Getting involved with a local YIMBY group is pretty easy, fun, and one of the best things you can do on several fronts:
* It's good for the economy, as "legitster" points out.
* It's good for the environment if people can drive less (or even walk or bike!) because they live closer to things.
* It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might like to move to a more productive place for a better job.
It's much easier to make a difference locally: in many places it's not hard to get to know your city councilors, or state reps/senators. One of my prouder YIMBY moments was turning out 5 people on a weekday morning to speak to our state rep, who ended up voting in favor of HB 2001, which legalizes up to 4-plexes throughout most Oregon cities.
I'm very involved with YIMBY Action here in SF: I'm on the board of both YIMBY Action and YIMBY Law, and I'm also running for local office in the current election: https://buss2020.org
If you have any questions about YIMBY, send them my way!
>It's much easier to make a difference locally: in many places it's not hard to get to know your city councilors, [..]
I am not from USA, but over here i did have a 'pleasure' contacting them. They worked actively against communities they were supposed to represent. I am talking about both city councilors, and district ones.
You know whats the best part? you have like 3 options to pick, and they all are exactly the same(cozy job, with limited hours for appointments and ignoring your community)
>It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might like to move to a more productive place for a better job.
Please cite at lease one example in which this has ever been the case. I do understand the theory behind your argument here, and I assume you are familiar with (leftist) counter-arguments, so this is not an attempt to open a debate. Rather, I want you to be right but until I see some solid evidence I am unconvinced.
>One of my prouder YIMBY moments was turning out 5 people on a weekday morning to speak to our state rep, who ended up voting in favor of HB 2001, which legalizes up to 4-plexes throughout most Oregon cities.
This is a great example of how it seems to me that YIMBYs are anti-NIMBY in the way Democrats are anti-Republican. Time and time again, it appears neither groups are actually doing any thing ‘good for the people “on the margins. Clearly, this policy benefits landlords more than anybody and the implication is that this is besides the fact of lowering rent prices. Fine. But it is not insignificant that all of these efforts primarily promote the perpetuation of rent-seeking.
I watched from the front row as investors bought up Portland. It has been about 6 years since it entered full-swing and rent prices are higher than ever before. This is not good for people “on the margins”. In fact, most of those people were not even on the margins before the investors came in. I am one of them. I should know.
Of course, history is littered with cases of YIMBY theory failing urban housing markets, so please show me an example of where your theories have actually succeeded.
There is a study that came out this year that I have been obsessed with: If zoning laws in San Francisco and New York City (just two places!) were frozen in place in 1964, the average American income today would be on average $3700 higher.
To clarify,
the issue is that in the 60's, both cities had much looser zoning and allowed dense housing development. Policy changes in the late 60s and early 70s tightened the zoning/reduced a cities ability to create dense housing.
I completely agree with the sentiment to build more, much more housing. But, in order to make that happen, we also need to:
- get rid of or modify zoning laws (at least in places where growth will happen)
- reduce regulations on builders
- ensure that there are plenty of builders for health competition (so that consumers don't get ripped off)
- provide protections for builders from Sue happy NIMBYs (some kind of legal protection that prevents builders from being sued and penalizes NIMBYs that try to stand in their way).
The benefits of building more are so numerous:
- every house that gets built reduces costs for everyone else as well, as the stress of under supply lessens
- it's easier for people to get to work and find work
- easier for companies to higher people
- more jobs getting created, not just from people able to get to work but new jobs getting created from all that construction
- It'll help the environment immensly! Everyday, I see the 580 - 5 lane highway clogged up with cars crawling by at 10mpg, probably getting very low MPG over a very long distance (this is where most of the CO2 pollution is coming from, at least in the US!)
- over the long term even people with houses already will pay lower property taxes (decreasing values reduce prop taxes)
- as the number of average miles driven per commute comes down, there will be less and less traffic.
Ahead of most of this, you probably need to remove or heavily adjust Prop 13.
The primary problem, as detailed in the article, is that homeowners have every incentive to be against new construction and no incentives to be for it. If property taxes rose appropriately with property values, homeowners would have an interest in maintaining housing prices rather than doing everything they can to keep them rising.
