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Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

darrellowens.substack.com

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Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#341

Post by rcme »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #313
rcme wrote: post #279

This 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.

No, not good. It doesn't make sense to destroy wealth. If you want to transfer wealth from one party (land owners) to another (renters) that's fine. The land itself has intrinsic value. It's fine to transfer that value from one party to another. But it's absolutely not fine to destroy it. Everyone is worse off.

Your argument is basically that we should start salting farm land to decrease its value.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#342

Post by HDThoreaun »

creeble wrote: post #334
HDThoreaun wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20% of them are for low income only.

Below-average income, not low income. Homeless people typically have zero income. They will qualify for exactly zero of the new housing these "unzoning" laws permit.

> Homeless people typically have zero income

This is not my understanding. 70% of the homeless in SF had an apartment before they became homeless. They had income, but weren't able to continue to afford the apartment. There's certainly a portion of people who have no desire to be productive, but it's far from all of the homeless or even a majority.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#343

Post by lovecg »

scruple wrote: post #140
thepasswordis wrote: post #5

Wow 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 I want to collect old VW busses and park them in the front yard, I don't care what effect this has on my neighbors property value. This is my home. If you don't want to deal with living near other people, move to the country. I don't like that we have to have laws like this in society anymore than you do. But you're kind of ignoring Chesterton's fence here. I've lived next to places like you're describing, and I…

This argument is a strawman though. Reasonable restrictions are fine, but in practice you get neighbors arguing about what kind of tile you’re allowed to put on your porch roof. If you ever listen in on local city planning/design meetings it’s pretty illuminating.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#344

Post by tinglymintyfrsh »

munificent wrote: post #205
rcpt wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't built a chemical processing plant in a residential neighborhood, obviously Actually we have oil derricks in the middle of residential neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

As far as I know, pumping crude doesn't produce the same pollution and nearby collateral damage that processing chemicals does. Source: Grew up in Texas surrounded by mostly harmless pump jacks and then moved to Louisiana in Cancer Alley.

Until there's an oil spill, fracking discharge, earthquake (from fracking), or refinery explosion like in Houston.

Houston has both petrochem refining and chemical plants with people living in "sacrifice zones".

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#345

Post by whiddershins »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #320
lovecg wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That was the deal at the time they bought it, and priced in.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#346

Post by raldi »

rcme wrote: post #279

This 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…

Another way to say "this will destroy land value" is "this will lower housing prices". That's the point.

But reality is more nuanced than that; the cost/value of apartments will go down, but the cost/value of single-family houses will go up, as there will be interest in buying the latter and turning it into the former. Land values will go up; rent and condo prices will go down.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#347

Post by HDThoreaun »

iskander wrote: post #337
HDThoreaun wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might just be because homeless people prefer to live in the same places everyone else does though, which is why those places are expensive.

You would then expect the percent of homeless per state to be roughly similar, when it in fact varies tremendously: https://www.statista.com/statistics/727847/homelessness-rate... NYC, HI, CA >40 per 100k homeless in 2020 (higher now) States with lots of poverty but also extremely cheap housing at the bottom with a 5x lower rate of homelessness: LA, AL, MS Similarly, WV very low on the list despite being high on all…

> You would then expect the percent of homeless per state to be roughly similar

No, I would expect the opposite. All the would be homeless in unappealing states leave and go to california or NYC because if they're not paying for housing they figure might as well go to the nicest area.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#348

Post by TulliusCicero »

ericmay wrote: post #212

I loathe the suburbs and car-only infrastructure. It's backwards, bone-headed, and downright treacherously stupid. In addition to zoning reform we should nationally remove mandatory parking minimums. Hell, if anything we should de-zone strip malls and any new development that practically requires a car to get to (implementation details fuzzy). But I do have sympathy for people who move to a location or community for…

> There is real harm done, and it is anti-democratic in some ways to take state or national laws and have those supercede (micromanage in this case) local building rules or regulations.

No, it's really not.

There's nothing fundamentally anti-democratic about higher government overriding lower government. Often, deciding rules at a lower level doesn't work well, and this is a good example of that.

Deciding housing density at the neighborhood or city level has been an abject failure, because every city is incentivized to benefit from the metro area booming job market while not shouldering responsibility for housing all the new people coming in. Pushing that burden onto the other cities is irresponsible, but that's what they all try to do, with the result being that hardly any cities build sufficient housing.

It'd probably be better to decide this with a metro-level authority rather than the state, but the state is still better than the city.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#350

Post by Supermancho »

jonhohle wrote: post #233
rjbwork wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody in the US, and indeed most of the world, "owns" their property. Try not paying your property taxes, and see where that gets you. You lease the right to usus, mostly fructus, and to some extent abusus from the state.

Even if you consider property tax that is legally false.

I'm not sure if you even understood what you're replying to, since this is pointlessly contrarian.

"legally" is an acknowledgement that the ownership is conditional on someone else who has authority about the ownership (ie the practical owner).

This is a reasonable point of view, in theory.

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