? Move to the country. Buy land around you. Don’t tell others what they can and cannot do on property you don’t own.
Devil’s advocate: they did. 50+ years ago they moved to a sleepy suburban town that through no fault of their own became a center of a worldwide tech revolution. Things change, sometimes dramatically. A place in the country you move to today can also transform 50 years in the future if you’re unlucky.
> they did
They didn’t. If they bought the block, or easements on it, they would have. But they bought a plot. Others bought adjacent plots. Now they’re arguing they get to tell the adjacent plots what they can and cannot do.