There's also a range of beneficial secondary effects. For example, I've talked to retired folks that have considered leaving the bay due to the increased cost of living. But because they have owned their house for decades + P13, if they bought a _cheaper_ house elsewhere in CA to downsize, they'd be paying _more_ in property taxes, to the point of the move not being worth the cost. (I believe there's been talk of transferable tax rates to fix this specific problem, or maybe something was even passed, but it just goes to show the distortions P13 has beyond the obvious).
Aligning incentives (where possible) is, imo, almost always a better way to do things than creating a new batch of regulations/laws to deal with a problem.
Not that this detracts from your points, but transportation is responsible for 29% of CO2 emissions[0]. It's the single largest sector, but not a majority contributor.
Home ownership generally slows growth for everything else around that area. Every home owner has this "not in my backyard" mentality and will veto any possible developments in their area.
Another beneficial change would be repealing proposition 13. Because proposition 13 essentially bans property tax increases for property owners, it creates a perverse incentive to drive property values as high as possible with restrictive zoning. Without proposition 13, property taxes would rise along with the land's economic value, creating an additional incentive for property owners to let the market naturally shift land use to higher-density housing.
This story reminds me of when I was a kid and the school bus would come. Often there were no seats because every seat was taken--one kid each. There was plenty of room there, but the kids who got on the bus first would ban together to prevent new kids from sitting.
Today these kids have grown up and own homes in the suburbs. New kids need to move in, but the kids who got there first refuse to let them build. That's what this story is about.
I'm a renter but please, this is about families protecting the value of the primary asset that they hope to live on in retirement. Home assets don't skyrocket in value when there is lots of supply. If we frame this thing as reasonable-needs-of-renters vs unreasonable-wants-of-homeowners, then everyone is going to remain at loggerheads.
That analogy isn't exactly accurate. To make it accurate, the kids sitting in the current seats would have to have paid a significant amount to purchase those seats. Also, throw in some kids who, for neurological reasons, become extremely distressed if they're forced to sit next to very loud kids. Because of this, they (or their parents) made a big sacrifice to secure single seats for them at great expense.
> In backing every single project in the development pipeline that day, Ms. Trauss laid out a platform that would make her a celebrity of Bay Area politics: how expensive new housing today would become affordable old housing tomorrow, how San Francisco was blowing its chance to harness the energy of an economic boom to mass-build homes that generations of residents could enjoy. She didn’t care if a proposal was for apartments or condos or how much money its future residents had. It was a universal platform of more. Ms. Trauss was for anything and everything, so long as it was built tall and fast and had people living in it.
What a great article, I'm glad that not all is lost in SF Bay w.r.t. the housing crisis.
TBH, I'm amazed how the above points seem so controversial in SF Bay. It's as common-sense as it gets. Build more, always. Denying market-rate housing projects because they don't have income-restricted units doesn't help anyone in any way; I'm all for free-speech and stuff, but anyone who's trying to argue any such points that interfere with adding more capacity to the market and which make zero economic sense should be escorted out of the meetings.
Go ahead and build, but make damn sure you are being rational about people's behavior when it comes to driving and transit.
My ex moved into a condominium complex that has exactly zero parking spots or loading docks for visitors, and no parking for half a mile in either direction. It's an absolute total fail. Neighbors rat on each other to get each other's cars towed because they get so upset. It's literally impossible to have a party there or even invite friends over because they simply cannot park and there is no transit available anywhere near there. There aren't any bike lanes either because it's a financially strapped city and the complex is near the border of a rich city that explicitly does things to make it harder to get between the two townships.
I'm just saying, both hands have to know what each other are doing and people have to make rational decisions at the municipal level.
How about we talk about building infrastructure? The whole Bay Area is building like crazy, and yet the roads are getting worse (more building? more traffic lights!). Public transportation is a big joke around here. Caltrain from South San Jose to Mountain View? We have the tracks, we have the train... the train just does not go this route on weekends.
We have the same situation as a startup focused on developing a product. We have abidance of developers, and very few infrastructure engineers. When we start deploying what we have built, we are going to have a bad time.
The answer _is_ building more. (I'll say this before the people on Hacker News who are opposed to all private property suggest that "prop 13" is the problem. It's not.)
