If you care about places like Silicon Valley or New York, or if you care about social justice across (and within) generations, it's time to research and understand why housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable in the most dynamic areas of the world. It's not due to lack of land.
In California, we have a chance to fix things. SB-827 is a new bill that prevents local governments from banning density near public transit. It is the most radical housing bill in decades, because it rebalances zoning control from the local to the state level. It could result in 3 million new units being created in California, a state that builds <100k per year.
https://standupcalifornia.com (this is a website i set up to support this issue, which i see as the most important political issue for myself and my friends, and our ability to stay in our communities)
Since that's a marketing page for SB827, can someone explain to me how it doesn't ultimately create an incentive against public transit? All it would take to get around the zoning override would be to remove transit... I assume removing a bus stop (or even an entire route) is trivial. I could definitely foresee more homeowners blocking development of new routes/stations. With those considerations, it's possible we could end up with less transit, and the same amount of housing. I actually got banned in /r/california for asking about this
I'm afraid it may be one of those 'short term gain, long term consequence' type bills that CA has a history of cough prop 13. However, at least it's looking in the right direction, since the housing situation couldn't be much worse
What's interesting is that you can make a very libertarian argument for a lot of this stuff too: http://marketurbanism.com/ although that probably doesn't play quite as well in much California.
Still though, it's one issue where we all ought to be able to find some common ground and fix things.
If you care about the rest of the country you should ask why the fire hose of investment money is directed at SF and New York and not elsewhere. Instead of asking what's wrong with San Francisco. Why not ask what's wrong with the rest of the US?
Sure I can name a bunch of reasons why little housing is built in California, we can start with the Libertarian wet dream that is Prop 13. Prop 13 does two things, removes any incentive for muni's to approve new housing. And starves the government of funding to pay for public goods like schools and mass transit. The zoning restrictions Libertarians bitch about are partly the direct result of that.
Okay fine. But then still the question is, even if we admit California has issues, why is it that corporations which are totally free to locate elsewhere aren't doing so? You would think with a large cost differential corporations would move. Why not?
Because neoliberal conservative dominated governments in the rest of the US means that VC's, engineers, and mangers don't want to live in those places at all. So they and their companies are paying a large premium not to.
No workers don't want to work in 'right to work state'
They don't want to send their kids to schools that teach creationism and abstinence only sex education.
They don't want to live in communities with bad family planning.
I'd suggest that you research why it's necessary for companies to cram so much demand for housing in a few areas.
It's seems absurd in this day and age that we're still concentrating business to such an extent in places like the NY Metro Area and the Bay Area. IBM in the olden times leveraged locating facilities in nowheresville as a competitive advantage. I'm surprised it isn't catching on now that engineers are being so highly compensated.
Transit-oriented development is great but not quite radical enough. It’s usually focused at rail nodes and if you take Oakland, as an example, you would barely move the needle on housing supply. One problem is that there is already some dense housing around these, and other nodes, in the Bay Area. The other is that these locations can only accommodate so much of the area’s housing supply. To address the housing crunch, there needs to be ubiquitous up-zoning of any — no EVERY — parcel, in any zoning category — by right. What that means is if you own a burger stand by the lake (using Oakland as an example again) and that burger stand is a one-story building with a big lot out front that is 90-percent empty virtually 100% of the time (if my memory serves me correctly) and you want to sell your lot to me and I can justify 50 units based on precedent of adjacency alone, then I should be able to supply those 50 dwelling units (60 with an affordable density bonus, 150 with a high rise even) and not have to litigate the local NIMBYISM for 5 years to do it. The cost of land in Oakland (my example again) is not that high on a per-unit, land basis cost. The issue is that people will come out of the woodwork (read: other parts of the Bay) to fight you and then the cost to litigate, the time value of money and the entitlement fees kill the desire to even start a project. If you could up-zone every single family lot to 3-flats, you could dramatically increase supply. Hell, you can focus on just one and two-story neighborhood commercial and rapidly decrease price pressure. And SV is not approaching $1500/sf without all the barriers to redevelopment of underutilized land (parking lots or otherwise).
To be fair, not everyone wants Manhattan so density, and even change, can be terrifying. But, to be fair, there were special and specific circumstances that created Manhattan that just don’t exist in SV or Oakland. So, that fear may not be justified. Still, is a step in the right direction...
First, thanks for taking the time to put that together; it's always reassuring to see someone take the time for democracy.
Quick question: why does "Tell me how they vote" require my email address? Couldn't that information just appear when the area is clicked on, or am I misinterpreting that feature?
Every time I see this posted, I ask about noise. Dense housing near rapid-transit, particularly rail, has led to lots of people getting exposed to massive volumes of noise, even at night. This is the type of long-term negative that get people to move out to the suburbs (e.g. self-defeating the policy) or call for more construction such as sound walls. You can see Reno for a perfect example of this. Everyone moved out to the burb, traffic sucks, then they ended up just building sounds walls anyways.
Does any piece of this legislation deal with the inherent problem of rapid-transit noise + dense housing?
Upzoning creates multifamily housing. To many, that is not really housing, it's something for other people. The younger, the poorer (in suburban areas), the richer (in gentrifying urban neighborhoods), the transient, the childfree. Upzoning will encourage the demolition of single-family detached homes, which in their mind is the only kind that real families care about. Even if you can get someone to acknowledge that greater supply will make condos cheaper, affordable condos don't offset the increasing cost and scarcity of backyards. To be forced into a tower is as bad as being displaced entirely.
