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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

#691

Post by [deleted] »

SamBam wrote: post #589
nlavezzo wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Of course their desires alone shouldn't be the final word on proposed changes to codes, but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven b…

> and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around Actually, suburban streets are significantly more dangerous than urban streets, in terms of number of children killed, as a fraction of both population and miles driven. > Motor vehicle traffic was the leading mechanism of unintentional injury death among children aged 5–13, with the rural rate (3.1) twice as high as the urban rate (1.5) > Motor vehicle…

[deleted]

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

#692

Post by refuse »

I doubt many will see this comment now but...

In my local community (rural area) the county changed zoning laws on people's residential properties. It's a damned nightmare. You can't rebuild a home or get approval for anything. According to the wording of the law, the county can sell the trees on your property (and you have to allow any heavy equipment on premise to allow this to happen) and they can supercede any water rights you have (water is not scarce here like in the SW). To be clear those last two points haven't been used...yet.

The funny thing is that this happened along class lines in a 'progressive' county. Richer people have MUCH more forgiving zoning and many live right down the street from poor people who essentially don't own the land they live on anymore. The equity they used to have was wiped out almost entirely because nobody wants to buy their property due to zoning (!). Think they can get a loan now? What do you think happened to property values for the rich people?

I'm honestly surprised somebody at the end of their rope hasn't gotten violent about this, it's outrageous.

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

#693

Post by zzzeek »

jackson1442 wrote: post #540
nlavezzo wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Of course their desires alone shouldn't be the final word on proposed changes to codes, but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven b…

You can have all this (and more!) in cities as well. Lived in Seattle for a bit and my apartment had several neighborhoods of single-family homes within a couple blocks: each with mature trees, yards, and low traffic streets. Sure, the yard maybe isn't as massive as you can get in a suburb, but there's still plenty of space (and far more public parks). Because they were so close to dense housing, they also had the ad…

I dont like noise, light pollution, or crowds. I'd like nighttime to be silent and pitch dark, and the daytime to be mostly silent as well.

I go on trips and need to be able to load lots of stuff in and out of "my" or "a" car without living in terror of all of my stuff getting stolen while I'm inside.

Where should I live?

Note: I lived in three different boroughs of NYC for 25 years

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

#694

Post by amadeuspagel »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #541
gibolt wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, that'd be great. School districts/boundaries being so unequal is at least partially the result of zoning policy that makes it harder for people of less financial means to move into affluent areas. I saw a counterexample living in Munich, just in the sense that the differences between neighborhoods in apparent wealth were much less stark than in the US. Almost everywhere looked vaguely middling, very few places…

Schools are funded by the state government in germany, not by districts. The concept of a school district doesn't exist.

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

#695

Post by BurningFrog »

nlavezzo wrote: post #511
hibikir wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has little to do with the existence of zoning laws themselves, but the specific zones that they define. Japan has zones, so does Spain. But there's just nothing anywhere near as Restrictive as most US cities' R1 zone. Many places have R2s and R3s that are still more restrictive than the least dense thing than a Spanish city has. Remove zones alone, and HOAs will get areas into legally binding covenants that are…

> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Of course their desires alone shouldn't be the final word on proposed changes to codes, but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven b…

I think the primary reason in 2023 is to keep housing values high and rising, not racism.

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

#696

Post by webkike »

hcurtiss wrote: post #598
webkike wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Any bets on whether eliminating zoning has any effect on the number of "people living in fucking tents?" In my experience, the people in tents aren't waiting with a down payment that's a few tens of thousands short of market. I think you're right that the solution here is being driven by homelessness. I also think it's more progressive wishful thinking.

And what is your experience?

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

#697

Post by crooked-v »

yamtaddle wrote: post #619
jackson1442 wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have all this (and more!) in cities as well. Lived in Seattle for a bit and my apartment had several neighborhoods of single-family homes within a couple blocks: each with mature trees, yards, and low traffic streets. Sure, the yard maybe isn't as massive as you can get in a suburb, but there's still plenty of space (and far more public parks). Because they were so close to dense housing, they also had the ad…

Old narrow-street, maybe an alley in the back, grid-layout suburbs with the odd block corner zoned commercial and all-neighborhood-streets routes to all kinds of businesses and parks and libraries and such are a whole different beast from the twisty-road car-dependent mazes of post-70s suburbia. And they're so much damn nicer. Too bad no-one builds them anymore.

Most cities have zoning that doesn't allow that kind of thing.

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

#698

Post by somethoughts »

neilparikh wrote: post #664
api wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that are safe for kids It’s all about kids. Without kids in the picture sure, go ahead, make cities look like Coruscant from Star Wars. The instant you have kids you see how important open spaces safe enough for unstructured minimally supervised play are. Without spaces like this all you have are kids drooling on Roblox and YouTube all day. There’s nothing for kids in an urban core. Those spaces don’t have to be un…

Japan is much more child friendly in terms of that. For example, young children are regularly sent to do errands on their own (see the Old Enough tv show for an exaggerated version of that). So people may believe it to be the case, but I'm not convinced our zoning style achieves that goal.

In theory I agree - however there some differences between Japan and the US/CA.

I think the key with Japan is that they have several big HOA style restrictions at the very front of their property - the border. Immigration and existing cultural norms of being super respectful and following conventions in public places make this possible - the HOA style rules are built in at the country level.

There's also a very strict police presence apparently to ensure HOA compliance. [1]

It'd be awesome if there was experimental urban (or suburban) development in the US/CA that existed that was very high density and had very strict HOA rules and enforcement similar to Japan/Singapore.

[1] Japan, a "heaven for cops" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAri8cD4kN8

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

#699

Post by bluGill »

rcme wrote: post #500
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?

You can't compare prices across geographic areas like that. For instance, property taxes are way higher in Houston. Assuming everything else was equal, the price of real estate in Houston would be less simply because it has higher carrying costs. That's just one of many possible differences unrelated to zoning.

There are no income taxes in Houston though, so while the property tax load is higher, the tax part of cost of living is not very different. (depending on what state you compare to)

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

#700

Post by matt_heimer »

egberts1 wrote: post #601
kevinburke wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually the compromise position - California proposed SB 50, which would have unilaterally set density standards near transit and permitted fourplexes in single family zones. Cities fiercely opposed this. So instead we have this dumb system where every city gets a target number from the state and can choose where the housing goes, as long as they can show they meet the target. "Local control!" Most of them a…

caldecott and hi-rise near freeways sounds like viable options. you make it sound like it is a bad thing.

It isn't horrible but I don't think you can argue that it'd be better to put the high-rises near the Caltrain stations. If you don't then you are just requiring people to have cars which also makes it harder to afford the housing.
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