The problem is they don't build enough. Build build build!
They need the California State Government to overrule local zoning limits. We need to allow dense housing near rail lines and major roads. And I think that anywhere a single-family detached home currently exists, a 2-family home should be allowed.
Build more housing! It's that simple. Prices will fall fast.
> They need the California State Government to overrule local zoning limits
Yes, California and other places with housing problems need as-of-right policies as the article suggests. It's not simply zoning, it's removing all ability of local governments to hold things up, because people will use absolutely anything they can grab onto.
From a philosophical standpoint, people are sometimes uncomfortable with the idea of pre-empting local control—after all, don't they know better? But as the article points out, it's a coordination problem. There is a certain cost [1] to be paid in building housing, unfortunately, and you need a higher-level (in this case, state-wide) view to distribute that cost fairly.
> And I think that anywhere a single-family detached home currently exists, a 2-family home should be allowed.
Make it more like 4–8 (but maybe limited to 3-4 stories), and I'm in.
[1]: As the article points out, however, we think far too often only about the costs. I for one would welcome more neighbors.
I'm from Texas, and I don't understand the stigma against developers building more housing. It drives down prices, and increases competition. Why would California citizens ever be against this?
Edit: The reason is because homeowners are competing with developers, so their own asset depreciates when supply increases. I was just thinking from the perspective of renters.
I'm not saying building isn't the problem but how do you solve for someone who is in a loan at $1.2M and in one year it is worth $500K on the open market due to all the building. This is something that has to happen incrementally and why people dig in so hard. That property is the main store of wealth for a lot of people. The wrong scheme could bankrupt them and destroy their retirement. Additionally, super dense housing will need major updates to public infrastructure to support these new numbers; from roads to trains to schools to hospitals and more. There is a reason that no one has the political will to do such a thing.
Mr. Falk looked at Mr. O’Brien and said, Dennis, look, I don’t even know you, but you have to eat something, even if it’s one grape, before I’ll talk to you. That at least got people laughing, and pretty soon everyone acceded to the bread and cheese and grapes.
The negotiation scene is great stuff. It's gold.
Another very important line:
People have to realize that homelessness is connected to housing prices.
I have been told repeatedly on the internet that the cost of housing has nothing whatsoever to do with homelessness. Homeless people are viewed by many as "junkies and crazies" who just have a personal problem and are not negatively impacted by the housing situation in the US. I've seen people deny that there even is a housing crisis in the US.
What happens when more people move into the area from the rest of the country and start driving to work from their newly built housing units? Silicon Valley has, at best, poor coverage of Caltrain and no coverage for BART in South Bay. If let’s say 10,000 more families move to San Jose into new housing units and they all need to commute to Palo Alto for work, how exactly would they do that without choking up the already clogged freeway network? Caltrain is already packed beyond imagination during rush hour. Each year, the rush hour commute time between Palo Alto and San Jose increasing by 5 minutes and that’s with limited net population growth in the area. Imagine if the population influx increased 2X or 5X. Housing is not an isolated problem. Due to decades of lobbying by the auto industry and a crippled public transportation strategy, what America really has is a transportation and infrastructure problem.
Without solving that, the housing problem will never be truly solved and building new housing will degrade the quality of life of everyone in the area - both newcomers and existing residents.
This is the most common argument I hear against building, but I am firmly convinced that the reason you have the commute problem in the Bay area isn't because of the number of people, but because the resistance to building has forced development further and further out.
Consider that there is still housing growth, but its in South San Jose, Morgan Hill, and Gilroy. Those people all have to drive past Los Gatos, Cambell, Cupertino, San Jose, and Sunnyvale to get to Mountain View. All your doing is increasing the amount of Miles people have to drive, and that in term increases the amount of time they spend in their cars, and clogs the roads. If you built houses in Mountain View or Palo Alto, none of those people would be on the roads, and if they were it wouldn't be for nearly as long. You don't have to take my word for it take a look at average commute times in the bay area, those increases aren't due to a 2x increase in Mountain View, its due to a 2x increase far outside with people driving in.
Public transportation is great, but the solution is to build houses near where people work, that means San Francisco and Mountain View.
