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

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

#851

Post by toast0 »

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

> Where should I live?

If you just want less human noise, somewhere with a large lot. On my 9 acre lot I can still hear human noise, but usually only big things, which tends to be daytime, and not a lot of it. Oh, and backyard roosters; they're everywhere around here, but only noisy when the sun is up. Vehicle noises carry a long way when people have more horsepower than brains, though; gunshots and fireworks too. Not sure how to avoid those noises. I don't get a lot of artificial light from the neighbors, but there's some; more forest or a larger lot would help.

On the other hand, there's a lot of noise from local wildlife, and wind and rain and hail and other natural phenomenon that creates noise. And sometimes the moon is pretty bright at night. I guess you could live somewhere with caves and avoid some of that, but critters are everywhere.

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

#852

Post by burntwater »

threeseed wrote: post #636
webkike wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The world isn't black and white. You can have increased density with mandated affordable housing without needing high rise developments.

I understand the point of these laws to be that cities were given the opportunity to have "increased density without high rise developments," the cities failed to use those opportunities, and so now that control is being taken away and the cities are being forced to accept whatever is sent their way.

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

#853

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

iskander wrote: post #337
HDThoreaun wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might just be because homeless people prefer to live in the same places everyone else does though, which is why those places are expensive.

You would then expect the percent of homeless per state to be roughly similar, when it in fact varies tremendously: https://www.statista.com/statistics/727847/homelessness-rate... NYC, HI, CA >40 per 100k homeless in 2020 (higher now) States with lots of poverty but also extremely cheap housing at the bottom with a 5x lower rate of homelessness: LA, AL, MS Similarly, WV very low on the list despite being high on all…

There are confounding factors at work here - for example, since 1979, people in NY have a legal right-to-shelter founded on the state constitution which does tend to generate a more encompassing homelessness policy than in, say, PA.

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

#854

Post by closeparen »

xyzelement wrote: post #814
closeparen wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The local people in every place want to live in rural towns 5 minutes from the big city. It’s built into the human psyche. The problem is it’s geometrically impossible. So it comes down to how important you think “finders keepers” is - do the people who got there first have the right to lock everyone else out forever? However justified they may be in wanting this, it’s hard to deny that the costs imposed on everyone…

// So it comes down to how important you think “finders keepers” is - do the people who got there first have the right to lock everyone else out forever? I get the point you're making and it's not illogical, it's just what do you prioritize? In many situations honoring the existing relationships and the wishes of people in it is the more humane choice. When your dad married your mom, he locked everyone out from marry…

Men and women are naturally born in equal proportion, and government policies that have created big structural imbalances are generally considered awful mistakes.

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

#856

Post by mannerheim »

bluGill wrote: post #788
satvikpendem wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually it is mid rises that are most efficient. High rises are very expensive to build. The cheapest construction is good to use for up to about 5 floors (check with a structural engineer for details). As such building 5 floors everywhere should be the goal: it is the cheapest mix of low costs and high density. There is no real advantage to making your city any denser than this.

Five floors may be the best for the parts of a city where the land is relatively cheap, but I doubt it's the most cost-efficient for, say, Manhattan, or the city centre of Hong Kong. At a certain point, the construction costs are dwarfed by the cost of land, and constructing a slightly larger building becomes a rounding error, unless somehow the marginal cost of the sixth floor increases astronomically.

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

#857

Post by SECProto »

TimPC wrote: post #756
JAlexoid wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not different from the current system, where we elect politicians who promise not to raise taxes, so they defer maintenance on all infrastructure, until in 70 years we have to spend trillions replacing old pipes/bridges/roads that could have been kept up for decades longer with better maintenance.

Except they can't go begging to the feds, because they've also have been voted in under platforms of "minimize tax increases" for 40 years, so they're also indebted.

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

#858

Post by burntwater »

Manuel_D wrote: post #373
TedShiller wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The fact that housing prices are high isn't a sign of greed: it's a sign of a constrained supply. Developers build housing, the price is set by what people are willing to pay.

The price is also set by developers. There's no reason for rent to increase 30-50% in a single year other than literal greed. Will people pay it? Yes, because they have no choice in the matter, they need a place to live. But it's still greed raising the price.

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

#859

Post by hervature »

kccqzy wrote: post #584
hervature wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's clear economically that wanting to limit building multi-unit housing near me enhances the value growth of my property This argument never made sense for me. Being able to put more units in the same space drastically increases the value of the land. It of course reduces the value of other things like having towering buildings around your 2 story home which blocks your view. In this sense, home owners need to tu…

They have a different argument, namely by making sure houses are less dense, the total number of houses being built in an area is far less than what the land can support, leading to artificial scarcity in the market. The artificially limited supply then leads to high prices.

Restricting supply obviously increases prices. That's economics 101. Their claim is that they are doing it precisely for economic gains. Whereas I'm saying that it is actually not about the economic gains because they are giving up economic value (much higher land value) in order to preserve non-economic things (neighborhood, view, etc.). My point is that an acre of land in the center of Manhattan is worth a lot of money. That value goes drastically down if something prevents you from building above 35 feet.

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

#860

Post by tshaddox »

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…

Nothing about this would let a developer cut down your tree, build on your yard, etc. You just wouldn't be able to stop your neighbor from selling their property to a developer who might cut down trees and build things there. It's not unreasonable for you to have preferences about what your neighbors do with their property, just like it's not unreasonable for you to have preferences about which kinds of restaurants are close to your home. But should you be able to prevent your favorite restaurant from legally closing?
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