Developers aren't helping the matter. Multifamily buildings in America are too often cheap and hastily-built crap polluting the suburban landscape, or gleaming ultra-luxury alien invaders menacing vulnerable urban neighborhoods. It might help with sentiment if we had more multifamily buildings that were pleasant to live in and that middle-class voters could actually identify with.
I'm as YIMBY as anyone, but the actual recent condo buildings I can point to are making it hard to challenge the preference for single-family homes. Anything that looks as good costs twice as much, or more with HOA fees.
Seeing an NBER paper on Hacker News of all places makes me want to cry tears of joy.
That zoning and insane levels of regulation are absolutely the causes of the housing crises in the US is the mainstream consensus among economists.
For those unfamiliar, Glaeser is widely considered the foremost urban economist, so I'm shocked to see his famous paper linked on here. He's absolutely brilliant.
Spend some time walking visiting third world countries sometime and observe how much homelessness you see. When pretty much anybody can build a currogated tin shack wherever they want, almost everybody is going to sleep with a roof over their head.
The problem with all real estate development is all the profits flow to the developers and all the costs flow to the existing residents (more traffic, infrastructure, etc). I am surprised that anyone is in favour of development in their neighbourhood unless they are a developer.
The solution is to share the benefits of new development with the existing residents so they gain from development. Get this right and communities will be fighting each other to have developers come in and build new houses.
more units equals more property taxes for the municipality to pay for services, and more people buying stuff and paying sales tax, and use fees like the $11 BART ticket.
[+] [-] krausejj|8 years ago|reply
In California, we have a chance to fix things. SB-827 is a new bill that prevents local governments from banning density near public transit. It is the most radical housing bill in decades, because it rebalances zoning control from the local to the state level. It could result in 3 million new units being created in California, a state that builds <100k per year.
https://standupcalifornia.com (this is a website i set up to support this issue, which i see as the most important political issue for myself and my friends, and our ability to stay in our communities)
[+] [-] gnarcoregrizz|8 years ago|reply
I'm afraid it may be one of those 'short term gain, long term consequence' type bills that CA has a history of cough prop 13. However, at least it's looking in the right direction, since the housing situation couldn't be much worse
[+] [-] davidw|8 years ago|reply
Still though, it's one issue where we all ought to be able to find some common ground and fix things.
[+] [-] Gibbon1|8 years ago|reply
Sure I can name a bunch of reasons why little housing is built in California, we can start with the Libertarian wet dream that is Prop 13. Prop 13 does two things, removes any incentive for muni's to approve new housing. And starves the government of funding to pay for public goods like schools and mass transit. The zoning restrictions Libertarians bitch about are partly the direct result of that.
Okay fine. But then still the question is, even if we admit California has issues, why is it that corporations which are totally free to locate elsewhere aren't doing so? You would think with a large cost differential corporations would move. Why not?
Because neoliberal conservative dominated governments in the rest of the US means that VC's, engineers, and mangers don't want to live in those places at all. So they and their companies are paying a large premium not to.
No workers don't want to work in 'right to work state' They don't want to send their kids to schools that teach creationism and abstinence only sex education. They don't want to live in communities with bad family planning.
[+] [-] Spooky23|8 years ago|reply
It's seems absurd in this day and age that we're still concentrating business to such an extent in places like the NY Metro Area and the Bay Area. IBM in the olden times leveraged locating facilities in nowheresville as a competitive advantage. I'm surprised it isn't catching on now that engineers are being so highly compensated.
[+] [-] sAuronas|8 years ago|reply
To be fair, not everyone wants Manhattan so density, and even change, can be terrifying. But, to be fair, there were special and specific circumstances that created Manhattan that just don’t exist in SV or Oakland. So, that fear may not be justified. Still, is a step in the right direction...
[+] [-] deathanatos|8 years ago|reply
Quick question: why does "Tell me how they vote" require my email address? Couldn't that information just appear when the area is clicked on, or am I misinterpreting that feature?
[+] [-] snomad|8 years ago|reply
Does any piece of this legislation deal with the inherent problem of rapid-transit noise + dense housing?
[+] [-] closeparen|8 years ago|reply
Developers aren't helping the matter. Multifamily buildings in America are too often cheap and hastily-built crap polluting the suburban landscape, or gleaming ultra-luxury alien invaders menacing vulnerable urban neighborhoods. It might help with sentiment if we had more multifamily buildings that were pleasant to live in and that middle-class voters could actually identify with.
I'm as YIMBY as anyone, but the actual recent condo buildings I can point to are making it hard to challenge the preference for single-family homes. Anything that looks as good costs twice as much, or more with HOA fees.
[+] [-] axau|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dogruck|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] techenthusiast|8 years ago|reply
Seeing an NBER paper on Hacker News of all places makes me want to cry tears of joy.
That zoning and insane levels of regulation are absolutely the causes of the housing crises in the US is the mainstream consensus among economists.
For those unfamiliar, Glaeser is widely considered the foremost urban economist, so I'm shocked to see his famous paper linked on here. He's absolutely brilliant.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] empath75|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tempest1981|8 years ago|reply
https://deleonrealty.com/2016/facebooks-effect-appreciation-...
[+] [-] duncan_bayne|8 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-zESacteu4
[+] [-] danieltillett|8 years ago|reply
The solution is to share the benefits of new development with the existing residents so they gain from development. Get this right and communities will be fighting each other to have developers come in and build new houses.
[+] [-] wwgg715|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] closeparen|8 years ago|reply