You might have it backwards. Traffic is increasing because we're adding offices but no housing nearby. Therefore people need to pour in from further out.
With higher density, alternate transportation options become viable and attractive.
This is a great point, never thought of it that way
When it was Ms. Trauss’s turn to speak, she argued that the entire notion of public comment on new construction was inherently flawed, because the beneficiaries — the people who would eventually live in the buildings — couldn’t argue their side.
FWIW - I’d love to see increased density where I live in Seattle, but the people who support it seem to ignore all the other stuff that has to go with it - e.g. more school capacity, better transit, requiring parking in new developments because people still have cars and the on-street parking can’t scale to meet new developments...
Bringing that stuff up gets me called a NIMBY; it sometimes seems like anything that might make it more expensive for developers to build more housing is a crime against humanity. :-/
It sometimes feels like all we’re really doing is enabling developers to mine our quality of life for their own profit, without actually creating enough housing to make a dent in the problem.
Yes, this is something in dire need of a solution in SF. There are not enough primary schools in the city to support even the people that currently live here (there’s a lottery system where students aren’t even guaranteed a spot in a high school).
I would love to see the city of SF get denser, but building condos isn’t the only answer.
It's very complicated. People have conflicting ideas - one the one hand, they want affordable housing (ie their rent to go down) or the other, not in my backyard.
As mentioned in the comments, housing/shelter has a different meaning depending on your perspective (renter/owner, single/married, young/old or import/local resident).
Unless we define housing types/building codes for specific subsets, it'll most likely be just more of the same development/investments.
With many major metro areas bursting at the seams, I think they need to break ground on new 21st century cities and identify a way to lower the populations as a solution/initial step, rather than adding more deck chairs to the ship.
This gives the economy a new canvas to work with and the opportunity to move forward 100% with sustainable priciples without being encumbered by the pre-existing conditions plaguing NIMBY strongholds.
With desalination and autonomous vehicles becoming a bigger part of the modern economy, California could build horseshoe/teardrop shaped autonomous highways from the coastline cities hundreds of miles inland that allow modern logistics to fillin the gaps with public transportation and servicing basic needs (water, sanitation, public services) and accomodate new suburban models to house an ever-growing population. Outside of the earthquake zones, the can build the high-density housing they need to solve a good portion of the social crisis.
Extending cities with autonomous loops may not be the best answer, but the existing city planning models need more pioneering strategies if they want to seed future growth.
Just a bold statement. I wish for change but i don't see it happening. I love the weather, love the environment and sometimes love the people here but after living here for a number of years, I am started to not understand it. I pay pretty high taxes to live here. We have the most embarrassing property tax laws that include business property. I walk to work and walk through so many homeless camps filled with poop, trash and needles. Many of our communities have failing roads, some of the worst I have experienced in the world. The roads have started groups such as "pot hole vigilantes". In most of the communities I never see a police presence. We say we are green and love the environment but we have made little progress on public transportation since the 70s. I mean hell, we cannot even get a quick rollout of new BART cars. So we want to hate on building new roads but we have no new public transportation. I am starting to run out of reasons to participate in California.
Articles like this and the subsequent comments always reinforce to me that the human domain will never, or perhaps can never support wildlife and fauna.
As much as we like to grandstand against mass extinction of wildlife and deforestation, we will always cave to economical and social pressures of modern life which almost exclusively require resource extraction and destruction of the biosphere.
Lafayette, the town in the article, is nearly an hour away from SF by train. Should we really be building more housing relatively far away from the jobs? The trains and roads are packed. What about focusing on high density housing that's closer to the jobs in Oakland and SF? Isn't it better for people to be able to walk to work or ride a bike?
Fun Fact: if three cities(San Jose, San Francisco, NYC) in America were to loosen up housing planning rules, America's GDP would be 4% higher, that is incredible in of itself, source: (paywall - https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/01/16/the-wests-bigge...)
Although I think California especially needs new housing, the bay area in particular has a housing issue which is somewhat artificially created due to a number of large (google, facebook, etc) and smaller tech companies requiring a "buts in seat" mentality and a philosophy that all "important" jobs be based in the bay area near their HQ's. Its really quite sad as a job that can be done anywhere is forced to be located in one of the most expensive areas on earth.
