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Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

sfchronicle.com

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Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#81

Post by jeffbee »

abeppu wrote: post #72

> The builder’s remedy says that noncompliant cities must allow housing at any density and any height, anywhere in the city, as long as at least 20% of the new homes are affordable. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/builde... For most places in the Bay Area, is there an existing affordability percentage requirement? How much of an increase is this? I'm not a development/construction insider, but a…

20% IZ is usually a show-stopper when combined with height and FAR limits but the idea is that there must be some point in the solution space that works with 20% IZ.

San Francisco has IZ set at between 20 and 33% depending on the project and this is widely seen as a blanket anti-development policy.

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#82

Post by edgyquant »

astrange wrote: post #58
occz wrote: post #3

Zoning 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.

You should clarify “in SF” since this isn’t true for the actual history of residential zoning (which originated in New York)

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#83

Post by edgyquant »

jai_ wrote: post #66
eric-hu wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a search to check the history of this claim, but maybe I wasn’t searching for the right thing. Would you mind sharing a link?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning It's the first sentence in the History section

This disputes the claim it originated in SF and the reasons listed. Odd that Wikipedia is centered on SF and its claim is backed up by (several experts believe.) Looks to me like another example of Wikipedia pushing a narrative and pretending it’s fact.

https://economics21.org/history-zoning-america-flexible-hous...

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#84

Post by seattle_spring »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #52
Vaslo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Citing an article or publication in rebuttal would be a more productive way to make this critique..

Which ironically would be from something like the Daily Wire or Zero Hedge.

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#85

Post by encoderer »

shuckles wrote: post #36
encoderer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why is it nonsense for the state to fund shelter programs by buying out non-viable businesses (empty motels at the height of the pandemic), bailing out both business owners and building shelter capacity at much lower cost than building it new?

Suppose you buy every hotel in the sfba and move in every homeless person, totally clearing the streets.

What happens next? Just no more homeless?

No, more homeless will appear. They will fill the same corners and tents that you just cleared the month before.

This is not a solution. This is a grift.

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#86

Post by MarkMarine »

GalenErso wrote: post #44
MarkMarine wrote: post #10

Earlier 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.

They seem to be trying any trick they can think of to avoid submitting a valid plan:

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/bay-area-towns-mull-pla...

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#87

Post by encoderer »

mikestew wrote: post #41
encoderer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Other than calling "nonsense", you haven't really made the case against for something that has precedent. Care to take another whack at it?

$550,000 a unit. Come on. You can’t be serious that this is a solution.

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-business-health-califor...

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#88

Post by shuckles »

astrange wrote: post #57
GalenErso wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

There are many reasons it would be good for there to be a fallback zoning set by the state if a city is missing a housing element. For example, in that case builders could propose zoning compliance projects which have less legal ambiguity, are consistent with a general plan (and therefore already have environmental impacts studied for CEQA), and perhaps don’t have the same inclusionary zoning requirements of Builders’ Remedy projects.

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#89

Post by jeffbee »

jmyeet wrote: post #74

I think this article overstates the risks to those wanting to use the builder's remedy. It suggests wealthy towns would have the means to fight this in court. But the reality is the towns have very little legal defense. Just last year, 4000+ new units were approved via the builder's remedy in Santa Monica, a rich envlcave of LA that has notoriously fought development with oppressive zoning for decades. Also, the poin…

I think it's overstating the case that 4000 units were "approved" in Santa Monica. Some guy pulled papers on the project. Get back to me if any of them break ground. So far, only 899 units worth have filed complete applications and zero of these have got anywhere in the rest of the process. I would not advise holding your breath.

Cities have various ways to stop projects. They can drag out things like demolition permits forever.

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#90

Post by davidw »

encoderer wrote: post #85
shuckles wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it nonsense for the state to fund shelter programs by buying out non-viable businesses (empty motels at the height of the pandemic), bailing out both business owners and building shelter capacity at much lower cost than building it new?

Suppose you buy every hotel in the sfba and move in every homeless person, totally clearing the streets. What happens next? Just no more homeless? No, more homeless will appear. They will fill the same corners and tents that you just cleared the month before. This is not a solution. This is a grift.

> No, more homeless will appear

It's not like they magically respawn or something. There are people who have studied the root cause of homelessness, and: it's housing. Sure, other factors make things worse, but there's more homelessness where housing is expensive.

Which stands to reason: when a thing is expensive, fewer people can afford it.

https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/

That's why, ultimately, the biggest YIMBY win is going to be not helping out people currently homeless, but stopping the pipeline in the first place by having enough housing.

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