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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

#931

Post by troupe »

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

If you throw a dart at a US map it will probably land on a place like what you described. It isn't hard to find a house where you literally cannot see your neighbors.

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

#932

Post by opportune »

gumby wrote: post #602
mateo411 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Basically, shows that the State's tax difficulties are themselves the consequence of exclusion. I'm not sure what you mean by tax difficulties, if you mean the state has trouble raising revenue, that's certainly not the case. CA is running a large budget surplus right now. If they only relied on property tax it could be an issue, but they also have an income tax, so the revenue outlook in CA is pretty good right now…

Fari enough: let me clarify. Because California gets so little tax from property, it must get more from income taxes. That has a couple of negative consequences. The nice thing about property taxes is that housing prices change slowly, even in boom/bust cycles -- essentially they are coupled to a dashpot. While income, especially in California with a progressive system coupled with most of the high earners paying cap…

The Lebowski loophole is partially closed on large enough values. But I doubt it prevents corporations/trusts from being a simple workaround. Then they added new loopholes to make it so old people can move and keep their low property taxes.

Prop 13 is IMO the biggest problem that California faces, because it’s the most intractable to solve (it would be political suicide to try to roll it back now that so many people are paying way lower taxes than they would without it) but is also a major contributor to a lot of other problems in the housing market. I can think of ways to roll it back slowly, but let’s be real, people will freak out if they think they’ll have to start paying 5x what they currently pay in property taxes, even if it’s after they die or in 20 years from now.

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

#933

Post by opportune »

acdha wrote: post #733
gumby wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fari enough: let me clarify. Because California gets so little tax from property, it must get more from income taxes. That has a couple of negative consequences. The nice thing about property taxes is that housing prices change slowly, even in boom/bust cycles -- essentially they are coupled to a dashpot. While income, especially in California with a progressive system coupled with most of the high earners paying cap…

Your point about moving is really important: there are a ton of boomers sitting in houses which are much larger than they need without children living at home but in many cases they're doing exactly what the system incentivizes. Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) can help somewhat if they have enough space and want to get in the landlord business (or have family who need it) but really we need to make it easy for people…

On one hand I’m sympathetic to the individualist argument that it’s unfair for these people to have to vacate their 30+ year residences just because a bunch of people moved to their area.

On the other, I agree that it’s ridiculous someone can be paying 10-20% what their neighbor pays in property taxes, and that this causes an inefficient allocation of resources.

If we ever want to solve this we IMO need some kind of gradual phase out. We can immediately/over a 5-20 year interval move the taxes to what they should be on commercial and non-primary residences. But for actual primary homes probably the only way we can do it is if we let the property taxes be deferred until the current homeowner dies. No matter how much pain the policy causes we must under no circumstances cause a single grandma to lose her home.

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

#934

Post by dragonwriter »

gumby wrote: post #107

This is a great article about great news (except for the first sentence calling it "A little known law" -- it's been quite contentious). Palo Alto has fought these rules and I'm glad they will be enforced. When I first moved to Palo Alto in the early 80s it had a very progressive climate: a couple of SRO buildings, lower average income than some of the neighboring towns, a lot of social support programs, and decidedl…

> It sets an interesting context for Prop 13 (basing the tax base on the purchase price, not generally on assessed value)

Prop 13 uses assessed value, but only allows unlimited assessment increases at sales, some other non-exempt transfers, and a few other qualifying events, otherwise, the year-over-year increase in tax basis value is limited to 2% or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower.

But, also missed in most discussions of Prop 13, is that it capped property tax rates at 1%, which (even before considering the value missed by the assessment cap) is not only way below the common rates prior to Prop 13, its way below the national average effective property tax rate.

Prop 13 isn't a result of exclusive zoning, it is—like exclusive zoning—a measure that protects status quo elites at the expense of everyone else.

> For example, Calaveras county has a shrinking population, but the main sources of jobs and taxes is construction. With no constraints on construction will there be a small boom in new development, tearing down virgin forest in order to make empty developments?

Neither Calaveras County nor any city therein has a noncompliant housing element, so “no constraints” due to builder's remedy is not an issue. OTOH, other places in the state getting more housing is more likely to accelerate Calaveras County population loss.

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

#935

Post by closeparen »

nlavezzo wrote: post #95
thepasswordis wrote: post #5

Wow that's great news! The level of bureaucratic creep that has been imposed on property owners is actually unbelievable to me. I obviously understand some regulations (you can't built a chemical processing plant in a residential neighborhood, obviously), but cities have creeped themselves into all-powerful overseers. Most cities now have the power to tell you what kind of house you can build, how you can paint it, h…

> If you don't want to deal with living near other people, move to the country. The reverse could also be said - if you don't want to deal with people deciding together that they want their community to have certain guidelines, move to the country. You can do pretty much whatever you want in rural areas without significantly impacting your neighbors. People living together in a small area do get to decide together wh…

So you can live in the actual countryside, or the population center curated to be like countryside. So many choices!