[+] [-] davidw|6 years ago|reply
* It's good for the economy, as "legitster" points out.
* It's good for the environment if people can drive less (or even walk or bike!) because they live closer to things.
* It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might like to move to a more productive place for a better job.
It's much easier to make a difference locally: in many places it's not hard to get to know your city councilors, or state reps/senators. One of my prouder YIMBY moments was turning out 5 people on a weekday morning to speak to our state rep, who ended up voting in favor of HB 2001, which legalizes up to 4-plexes throughout most Oregon cities.
[+] [-] buss|6 years ago|reply
I'm very involved with YIMBY Action here in SF: I'm on the board of both YIMBY Action and YIMBY Law, and I'm also running for local office in the current election: https://buss2020.org
If you have any questions about YIMBY, send them my way!
[+] [-] arthurjj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badfrog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xelbair|6 years ago|reply
I am not from USA, but over here i did have a 'pleasure' contacting them. They worked actively against communities they were supposed to represent. I am talking about both city councilors, and district ones.
You know whats the best part? you have like 3 options to pick, and they all are exactly the same(cozy job, with limited hours for appointments and ignoring your community)
[+] [-] foxx-boxx|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] exterrestrial|6 years ago|reply
Please cite at lease one example in which this has ever been the case. I do understand the theory behind your argument here, and I assume you are familiar with (leftist) counter-arguments, so this is not an attempt to open a debate. Rather, I want you to be right but until I see some solid evidence I am unconvinced.
>One of my prouder YIMBY moments was turning out 5 people on a weekday morning to speak to our state rep, who ended up voting in favor of HB 2001, which legalizes up to 4-plexes throughout most Oregon cities.
This is a great example of how it seems to me that YIMBYs are anti-NIMBY in the way Democrats are anti-Republican. Time and time again, it appears neither groups are actually doing any thing ‘good for the people “on the margins. Clearly, this policy benefits landlords more than anybody and the implication is that this is besides the fact of lowering rent prices. Fine. But it is not insignificant that all of these efforts primarily promote the perpetuation of rent-seeking.
I watched from the front row as investors bought up Portland. It has been about 6 years since it entered full-swing and rent prices are higher than ever before. This is not good for people “on the margins”. In fact, most of those people were not even on the margins before the investors came in. I am one of them. I should know.
Of course, history is littered with cases of YIMBY theory failing urban housing markets, so please show me an example of where your theories have actually succeeded.
[+] [-] legitster|6 years ago|reply
https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/mac.20170388?fbc...
[+] [-] aresant|6 years ago|reply
"Our point is that a first-order effect of more housing in Silicon Valley is to raise income and welfare of all US workers."
[+] [-] tmh79|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] istjohn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pascalxus|6 years ago|reply
- get rid of or modify zoning laws (at least in places where growth will happen)
- reduce regulations on builders
- ensure that there are plenty of builders for health competition (so that consumers don't get ripped off)
- provide protections for builders from Sue happy NIMBYs (some kind of legal protection that prevents builders from being sued and penalizes NIMBYs that try to stand in their way).
The benefits of building more are so numerous:
- every house that gets built reduces costs for everyone else as well, as the stress of under supply lessens
- it's easier for people to get to work and find work
- easier for companies to higher people
- more jobs getting created, not just from people able to get to work but new jobs getting created from all that construction
- It'll help the environment immensly! Everyday, I see the 580 - 5 lane highway clogged up with cars crawling by at 10mpg, probably getting very low MPG over a very long distance (this is where most of the CO2 pollution is coming from, at least in the US!)
- over the long term even people with houses already will pay lower property taxes (decreasing values reduce prop taxes)
- as the number of average miles driven per commute comes down, there will be less and less traffic.
[+] [-] rndmize|6 years ago|reply
The primary problem, as detailed in the article, is that homeowners have every incentive to be against new construction and no incentives to be for it. If property taxes rose appropriately with property values, homeowners would have an interest in maintaining housing prices rather than doing everything they can to keep them rising.
