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Sounds like a recipe for even more sprawl. The bay area may need more housing but build up, not out.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jacobolus 10y ago
What’s needed is large amounts of new housing in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, etc. etc. The most reasonable places to put it are near public transit and near office parks. These cities don’t really have a whole lot of “out” left to build on.
- lambdasquirrel 10y ago
  I'd thought the same. In theory, this would contribute to sprawl. In practice, you have to know a bit of what's been going on in California to recognize that the proposed law is squarely aimed at these suburban towns, and they are all already sprawls as it is anyway.
- throwaway4891a 10y ago
  Actual affordable housing means growing vertically and shrinking units to typical Hong Kong sizes.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Mountain View has about 6,000 people per square mile. Cupertino has about 5,000 people per square mile. Palo Alto has about 2,500 people per square mile. Etc. By contrast, a suburb full of real housing can be far denser. For example, Somerville, MA, a suburb of Boston, has about 19,000 people per square mile. It’s entirely unnecessary to fill the whole of the Bay Area with 30+ floor high rises in order to increase density by a factor of 2 or more; all we need is to re-zone a fraction of the land to allow 3–6 story low rise apartment buildings in mixed-use neighborhoods instead of only allowing single family detached houses on large lots and scattered strip malls and outrageous numbers of parking spaces everywhere. Kowloon has a density of more than 100,000 people per square mile. The Bay Area does not need anything near the density of Hong Kong to meet its housing needs.
    - Johnny555 10y ago
      Of course, Somerville has little parkland, and few commercial buildings, not even much retail, and little office space. I'd much rather see balanced communities with parks, retail/entertainment and office space so many residents don't have to travel outside of their community for every day needs.
- jedberg 10y ago
  NIMBY is a huge problem. I live in Cupertino, and we just defeated a couple of bills that would have allowed a nine story high rise of apartments right next to the freeway. In this particular case most people opposed it because they didn't want a nine story building. I didn't actually mind, even though I would literally live in it's shadow. But I voted against it too because the they were apartments, not condos, which means that they will send their kids to the schools but not pay for them. Actually worse, their rent would have been higher because of the schools, but the schools would never see any of that money since apartments don't pay parcel taxes, which is where a good chunk of the school funding comes from. But my main point is that almost all of my neighbors opposed it because "they don't want high density housing to ruin the neighborhood". I hate to break it to these people, but they said the same thing in the 1960s when their houses were being built.
  - shostack 10y ago
    So whomever actually owns the apartments that get rented pays no parcel tax?
    - jedberg 10y ago
      They pay a single parcel tax instead of one per home like the rest if us.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    The people living there will all be working in the office space in Cupertino and nearby towns. It’s ridiculous that all of these towns can add unlimited amounts of new office space, without likewise building any new places for the workers to live.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    >"they don't want high density housing to ruin the neighborhood". In all likelihood they probably just don't want more supply driving down prices. If you've got a $1 million mortgage on a $1.4 million bungalow you're not exactly going to be pleased if the housing crisis comes to an abrupt end and you're plunged deep into negative equity. There seems to be some tiptoeing around this elephant when it comes to the politics of land development though.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  Agreed, many of my neighbors spoke out against a proposed condo development (less than half a mile from a Caltrain station, and 1/4 mile from 2 ramps to 101) because they were worried about traffic in the neighborhood. Fortunately, the developments went on as planned and 3 years and 400 housing units later, traffic isn't noticeably worse than it was before the developments, and I see a lot more people walking to Caltrain. Cities love to welcome office space, but they are loathe to welcome residential space, yet at the same time, people complain that people are being forced out of the community due to the price of housing. The cure to high housing prices is more housing, not rent control.
- narrator 10y ago
  The problem in the Peninsula is the traffic. It will just get worse with higher density. Nobody is going to walk or bike to work. Complete wonderland. Public transit is a joke and has been for the last 30 years. Higher density may lower housing costs some, but it will just make traffic worse and that's why existing residents are not in favor of it. The most practical thing would be to extend BART and have it run next to the freeway to minimize the NIMBY factor. That will never ever happen though because it costs a billion dollars a mile to build anything that carries multiple people on a track in the U.S. See the recent muni train expansion in San Francisco.
  - skuhn 10y ago
    One of (many) reasons why BART can't expand is NIMBYism as well. Trains are loud, they bring undesirable people to the area, the stations themselves can have crime problems. Basically people see it as a magical portal that brings downtown Oakland and San Francisco to them, with all of the attendant problems of those areas. Not entirely untrue, but it also contributes to the inability to ever improve things in the bay area.
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  Why do rational urbanists suddenly crave development in suburbs like Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Cupertino when we have three major urban centers in San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco that all could use a lot more density. Building more out in the suburbs between will just mean more traffic, more pollution, more global warming. It makes no sense.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    I think a good chunk of San Francisco should also be up-zoned for mixed uses and more housing units in buildings up to 5 stories with less parking requirement. All the pale yellow here is very low density residential: http://default.sfplanning.org/zoning/zoning_map.pdf http://default.sfplanning.org/zoning/zoning_map.pdf But anyway, I don’t think it would be inherently terrible to have relatively low density suburbs. The problem is that all the towns in the peninsula love building massive amounts of new office space, but don’t build enough housing for the workers to live there. As a result, the workers all live in SF and commute daily to the peninsula by car or corporate shuttle. This is a horrible planning pattern for everyone. (Except for the peninsula towns who get big tax revenue from the office space and don’t have to pay for any of the costs of housing the workers’ families.) It’s plausible that increasing the housing supply in Silicon Valley suburbs would even decrease commute-hours traffic. (I’m not enough of an expert to predict precisely.)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

What’s needed is large amounts of new housing in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, etc. etc. The most reasonable places to put it are near public transit and near office parks. These cities don’t really have a whole lot of “out” left to build on.

