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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

#351

Post by [deleted] »

ketzo wrote: post #329
thegrimmest wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? if a low density community wants to plan to remain low density, who are the rest of us to stop them?

I don't think you should be blindly downvoted for this -- I think it is a totally valid question, and one that the YIMBY movement needs to find a way to answer consistently. Personally, I would say that lots of low-density communities do remain low-density. And generally, that's because people don't want to move to them. But if you're a small town in Northern California, one of the most desirable places in the world,…

[deleted]

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

#352

Post by opportune »

thegrimmest wrote: post #339
opportune wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with your premise. I just disagree that the use of authority is the solution here. I don't see any reason why the state needs to intervene. Just let the locally-optimal solutions (peacefully) compete and sort themselves out. Let there be winners and losers, and don't get in the way. Using authority to force cooperation is tyranny. We're not all on the same team. We're self-interested, in-group focused, animal…

The locally-optimal solution is always to try to get as much commercial tax base as possible (since it increases the tax base without much increase in spending) and as little resident tax base as possible (since it increases spending). So I don’t really see how it will sort itself out.

When you are a bunch of small, close by municipalities all operating in essentially the same economic context (job market, etc.) the regional issues always become someone else’s problem.

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

#353

Post by gibolt »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #284
kqr2 wrote: post #48

How would the builder's remedy work in a place like Atherton if the homeowners form a pact and refuse to sell to any developers? E.g. if Marc Andreessen ( https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andre... ) and Steph Curry ( https://therealdeal.com/2023/01/29/steph-curry-shoots-his-ni... ) form a coalition with other residents then they can effectively keep the city down zoned even if builder's remedy i…

The point of upzoning is to allow for more housing to be built, not to literally force it upon unsuspecting property owners. If nobody wants to sell, nobody wants to sell. But eventually...

Houses in Atherton are already the size of apartment buildings. You could house 10-20 units in them without any change to the exterior.

Change will happen, people would gladly pay a normal Bay Area house cost to get 1/10 of an Atherton house and live in that school district

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

#354

Post by runnerup »

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…

> you can't built a chemical processing plant in a residential neighborhood, obviously

Lots of people disagree with this! There are tons of chemical processing facilities that pop up near my neighborhood, particularly rail car cleaning.

Can smell a different chemical every day depending on what they’re spraying out of the rail cars.

La Porte, TX

Pasadena, TX

Lake Jackson, TX

There are both new subdivisions and new processing facilities going up all the time. ProPublica ran some big articles on it, absolutely skyrocketing cancer rates around here.

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

#355

Post by notyourwork »

raldi wrote: post #340
notyourwork wrote: post #285

Am I reading this right? > Alternatively, 100% affordable to moderate income residents where rents don’t exceed 120% area median income. If the median income is $50k, using arbitrary number for example. 120% is $60k, so rent can be $5000/monthly. Is that right?

That's a poorly-written sentence. The law requires a certain percentage of units to be set aside for households making below 120% of the AMI, with rents restricted to be affordable to such families.

Got it - so it's sort of the same thing as the prior sentence. I'm semi familiar with the setup having lived in Mission Bay for a few years. Thanks for clarifying!

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

#356

Post by TulliusCicero »

BLO716 wrote: post #243

Honestly, sounds like a "drain the swamp" type event, to put it bluntly.

That slogan has been poisoned in the public consciousness, but the idea of it isn't a bad one. You do get problems like this in government occasionally where it's not exactly corruption, but things have degraded so much it looks corruption-esque.

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

#357

Post by SethTro »

notyourwork wrote: post #285

Am I reading this right? > Alternatively, 100% affordable to moderate income residents where rents don’t exceed 120% area median income. If the median income is $50k, using arbitrary number for example. 120% is $60k, so rent can be $5000/monthly. Is that right?

No, they choose a percentage of income for housing, I think 30% or 35%, and calculate from that so 50K * 1.2 * 0.3 = 18K/year = $1500/month

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

#358

Post by toast0 »

creeble wrote: post #270
toast0 wrote: post #81

Earlier 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.

It isn't. Afaik, there isn't a single water restriction plan in any CA jurisdiction (I've been looking). Also, the "builder's remedy" specifically avoids EIRs of almost all types, including traffic and parking.

If I understand correctly, the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District is subject to an order from the (California) State Water Resources Control Board which prevents it from allowing new water meters[1]. New house construction in most communities with municipal water service will not be issued final approval without being connected to the water service; so this effectively prevents new construction. I strongly suspect (but have no evidence) that an onsite private well would be prohibited as well.

The City of Monterey has a page[2] describing this as well as a published wait list [3], with the first project having submitted in 2003.

I don't know if they deny construction permits, but you'd have to be pretty foolish to actually construct residences that can't be legally occupied because they lack potable water.

[1] https://www.mpwmd.net/regulations/water-permits/water-meters... [2] https://www.monterey.org/city_hall/community_development/pla... [3] https://files.monterey.org/Document%20Center/CommDev/Plannin...

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

#359

Post by oreoftw »

arcticbull wrote: post #281
nlavezzo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is America, land of the free, home of the property rights. It's a weird imposition to say that I can't build exactly what I want on my property (assuming it's safe). It's a totally fair thing to say that if you want full control over what can be built adjacent to your house buy a ranch in Montana . Don't want a skyscraper in downtown SF? Buy the plot. Can't afford it? Sorry, you're getting neighbors. You shouldn…

What’s wrong with the alternative of sane zoning instead of “just buy the plot”?

All people want is to live in a quiet and a nice place after all.

Why someone who doesn’t even live there but has a bigger buck should decide?

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

#360

Post by Slighted »

causi wrote: post #83

I get not wanting to suddenly put an extra five hundred families onto a road that was only designed for a hundred single-family dwellings. What I don't get is being so nimby that you'd rather have your streets utterly full of homeless people and human waste.

Alternatives/"solutions" aren't always better than that which they seek to replace or fix and may very well be noticeably worse.

Homeless people are an annoyance but so is extremely dense housing to the point that local resources and infrastructure are overloaded. In addition, I'm skeptical that the new housing developments will even resolve the homeless problem, as its not really targeting the root cause of the issue. Most of the homeless aren't keen on helping themselves, either. You'd have more luck shipping them off to coal mines to work than this, I reckon.

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