There's also a range of beneficial secondary effects. For example, I've talked to retired folks that have considered leaving the bay due to the increased cost of living. But because they have owned their house for decades + P13, if they bought a _cheaper_ house elsewhere in CA to downsize, they'd be paying _more_ in property taxes, to the point of the move not being worth the cost. (I believe there's been talk of transferable tax rates to fix this specific problem, or maybe something was even passed, but it just goes to show the distortions P13 has beyond the obvious).
Aligning incentives (where possible) is, imo, almost always a better way to do things than creating a new batch of regulations/laws to deal with a problem.
[+] [-] samatman|6 years ago|reply
[0]: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
[+] [-] christiansakai|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quotemstr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lendal|6 years ago|reply
Today these kids have grown up and own homes in the suburbs. New kids need to move in, but the kids who got there first refuse to let them build. That's what this story is about.
[+] [-] riazrizvi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xamuel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] i_am_nomad|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cnst|6 years ago|reply
What a great article, I'm glad that not all is lost in SF Bay w.r.t. the housing crisis.
TBH, I'm amazed how the above points seem so controversial in SF Bay. It's as common-sense as it gets. Build more, always. Denying market-rate housing projects because they don't have income-restricted units doesn't help anyone in any way; I'm all for free-speech and stuff, but anyone who's trying to argue any such points that interfere with adding more capacity to the market and which make zero economic sense should be escorted out of the meetings.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] danbmil99|6 years ago|reply
My ex moved into a condominium complex that has exactly zero parking spots or loading docks for visitors, and no parking for half a mile in either direction. It's an absolute total fail. Neighbors rat on each other to get each other's cars towed because they get so upset. It's literally impossible to have a party there or even invite friends over because they simply cannot park and there is no transit available anywhere near there. There aren't any bike lanes either because it's a financially strapped city and the complex is near the border of a rich city that explicitly does things to make it harder to get between the two townships.
I'm just saying, both hands have to know what each other are doing and people have to make rational decisions at the municipal level.
[+] [-] uniformlyrandom|6 years ago|reply
We have the same situation as a startup focused on developing a product. We have abidance of developers, and very few infrastructure engineers. When we start deploying what we have built, we are going to have a bad time.
[+] [-] fortran77|6 years ago|reply
They need the California State Government to overrule local zoning limits. We need to allow dense housing near rail lines and major roads. And I think that anywhere a single-family detached home currently exists, a 2-family home should be allowed.
Build more housing! It's that simple. Prices will fall fast.
[+] [-] notJim|6 years ago|reply
Yes, California and other places with housing problems need as-of-right policies as the article suggests. It's not simply zoning, it's removing all ability of local governments to hold things up, because people will use absolutely anything they can grab onto.
From a philosophical standpoint, people are sometimes uncomfortable with the idea of pre-empting local control—after all, don't they know better? But as the article points out, it's a coordination problem. There is a certain cost [1] to be paid in building housing, unfortunately, and you need a higher-level (in this case, state-wide) view to distribute that cost fairly.
> And I think that anywhere a single-family detached home currently exists, a 2-family home should be allowed.
Make it more like 4–8 (but maybe limited to 3-4 stories), and I'm in.
[1]: As the article points out, however, we think far too often only about the costs. I for one would welcome more neighbors.
[+] [-] aty268|6 years ago|reply
Edit: The reason is because homeowners are competing with developers, so their own asset depreciates when supply increases. I was just thinking from the perspective of renters.
[+] [-] snarf21|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilamont|6 years ago|reply
How fast, and how much?
[+] [-] pruneridge|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loansas3424|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|6 years ago|reply
The negotiation scene is great stuff. It's gold.
Another very important line:
People have to realize that homelessness is connected to housing prices.