lambdasquirrel 10y ago
I'd thought the same. In theory, this would contribute to sprawl. In practice, you have to know a bit of what's been going on in California to recognize that the proposed law is squarely aimed at these suburban towns, and they are all already sprawls as it is anyway.
throwaway4891a 10y ago
Actual affordable housing means growing vertically and shrinking units to typical Hong Kong sizes.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  Mountain View has about 6,000 people per square mile. Cupertino has about 5,000 people per square mile. Palo Alto has about 2,500 people per square mile. Etc. By contrast, a suburb full of real housing can be far denser. For example, Somerville, MA, a suburb of Boston, has about 19,000 people per square mile. It’s entirely unnecessary to fill the whole of the Bay Area with 30+ floor high rises in order to increase density by a factor of 2 or more; all we need is to re-zone a fraction of the land to allow 3–6 story low rise apartment buildings in mixed-use neighborhoods instead of only allowing single family detached houses on large lots and scattered strip malls and outrageous numbers of parking spaces everywhere. Kowloon has a density of more than 100,000 people per square mile. The Bay Area does not need anything near the density of Hong Kong to meet its housing needs.
  - Johnny555 10y ago
    Of course, Somerville has little parkland, and few commercial buildings, not even much retail, and little office space. I'd much rather see balanced communities with parks, retail/entertainment and office space so many residents don't have to travel outside of their community for every day needs.
jedberg 10y ago
NIMBY is a huge problem. I live in Cupertino, and we just defeated a couple of bills that would have allowed a nine story high rise of apartments right next to the freeway. In this particular case most people opposed it because they didn't want a nine story building. I didn't actually mind, even though I would literally live in it's shadow. But I voted against it too because the they were apartments, not condos, which means that they will send their kids to the schools but not pay for them. Actually worse, their rent would have been higher because of the schools, but the schools would never see any of that money since apartments don't pay parcel taxes, which is where a good chunk of the school funding comes from. But my main point is that almost all of my neighbors opposed it because "they don't want high density housing to ruin the neighborhood". I hate to break it to these people, but they said the same thing in the 1960s when their houses were being built.
- shostack 10y ago
  So whomever actually owns the apartments that get rented pays no parcel tax?
  - jedberg 10y ago
    They pay a single parcel tax instead of one per home like the rest if us.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  The people living there will all be working in the office space in Cupertino and nearby towns. It’s ridiculous that all of these towns can add unlimited amounts of new office space, without likewise building any new places for the workers to live.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  >"they don't want high density housing to ruin the neighborhood". In all likelihood they probably just don't want more supply driving down prices. If you've got a $1 million mortgage on a $1.4 million bungalow you're not exactly going to be pleased if the housing crisis comes to an abrupt end and you're plunged deep into negative equity. There seems to be some tiptoeing around this elephant when it comes to the politics of land development though.
Johnny555 10y ago
Agreed, many of my neighbors spoke out against a proposed condo development (less than half a mile from a Caltrain station, and 1/4 mile from 2 ramps to 101) because they were worried about traffic in the neighborhood. Fortunately, the developments went on as planned and 3 years and 400 housing units later, traffic isn't noticeably worse than it was before the developments, and I see a lot more people walking to Caltrain. Cities love to welcome office space, but they are loathe to welcome residential space, yet at the same time, people complain that people are being forced out of the community due to the price of housing. The cure to high housing prices is more housing, not rent control.
narrator 10y ago
The problem in the Peninsula is the traffic. It will just get worse with higher density. Nobody is going to walk or bike to work. Complete wonderland. Public transit is a joke and has been for the last 30 years. Higher density may lower housing costs some, but it will just make traffic worse and that's why existing residents are not in favor of it. The most practical thing would be to extend BART and have it run next to the freeway to minimize the NIMBY factor. That will never ever happen though because it costs a billion dollars a mile to build anything that carries multiple people on a track in the U.S. See the recent muni train expansion in San Francisco.
- skuhn 10y ago
  One of (many) reasons why BART can't expand is NIMBYism as well. Trains are loud, they bring undesirable people to the area, the stations themselves can have crime problems. Basically people see it as a magical portal that brings downtown Oakland and San Francisco to them, with all of the attendant problems of those areas. Not entirely untrue, but it also contributes to the inability to ever improve things in the bay area.
WillPostForFood 10y ago
Why do rational urbanists suddenly crave development in suburbs like Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Cupertino when we have three major urban centers in San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco that all could use a lot more density. Building more out in the suburbs between will just mean more traffic, more pollution, more global warming. It makes no sense.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  I think a good chunk of San Francisco should also be up-zoned for mixed uses and more housing units in buildings up to 5 stories with less parking requirement. All the pale yellow here is very low density residential: http://default.sfplanning.org/zoning/zoning_map.pdf http://default.sfplanning.org/zoning/zoning_map.pdf But anyway, I don’t think it would be inherently terrible to have relatively low density suburbs. The problem is that all the towns in the peninsula love building massive amounts of new office space, but don’t build enough housing for the workers to live there. As a result, the workers all live in SF and commute daily to the peninsula by car or corporate shuttle. This is a horrible planning pattern for everyone. (Except for the peninsula towns who get big tax revenue from the office space and don’t have to pay for any of the costs of housing the workers’ families.) It’s plausible that increasing the housing supply in Silicon Valley suburbs would even decrease commute-hours traffic. (I’m not enough of an expert to predict precisely.)