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

751–760 of 1001 posts

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

#751

Post by anyfoo »

rootusrootus wrote: post #734
anyfoo wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like cleaner air, safer streets, less traffic and a better place to raise a child and/or dog with backyards and privacy. So, like in European cities.

I don't have to try that hard with google maps to find places in Europe that look just like suburbs of the US.

And I grew up in Germany all my life and live in the US now. Maybe "places like suburbs in the US" do exist, though I doubt they are as restricted as the suburbs I'm seeing here, and that you can recognize their nature from a quick Google Maps glance.

But in any case, it does not change the fact that I grew up in a big city, with, as listed above, "cleaner air, safer streets, less traffic, a better place to raise a child and/or dog with backyards and privacy", and that that was common all around me. Children, me included, played on the streets. It's literally called a "Spielstraße", and they are very common. We just walked over to school, too, maybe took the bus for a few stations.

I've been living in the US for close than a decade now, and it's markedly different. I don't blame the US, I just hate zoning with a passion. I so miss living in a nice area in the city and being able to walk over to a small supermarket, a café, a barber, within the same area. Just live my life, without having to hop into my car and make it a journey for every tiny thing. It's so isolating here.

These news give me hope.

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

#752

Post by smolder »

thegrimmest wrote: post #322
gremlinsinc wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then they should enforce 1 child per family while they're at it. their kids have to live somewhere right? I live in a rural city in Utah that doesn't like building new homes yet it's a Mormon town where families are about 5 kids on average. if you want grandkids nearby then more homes need built. period.

Or people whom the community has no room for can leave. I think this comes from an axiomatic disagreement about what being born/alive entitles a person to. My view is that we are all born owning nothing, and that everything we acquire we must acquire via consensual exchange.

This comes about from job openings in places that don't have housing, so, basically a disagreement about where people should work and live, acted out on the housing and job markets.

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

#754

Post by njarboe »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #571
maxsilver wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With no constraints on construction will there be a small boom in new development, tearing down virgin forest in order to make empty developments? Probably? I live in Michigan, which (with the exception of two spots) has no meaningful limits on construction. Even the cities that technically have-and-enforce zoning, waive all the rules constantly anytime a developer asks. And yes -- it means developers can build alm…

There's a certain cost to build a house. It's not like the houses themselves are more in CA (well, maybe a little), it's the land . For example, my house is appraised around $300k but the land is appraised at $1.2 million.

My 4 bedroom house in Oakland had a replacement cost/value of about $400k. That seemed high but not unreasonable. Then the Santa Rosa fire burned down 1000 homes and insurers realized that construction costs in California are insane (especially when you are trying to build a thousand in a year). Replacement cost jumped to $750k in one year. The land used to be worth quite a good fraction of the property, and then it wasn't.

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

#755

Post by [deleted] »

zzzeek wrote: post #693
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…

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

[deleted]

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

#756

Post by TimPC »

JAlexoid wrote: post #574
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…

Dealing with HOAs is actually easier - transfer all infrastructure ownership and maintenance to them... you'll see some big changes real fast. Like treat HOA as a commercial entity for purposes of trash, water and sewage. (HOAs are, de facto, incorporated organizations). Tax land under the roads as plain land. As for localities - they should be mandated to reassess property values every X years and distribute infrast…

This is the dumbest idea I’ve heard. You’ll end up with people paying $0 for infra for 70 years then suddenly having to buy multimillion dollar projects with no cash reserves. The net result will be widespread chaos and huge social pressure on government to bail out badly managed HOAs.

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

#757

Post by ericmay »

arrosenberg wrote: post #638
ericmay wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not concerned about "petty gentry" or whatever silly class warfare terms people use. It's not only boring but harms progress by pitting people against each other. You can of course argue that things are or are not democratic. That's part of my point. Overriding local, more direct democracy (in theory) could be anti-democratic in my view. But doing something like having highly restrictive zoning laws such that you…

> Overriding local, more direct democracy (in theory) could be anti-democratic in my view. Your theory is bunk, that's my point. What pits people against each other are exclusionary housing laws that the wealthy use to keep poor people separate from them, not the words we use to describe that choice. > But you can make cases for both. For every "We don't like the zoning because it keeps the place expensive" there's "…

> Your theory is bunk, that's my point.

What part of the theory is "bunk"? Are you suggesting that the less local a government is the more democratic it is? Please also note that I said could because I'm not making a strong claim for this to always be true.

> What pits people against each other are exclusionary housing laws that the wealthy use to keep poor people separate from them, not the words we use to describe that choice.

Generic suburbs (with their exclusionary housing laws) would have to be included in this statement for it to be true. "The wealthy" whoever that convenient scapegoat is are not the only ones who do this.

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

#758

Post by 1MachineElf »

>Developers will be allowed to propose housing at any height and any density anywhere in a city, so long as at least 20% of the homes in the proposed building are deed-restricted to low income residents who make at or less than 80% the area median income.

With neither of these percentages being 50, it sounds to me like this policy ensures gentrification.

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

#759

Post by notch898a »

Swizec wrote: post #670
spockz wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is that? Maybe because children don’t play on the street at all in the city. So what does the fraction look when we take children playing outside and be healthy instead of just children? The chance remains the same but for the ones that survive there is a better quality of life.

Higher speeds. Suburban streets/roads/stroads optimize for traffic safety, not pedestrian safety. The wide roads and large front yards promote higher driving speeds. For a long time the thinking was even that front yards can work as a place for cars to stop safely if they fly off the road. They talk about this in Strong Towns iirc

May also be type of vehicle. Big farm truck in suburbs/rural, can't see anyone under ~3ft well when they're right up on you unless you're really intentionally looking down. Also could be the children are improperly trained. False sense of security, whereas in the city it's basically entrenched in anyone that as soon as you set foot outside that the cars are trying to slaughter everyone so kids & adults alike are always on alert. Whenever I live in the city I basically assume if I'm not in a city park a car is on the prowl to run me over at any minute, which means I'm not really caught unawares.

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

#760

Post by satvikpendem »

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!

High rises are one of the most efficient ways to house people at scale. There's a reason the majority of the human population lived in cities, historically.

It's also more efficient greenhouse-gas wise, as suburban sprawl means more driving to transport goods.

Post reply on HN