What's to stop a landlord from turning a floor in his apartment building into a chicken battery farm now?
Other laws. Same thing that stops someone from burning down your house or robbing you. They haven't suspended all laws.
Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama
51–60 of 228 posts
Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once someone has a home, they're no longer homeless, so it's a good strategy in some circumstances. Even where that person has other 'issues', it's a lot easier to deal with those once they're in a stable location. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...
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Citing an article or publication in rebuttal would be a more productive way to make this critique..
Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Congrats to https://cayimby.org/ and https://yimbyaction.org/ for all their work on this! Great organizations to get involved with if you care about other people being able to afford a place to live.
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Can you elaborate on how this is "nonsense"?
Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama
#54Whether or not developers take advantage will still depend on market conditions and the costs to develop housing. For example, recently in LA county voters passed a transfer tax that is espected to quiet development somewhat:
https://www.planetizen.com/news/2022/12/120395-critics-expec...
Plenty of other things beyond taxes add to costs as well. Onerous environmental review, having to add amenities like open courtyard space or balconies, how many elevators might be required, parking requirements, all adds to the cost per unit which leads to fewer units built per loan and the need for higher rents to make those costs pencil out. Even the amount of time things sit in review at city hall has costs. You could very well hit a situation where due to these constraints, not nearly as many builders take advantage of builders remedy as one might expect. This is part of the issue with allowing the onus of adding housing supply in our cities fall on an overregulated industry that depends on achieving a certain profit margin to function.
Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama
#55Zoning laws broadly are probably still in effect, right? I doubt you could build something industrial in residential zones. It's just the bad parts of zoning that are disabled, if I understood the article correctly. Excellent development in any case. Hope a lot of good dense housing gets built.
The same "Builder's Remedy" kicked in last year in many Southern California cities when they missed similar deadlines, and as far as I know it has led to approximately (if not exactly) zero new construction.
Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama
#56This is just a play from high-powered NIMBY SF players to placate the devs, landlords, scumlords and hedgies (like blackRock) Nothing more. REPLY TO BELOW: - If they are not hedge funds, then what are they, BE SPECIFIC.
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Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a great article about this a couple weeks back: https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/ca-cities-to-lose-all-zo... Basically, until these cities get a housing plan validated with the state, who is apparently sick of their crap like zoning in the middle of an active mall that will not be torn down, builder’s remedy is in place.
> until these cities get a housing plan validated with the state I could see the cities just refusing to submit any plans at all. The state should then make its own housing plans with the developers directly. Cities should be cut out of the loop.
If they don't submit a housing element they don't get to have zoning (as they currently don't) and then what's the point?
Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama
#58Zoning laws broadly are probably still in effect, right? I doubt you could build something industrial in residential zones. It's just the bad parts of zoning that are disabled, if I understood the article correctly. Excellent development in any case. Hope a lot of good dense housing gets built.
Residential-only zoning is "the bad kind of zoning". It wasn't invented to keep factories away from homes; it was /literally/ invented in Berkeley to stop Chinese immigrants from being able to afford homes by running laundry businesses out of them.
Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
An earlier Chronicle article anticipates some ways projects will be blocked. It sounds like this isn't the unambiguous green light that some articles suggest. > Environmental review is one such way. Normally, cities perform one environmental review for a citywide or neighborhood-wide zoning plan. So long as project applications comply with those plans, they can piggyback on the parent environmental report. But since…
I'll throw out I also know a guy who is a developer, they have had enough bad issues working in Oregon alone that they have 0 intention of ever touching anything in CA with a 10ft pole, simply because it isn't worth it to deal with the hassle and the headaches.
A sinister part of the hassle and headaches are that sometimes they are designed to be so convoluted such that only certain favorite developers are even qualified to take up the project at all. Keeping your friend out of the market is sometimes the point.
Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama
#60This is just a play from high-powered NIMBY SF players to placate the devs, landlords, scumlords and hedgies (like blackRock) Nothing more. REPLY TO BELOW: - If they are not hedge funds, then what are they, BE SPECIFIC.
A mildly funny thing about vacant housing/everything is corporations conspiracists is they can't tell the difference between BlackRock and Blackstone. Though neither one is a hedge fund.