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

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

darrellowens.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 1001 posts

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

#451

Post by AnnikaL »

xyzelement wrote: post #361

I am not an expert in California but I don't love this concept in general. Here in New York, the Governor is attempting to drive higher housing density in certain places regardless of what the local people think and want. I think this is a sort of obvious effort at a form of gerrymandering - if the assumption is that the residents of higher-density dwellings are more likely to vote Democrat on average vs the current…

The entire SF Bay Area votes strongly Democratic already; the most Republican county in the Bay Area is Solano County, where Trump got 34% of the vote in 2020.

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

#452

Post by jurassic »

xyzelement wrote: post #361

I am not an expert in California but I don't love this concept in general. Here in New York, the Governor is attempting to drive higher housing density in certain places regardless of what the local people think and want. I think this is a sort of obvious effort at a form of gerrymandering - if the assumption is that the residents of higher-density dwellings are more likely to vote Democrat on average vs the current…

I don't think Democrats are worried about losing control of California any time soon, it's basically a one party rule situation. The political divide is primarily rural parts of the state vs everyone else. The entire Bay Area, including the suburban parts, consistently votes Democrat about 2:1.

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

#453

Post by Xeronate »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #413
fnordpiglet wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth is people want to live in a community of the character they choose when they moved into that community. The high density housing community seems to think everyone just needs an efficiency unit in a Soviet style housing block and anyone else is an entitled NIMBY. What the person said was developers don’t care about the community they’re building into. Loosening of community rules means they can move in start bui…

Yes, but on the flip side thousands of people will no longer be paying $3k/mo in rent for a shitty apartment, and homelessness will drop dramatically. The anti-NIMBY movement didn't come about because people want to override existing communities. It came about because people need a place to live, and NIMBYs were actively campaigning against it for decades with no consideration for the needs of others. Now, I think it…

People need a place to live but does that place have to be in California? It doesn’t make sense to talk about living in Santa Monica as a need.

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

#454

Post by nlavezzo »

curiousllama wrote: post #316
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…

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 reasona…

> 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

Totally agree. The state or larger city, etc. is also a community that should be able to make rules that promote the welfare of the great majority over the objections of a small minority, as long as they take care to not harm the small minority unnecessarily. I just think the solution is thoughtful modification of existing codes, possibly forced by larger jurisdictions, and not just a free for all where almost anything goes as was proposed by the parent commenter.

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

#455

Post by CogitoCogito »

foobarian wrote: post #406
ketzo wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

It seems pretty clear cut given the focus on property rights in the States that whoever got there first does get to call the shots. There are maybe some overrides like eminent domain but it seems the only non-coercive way to change this is to get your own land and make your own rules (e.g. HOAs, incorporate towns with better rules, etc). Besides, who's to say that these desirable places are not desirable because they…

> It seems pretty clear cut given the focus on property rights in the States that whoever got there first does get to call the shots.

If we're concerned about property rights, why can't the property owners build at a higher density? Or sell to a developer that will build at a higher density? The fact is the zoning at play _restricts_ property rights it doesn't protect them.

Anyway zoning was never static (it wasn't ordained by God after all), so changing it isn't really a big deal. People are angry and surprised of course, but the writing has been on the wall for a long time.

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

#456

Post by [deleted] »

nostromo123 wrote: post #394
xwdv wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. Fuck your neighbors. The region is long overdue for more housing to fix the ridiculous situation that has formed down there. Hopefully the region will become more affordable as new housing floods the area and brings down prices and makes things generally more affordable.

Yeah, f*k other people, let's cram as many souls as we can in affordable dystopian high rises... that's the spirit!

[deleted]

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

#458

Post by BenFranklin100 »

LynxInLA wrote: post #395
softsound wrote: post #364

Looking at other countries like Japan with like barely any zoning laws, this looks great, I hope it leads to more mixed cities again and more walkable/liveable areas like before WW2. It is funny that America land of the free had so many restrictions, building up hundreds of zoning laws across the country did a lot of bad and led to a lot of urban sprawl leading to very poor cities and towns that literally cannot pay…

I'm not an expert, but I lean towards relaxing zoning laws but not getting rid of them completely. Look to Houston to see what happens when there are no zoning laws at all.

Houston has lots of zoning laws in the way of parking minimums. These parking spot requirements apply to new buildings and make it very difficult to build dense housing. It’s a big reason why Houston has so much sprawl.

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

#459

Post by yellowapple »

Stop. I can only get so erect.

I'd still prefer to tackle the motivations for NIMBYism (namely: by using land value taxation to discourage or outright eliminate the treatment of land as a speculative asset) rather than the symptoms, but tackling the symptoms is infinitely better than doing nothing at all.

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

#460

Post by enragedcacti »

wrycoder wrote: post #230
enragedcacti wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes back to the late 1800's and Early 1900's and like many legal overreaches in the US, zoning laws were primarily spawned from a desire to discriminate on the basis of race or class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning_in_the_United_States#Or...

WP may not be entirely evenhanded on this subject.

I generally avoid citing Wikipedia directly but in this case I feel it gives a pretty digestible overview while being fairly well sourced throughout. Even if it's not perfectly Fair & Balanced^tm I don't think people in the early 1900s using the law to suppress minorities/the poor is a such contested viewpoint that we need to hunt for the perfectly centrist perspective to get a rough idea.
Post reply on HN