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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

#941

Post by uoaei »

freedomben wrote: post #142
jimbob45 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most cities now have the power to tell you what kind of house you can build, how you can paint it, how you can landscape it, what kinds of cars you can keep in your own driveway, what you can do in your leisure time on the property etc. In my experience, the city regulations around what you’ve listed are always sensible. It’s the HOA regulations that tend to be kooky and capricious.

Your experience sounds outdated. It was like that 10 years ago, even 5 years ago in many cities, but in the last few years so many cities have gotten into HOA territory. Even small cities in places you wouldn't expect.

That kind of timeline is extreme and definitely doesn't pass the smell test. Sounds like a whitewashed variation of "big gubmint takin over as nanny state" reactionary predilections.

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

#942

Post by dragonwriter »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #566
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…

> Unfortunately, it does not mean you get lower cost of housing You don't believe in supply and demand? I'm not saying you have cheap housing. I'm saying you would have more expensive housing if there were fewer of them, the same way GPUs are more valuable when there are fewer of them.

> You don't believe in supply and demand?

Induced demand is a thing, as (and much more common) are demand curves that are flat enough that shifting the supply curve to the right by some large fraction of the current market clearing quantity has no discernable effect on the market clearing price.

Real life supply and demand involves more than the simplest Econ 101 illustrative examples of the general direction of the ideal relation.

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

#943

Post by ClumsyPilot »

JAlexoid wrote: post #643
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…

I grew up in a Soviet planned city, with courtyard focused developments. Our playgrounds were(they still are) larger and more accessible, than anything my current neighbours kids get on their 2a of land in rural USA. Even the new developments in Eastern Europe provide a kid friendly courtyard. Shielded from all traffic and observable by literally the whole community. Suburbia should be reserved for the insane rich pe…

exactly - the problem is that House-absessed people do not understand how to build and manage apartments. In their imagination its just stacking towers without courtyards on top of each-other.

When they have coirtyards, they looks lile prisons.

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

#944

Post by maxerickson »

rootusrootus wrote: post #728
JoshTriplett wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next up, get rid of HOAs.

HOAs are the most local form of democracy there is. Perhaps just reduce the overwhelming supermajority requirements to dissolve them, perhaps. In many places your only viable option if you don't like your HOA is get elected to the board yourself along with enough like-minded neighbors. You might not be able to dissolve it, but you could seriously neuter the policies if you wanted.

Having democratic properties doesn't make a bad thing good.

But like I think states like Michigan should do things like get rid of townships (which end up being a redundant layer under counties given modern infrastructure and administrative capacity).

The dumbest meeting I ever went to was a township zoning discussion where one group disingenuously argued that wind towers were the worst thing that could ever happen, another group argued that they should be able to put a wind tower anywhere they want regardless of any impact on their neighbors, and a guy that liked his own voice talked about how natural gas is a conspiracy, or something like that.

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

#945

Post by dragonwriter »

pj_mukh wrote: post #381
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…

Santa Monica building 4000 homes seems like such a dream. However, I wonder how many of these will get CEQA blocked [1] :( [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/signature-...

My guess is that a lot will in the short term, which will result in streamlining changes to CEQA rules specifically applying to them. It probably won't be a straight exemption like SB288 and SB922 provided for certain projects.

And if the pressure for a statewide emergenct declaration on the housing crisis bears out, well, a lot could happen without legislative change.

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

#946

Post by fleddr »

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…

Even the prejudice part we don't have to dance around.

I'm from the Netherlands, and for the first 24 years of my life have lived in lower working class neighborhoods, 3 in total. Low income families, people on wellfare, the like. In this case all white, so it's not a racial thing.

All of these 3 neighborhoods were awful. Relatively high crime, vandalism, the public dumping of trash, alcoholism, very loud music blasting, shouting, just general anti-social behavior.

The biggest quality of life improvement in my lifetime is that eventually I was able to afford living in a good neighborhood. Middle class to a bit above it. Families, stable citizens, civil, considerate, sane. The piece of mind this gives is invaluable. This is just one step up the ladder, I'm by no means rich.

It's not elitism. It shouldn't be a high bar to feel comfortable, safe, and not constantly frustrated by obnoxious people, or the spaces ruined. But at the same time we should acknowledge that this "bar" is strongly correlated with class. For obvious reasons, in the lower classes more people have what I'll categorize as "social issues".

And here's the thing. It's a rotten apple dynamic. Perhaps as little as 5-10% of the inhabitants are responsible for all this shit, yet the entire neighborhood becomes unlivable because of it. The real issue here is that these rotten apples are not addressed. Because it's near-impossible to address. The behavior is petty crime at best and often merely obnoxious and anti-social behavior. You can't put people in jail for that and they have to live somewhere. This is already the lowest end, there's nowhere else to go.

So the positive here is that it's not racism (in my example), and not even classism. 90% of people in the lower classes are decent and social people. The real issue is the inability to deal with the 10% that is not. The dysfunctionals and anti-socials wrecking the place.

I'm sure that each has their own story, but I'm not going to suffer my entire life at their whims. I've done plenty of that. You could say that this "prejudice" is very much grounded in reality. Sometimes you need to a reality check.

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

#947

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Spooky23 wrote: post #837
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 answer is that people benefit from stability, both financially and socially. Single and duplex zoning was a great deal for cities and close suburbs because they are operationally efficient - less services are required; fewer parks, fewer schools, fewer calls for fire and police service. It’s a good deal for people because financially it has been historically better to own a building and land vs rent or buy into c…

> they are operationally efficient

> Because there are no local amenities, people need cars

Seems like the definition of inefficiency

> - Developers usually get tax credits for including street level retail, but have no financial incentive to rent them as tax policy pays them to do nothing

Damn

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

#948

Post by ClumsyPilot »

JasserInicide wrote: post #810
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…

>What is making people want to restrict their neighborhood to extremely low density suburbs? Because it's actually what many people want. They want a house in the quiet suburbs that they can sell in 30 years for much more than it's worth. This is obviously all because nearly everyone alive that can vividly remember a time before WW2 are dead. All they know are car-centric architecture. And we all know how much people…

> that they can sell in 30 years for much more than it's worth

Sooner or later this will collapse disasterously

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

#949

Post by rgmerk »

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

A small town in Iceland (which is pretty much all of them except Reykjavik) would do the trick.

But then you have a crappy range of very expensive food at the local supermarket, pretty much everything else you have to order in or pick up from Reykjavik (or abroad), if you want to see live music your choice is “Ja Ja Ding Dong” at the (only) pub one night a week or (again) going to Reykjavik. Want to see the latest musical (or a Grand Slam tennis tournament, or a million other events that are on all the time in NYC) live? Hop on an international flight. And everybody in the street will know pretty much everything you do.

But the mountains are stunningly beautiful, the crime rate is almost zero and you can drive your Super Jeep around to your heart’s content.

I get the desire for solitude but it comes with tradeoffs.

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

#950

Post by rootusrootus »

refuse wrote: post #938
rootusrootus wrote: post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I hadn't heard of anything directly along those lines, which is why I asked for location. Figured if it was close enough to me, I might be able to learn more; I'm always interested in other viewpoints as well as gov't policies that I may be unaware of, but still subject to. I live in Oregon, so I'll have to do some more digging. Based on the wildfire comment, I could make some educated guesses. Certainly every time I drive down 22 from Salem over to Bend I'm struck by how many houses are still not being rebuilt. There are some, but there are vastly more RVs siting on big empty lots with remnants of what was once built there.
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