I have been told repeatedly on the internet that the cost of housing has nothing whatsoever to do with homelessness. Homeless people are viewed by many as "junkies and crazies" who just have a personal problem and are not negatively impacted by the housing situation in the US. I've seen people deny that there even is a housing crisis in the US.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pruneridge|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkhenry|6 years ago|reply
Consider that there is still housing growth, but its in South San Jose, Morgan Hill, and Gilroy. Those people all have to drive past Los Gatos, Cambell, Cupertino, San Jose, and Sunnyvale to get to Mountain View. All your doing is increasing the amount of Miles people have to drive, and that in term increases the amount of time they spend in their cars, and clogs the roads. If you built houses in Mountain View or Palo Alto, none of those people would be on the roads, and if they were it wouldn't be for nearly as long. You don't have to take my word for it take a look at average commute times in the bay area, those increases aren't due to a 2x increase in Mountain View, its due to a 2x increase far outside with people driving in.
Public transportation is great, but the solution is to build houses near where people work, that means San Francisco and Mountain View.
[+] [-] mertd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xivzgrev|6 years ago|reply
When it was Ms. Trauss’s turn to speak, she argued that the entire notion of public comment on new construction was inherently flawed, because the beneficiaries — the people who would eventually live in the buildings — couldn’t argue their side.
[+] [-] earhart|6 years ago|reply
Bringing that stuff up gets me called a NIMBY; it sometimes seems like anything that might make it more expensive for developers to build more housing is a crime against humanity. :-/
It sometimes feels like all we’re really doing is enabling developers to mine our quality of life for their own profit, without actually creating enough housing to make a dent in the problem.
[+] [-] aabhay|6 years ago|reply
I would love to see the city of SF get denser, but building condos isn’t the only answer.
[+] [-] pneill|6 years ago|reply
Worth a view The Insane Battle To Sabotage a New Apartment Building Explains San Francisco's Housing Crisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4
[+] [-] DonHopkins|6 years ago|reply
(Edit: the original title was "Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build"! ;)
[+] [-] pixxel|6 years ago|reply
(https://youtu.be/Vhh_GeBPOhs)
[+] [-] neonate|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aSplash0fDerp|6 years ago|reply
Unless we define housing types/building codes for specific subsets, it'll most likely be just more of the same development/investments.
With many major metro areas bursting at the seams, I think they need to break ground on new 21st century cities and identify a way to lower the populations as a solution/initial step, rather than adding more deck chairs to the ship.
This gives the economy a new canvas to work with and the opportunity to move forward 100% with sustainable priciples without being encumbered by the pre-existing conditions plaguing NIMBY strongholds.
With desalination and autonomous vehicles becoming a bigger part of the modern economy, California could build horseshoe/teardrop shaped autonomous highways from the coastline cities hundreds of miles inland that allow modern logistics to fillin the gaps with public transportation and servicing basic needs (water, sanitation, public services) and accomodate new suburban models to house an ever-growing population. Outside of the earthquake zones, the can build the high-density housing they need to solve a good portion of the social crisis.
Extending cities with autonomous loops may not be the best answer, but the existing city planning models need more pioneering strategies if they want to seed future growth.
[+] [-] infecto|6 years ago|reply
Just a bold statement. I wish for change but i don't see it happening. I love the weather, love the environment and sometimes love the people here but after living here for a number of years, I am started to not understand it. I pay pretty high taxes to live here. We have the most embarrassing property tax laws that include business property. I walk to work and walk through so many homeless camps filled with poop, trash and needles. Many of our communities have failing roads, some of the worst I have experienced in the world. The roads have started groups such as "pot hole vigilantes". In most of the communities I never see a police presence. We say we are green and love the environment but we have made little progress on public transportation since the 70s. I mean hell, we cannot even get a quick rollout of new BART cars. So we want to hate on building new roads but we have no new public transportation. I am starting to run out of reasons to participate in California.
[+] [-] staplers|6 years ago|reply
As much as we like to grandstand against mass extinction of wildlife and deforestation, we will always cave to economical and social pressures of modern life which almost exclusively require resource extraction and destruction of the biosphere.
[+] [-] tayistay|6 years ago|reply
I'm not asking rhetorically.
[+] [-] subsubzero|6 years ago|reply
Although I think California especially needs new housing, the bay area in particular has a housing issue which is somewhat artificially created due to a number of large (google, facebook, etc) and smaller tech companies requiring a "buts in seat" mentality and a philosophy that all "important" jobs be based in the bay area near their HQ's. Its really quite sad as a job that can be done anywhere is forced to be located in one of the most expensive areas on earth.