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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

#471

Post by rrsmtz »

crooked-v wrote: post #379
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…

> your 100 year old Victorian neighborhood Well, you know, it sure would be nice if people could build more of those tightly-clustered Victorians in, say, San Francisco, to continue the classic character of the city and replace ugly box houses... but zoning laws mean they can't.

Even if they could, they wouldn't.

The modern trend is demolishing beautiful, sustainably-built housing with shoddy, ugly, mass-produced 5-over-1s.

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

#472

Post by pvarangot »

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…

Around California cities which is where this discussion is relevant, everyone already votes Democrat. The thing is which Democrat.

So, it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that regarding gerrymandering. For example the article talks about Atherton getting high-rises. Those apartments would probably be occupied by transplants from another city like San Francisco, and those voters would be more familiar with the "left" Democrats and maybe turn Atherton less conservative (which is honestly not that hard, it's a city that's literally against public transport). The units those people vacate on San Francisco would get squeezed in by lower income voters upgrading their living conditions which is something very functional to the current SF government. That's just a theory of course.

In my opinion most of this more aggressive stance at fixing the California housing emergency is motivated either by true commitment and vocation, which is not hard to find regarding housing since the situation is really bad. In the case of Wiener he's been doing this for a while and sounds like a true believer. Of course some legislators supporting this may just be thinking about using it as a platform to run for executive or federal positions, but honestly looking at the track record of most people pushing this you can see they legitimately have been tackling hard problems in all of their political careers.

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

#473

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

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.

Can they now build housing in parks and open space? Those require zoning to keep separate.

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

#474

Post by AmpsterMan »

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.

Would just like to correct a common misconception:

Houston technically has no zoning laws, but it has a combination of other laws that end up behaving similarly to exactly how zoning laws work. Giving you a link to City Beautiful which works as a great primer.

https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5k

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

#475

Post by encryptluks2 »

webkike wrote: post #435
nostromo123 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

High rises are not dystopian. What is dystopian is people living in fucking tents

I'd rather live in a tent in a rural area with access to nature than an inner city high rise.

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

#476

Post by epistasis »

eddsh1994 wrote: post #436
cal5k wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median sale price in Houston is currently $310,500, vs $441,250 in Sacramento, $917,500 in LA and $1.3MM in SF. Aesthetic judgments aside, seems like a winning strategy for housing affordability?

I live in Palo Alto and saw a local ad for an acre of land with no house in Atherton going for $5.2M. The housing here is really screwed.

With a moderate density like 40du/acre, that amounts to about $130,000 in land cost per unit, which is not so bad!

even at our grossly inflated land costs, simply allowing density throughout the Bay Area would enable much more housing affordability, allow more transit, and reduce our emissions and enhance our social contact. But a side benefit of broad legalization of density would be that those land costs would drop dramatically too, as there would be a much greater supply.

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

#477

Post by nostromo »

bootsmann wrote: post #224
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…

> I don't think the solution is just nuking all zoning regulations from orbit. It has to be, because the in-group, i.e. the people already living there don't accrue the cost as that falls on the out-group, the people who need to live there (job etc) but cannot. Its the essence of a "f** you i got mine attitude"

San Francisco is 2/3rds renters, all of whom can vote. You shouldn't pretend that they have no say in how their city is run.

If they want more rentals and more density, they have the power to vote for people who can make it happen. Instead they vote for people who talk a lot about preserving the character of San Francisco.

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

#478

Post by CydeWeys »

civilian wrote: post #292
fasthands9 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's fine. I dont think the point of this is to confiscate land that people own and build condos on it. But realistically real estate ownership is pretty disperse, even in small town called Atherton there are going to be thousands of individuals that own 1 acre plots and maybe a hundred that own larger plots. It just takes a couple people to choose to sell their land or to die.

And the average home in America is owned for what, like 5-7 years? If someone is moving out of the community, are they really going to ignore a windfall payment from a developer? And how about estate sales? Are the out-of-state heirs going to care to who their parent's property is sold? Or are they just going to go for the top dollar?

Put me on team top dollar. Hell, I'd even consider accepting a lower offer from a developer if I knew they were gonna build more properties in it (though of course this is extremely unlikely to happen as the developer planning on building more units stands to make more profit and the land is thus worth more to them).

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

#479

Post by Analemma_ »

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.

You’re going to need to do more than just toss off a scaremongering phrase like “look to Houston” with no elaboration, particularly when the replies are already explaining that its approach to zoning has been rewarded with much more tractable prices. What, specifically, is wrong with Houston, and is it worse than the affordability disaster that is most of California?

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

#480

Post by CogitoCogito »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #282
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #242

Earlier 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.

I mean… there's a balance, right? People should be able to mostly do what they want with their own property. At the same time, they should be able to come together to make collective decisions about their towns/cities/neighborhoods. Each of those has a bad outcome if taken to the extreme.

> At the same time, they should be able to come together to make collective decisions about their towns/cities/neighborhoods.

That's exactly what's happening here. Californians have collectively decided that zoning laws need to change. If the current actions by the state are somehow unreasonable, how could the original zoning provisions ever have been considered reasonable in the first place?

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