What about those of us who actually want to live in cities? The only way cities come to be is incrementally; if an already-settled place cannot intensify then cities cannot exist.

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

#936

Post by TchoBeer »

telotortium wrote: post #572
jedberg wrote: post #127

There is a developer in Cupertino who has been fighting with the city for years, who got awfully quiet lately. Now I know why. I suspect they have a plan for an absolutely massive high rise behind my house that they will be submitting at 8am tomorrow morning. My neighbors are going to be pissed .

By "high-rise", you must mean 5-over-1, right? I doubt anyone's going to build an actual high rise in the suburbs.

I mean like, you could doubt that, but in lieu of zoning laws there isn't any reason not to.

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

#937

Post by closeparen »

oreoftw wrote: post #359
arcticbull wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is America, land of the free, home of the property rights. It's a weird imposition to say that I can't build exactly what I want on my property (assuming it's safe). It's a totally fair thing to say that if you want full control over what can be built adjacent to your house buy a ranch in Montana . Don't want a skyscraper in downtown SF? Buy the plot. Can't afford it? Sorry, you're getting neighbors. You shouldn…

What’s wrong with the alternative of sane zoning instead of “just buy the plot”? All people want is to live in a quiet and a nice place after all. Why someone who doesn’t even live there but has a bigger buck should decide?

>All people want is to live in a quiet and a nice place after all.

People want all sorts of things. Walkability, transit, cafes, restaurants, recreation, jobs. Some do prefer the particular brand of quiet offered by the suburban form, but because it's the only thing you're allowed to build, lots of us who do not want it are forced into it.

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

#938

Post by refuse »

rootusrootus wrote: post #870
refuse wrote: post #692

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 wa…

Given you are a brand new account with exactly one post, perhaps you'd feel comfortable sharing the location.

It's in Oregon, I'd rather not say where exactly because I live in a very, very small community and I'm not sure if it's a widespread problem in the county or a localized issue in my neck of the woods.

A lot of this goes back to the 70's IIRC where Gov. Tom McCall passed a law to limit land use, which was great. Nobody wanted the sprawl you see on the East Coast or in parts of California, it's why Oregon still has a lot of nice areas with small farms and communities instead of shopping centers. Also of concern was, say, timber companies doing a harvest and then selling the land for a housing development or something -- this would also be terrible. Unfortunately, some more activist counties used this to deprive people of property rights which they bought into, I know there was a huge legal dispute over an issue along these lines just outside Portland in the 90's. We also had a ballot measure that was on tge books for about a year or two which would compensate land owners for lost value due to zoning changes, but that was thrown out pretty quickly.

I'm not exactly sure how we got such clear class divides in zoning and if it was intentional or not, but the effect is black and white.

Also of interest is how different counties handled permitting post-wildfires in 2020. There are many wildfire victims from my area who have been unable to rebuild because of permitting issues and what appears to be intentional obstruction by the county.

A side note, I don't know any displaced wildfire victims that received the hundreds of millions in federal aid sent our way. FEMA didn't approve any loans even though hundreds of structures were lost in a poor rural area -- but they were happy to provide water and WiFi, which is...something.

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

#939

Post by gamblor956 »

bluGill wrote: post #720
gamblor956 wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's referring to the hundreds of houses that were knowingly built in a floodplain, because Houston does not have the kind of zoning that would have prevented that. Those houses are at high risk of flooding any time there is a storm, and many of them did flood during last year's storms. It's easy to have cheap housing when you ignore common sense and just build wherever. (Also, part of the expense for LA and SF is th…

I'm not sure what codes are in Texas, but I can tell you in MN the housing codes are designed nationally to cover CA earthquakes and Florida Hurricanes even though both are not factors. Of course those codes also cover insulation which the other two states don't really need as much of..

Housing codes are adopted at the municipal or state level. There is no mandatory "national" building code in the U.S., though there is a "model" building code at the national level upon which the state and local building codes are based. (https://localhousingsolutions.org/housing-policy-library/hou...)

Specifically, Texas just uses the ICC's IRC, while California has the California Building Standards Code, which has additional requirements to account for our many earthquakes (https://peer.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/peer2019-05_ss...).

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

#940

Post by uoaei »

tigen wrote: post #512
strawhatguy wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no kidding, no residential zoning at all? Hard to believe it's CA, but good for them! This will vastly improve the housing situation, if CA has sense enough to keep it this way.

Isn't this misleading? It's not "no zoning" it's specifically required to be low-income or whatever housing. Right?

Mandating one zone is like mandating zero zones in the "fish asks, 'what's water?'" way.
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