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Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs
- colordrops 9y agoI'm making what I would think to be an upper middle class salary and I can't afford a home in a modestly decent neighborhood in L.A. It seems to me that there is definitely a problem and I support loosening development restrictions. It's not only restrictions though. Of the people I know who own property, many, if not the majority, own more than one property, some of them empty. I also know many remote Chinese that own a property in L.A. It's super frustrating.
- umanwizard 9y ago> afford a home Can you afford rent, though? Isn't a bit extreme to expect to be able to own property -- like some sort of medieval lord -- in a major city?
- alexbecker 9y agoIt didn't used to be. We should be asking why things seem to have regressed, shouldn't we?
- umanwizard 9y agoDidn't it? Were individuals ever commonly buying houses (EDIT: any property) in Manhattan, for example? I don't have any hard numbers, but I suspect LA simply having become more urban and desirable is a big part of it. It's certainly still possible to buy houses in suburban flyover country very cheaply.
- colordrops 9y agoNot a fair comparison. Manhattan is a very dense small area. More comparable to L.A. would be the greater NY metropolitan region.
- panzer_wyrm 9y agoPlease do not change the goalposts. You were talking about property not houses. Condos are property and are easier to obtain.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- beering 9y agoWouldn't rent and a monthly mortgage end up being about the same? The value provided by one unit of housing to its tenants should be about the same as the value to an owner living there, so an investor buying a unit shouldn't expect to reap huge returns relative to someone buying a unit with a X0-year mortgage, right? I think owning property would be much more expensive than renting in the case where the value is based on future appreciation, vs actual value that it provides as a living area. I admit I'm not an expert on real estate, so please explain to me whether this makes sense or not.
- sbov 9y agoIn the last housing bubble rents and mortgages disconnected pretty severely. My friends and I were renting a million dollar house in Los Gatos for just $2400/month. Not sure how things are nowadays though.
- linkregister 9y agoIn the overall Bay Area, rents are moving up with house prices. Median rent in Los Gatos is $5.5k per month.
- mythrwy 9y agoWell given the number of houses in a major city obviously SOMEONE is affording them. Unless they are all owned by a handful of people (not really what we are shooting for here I'd think). Point being, its not unreasonable at all to expect to be able to afford a home.
- colordrops 9y agoWhy would affording to purchase a property in a large diverse city like L.A. with a high salary be unreasonable? I really don't understand your stance.
- sjg007 9y agoIt should be.. basic subdivision would work but it's nimbys that prevent it.
- panzer_wyrm 9y agoNot at all. Renting with no road to purchase turns you into serf. Owning your dwelling is the most basic form a security a human needs. I own a condo that I rent and live renting in other part of my city. The rents cancel each other. It works very nice for me. I definitely wish more people own their homes. I also love highrises.
- abalashov 9y agoI'm not sure this rather dated precept is compatible with the exigencies of 21st century economics, and the flexibility, mobility and long hours demanded. For one thing, houses are cash sinks. It doesn't make sense for highly paid professionals to spend enormous amounts of time or money reshingling roofs, painting, mowing lawns, treating weeds, trimming hedges, repairing plumbing, etc. The deep specialisation and constant attention that the professional economy asks are orthogonal to all those things. It's prudent to upload those demands to the cloud (aka your landlord, at scale) so to speak. I know far more urban professionals that were hindered by the ballast of owning real estate than those empowered by this "most basic form of security". Here in the sprawling metro Atlanta area, taking another job will very likely take you to a wholly different part of this vast agglomeration and doom you to a punishing commute unless you sell your house and relocate. The uncertainty, transaction costs and other friction kept a number of people I know in dead-end jobs until they were finally laid off. As a personal anecdote, I bought a condo in May 2007. I was drinking the very same Kool-Aid about basic form of security and whatnot. I finally let my home go to foreclosure in summer 2015. I financed at $160K, and in summer 2015 it appraised at $85K. I still owed $140K. One of the lenders sued me for a $29K deficiency and got a judgment, and I'll be paying them $250/mo for the next six years. Some security. I grant that my effort at partaking of the most basic form of security a human needs was exceptionally disastrous, but I think the housing crash educated a lot of people about just how much security it really offers. A senseless push to ownership for ownership's sake threatens to discard those valuable lessons. The real argument for owning vs. renting is the mortgage interest deduction, and that's an artifice of government tax policy that hugely distorts the market and the incentives.
- panzer_wyrm 9y ago
- posixplz 9y agoYou have hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, i fear that any sufficiently strong measures to restrict empty homes or foreign investment (see: empty home taxes in British Columbia) will be met with strong resistance from Democrats. As a resident of the Pacific Northwest, the same property squeeze is happening here on a similarly massive scale, also driven by foreign "investment". In my experience, advocating for strong countermeasures is a great way to get one's self labeled as a Trump-er or anti-immigrant.
- enraged_camel 9y ago>>i fear that any sufficiently strong measures to restrict empty homes or foreign investment (see: empty home taxes in British Columbia) will be met with strong resistance from Democrats. Uh, I'm not sure why Democrats would be against this, especially considering Prop 13 was passed by Reagan.
- WillPostForFood 9y agoI know people like to blame Reagan for lots of things, but Prop 13 was passed by voter initiative in 1978, Reagan was Governor from 1967 to 1975. He probably voted for it though.
- icantdrive55 9y ago"I'm mad as Hell" Howard Jarvis. My father was madder. He would watch those property taxes go up every year, cringe, and gulp his Mickey's Big Mouth Beer. (My father died of liver cancer years later. My father drank for many reasons, but all adults were furious over what politicians were doing with all that money. It wasen't pretty.) Politicians used the money on pet projects. I was a kid, but I knew something was very wrong. Everyone knew--Republicans, and Democrats, even the hippies were furious. The waste/borderline fraud was on the front pages of newspapers monthly. The Bay Area is a disaster. Rents are atrocious. Traffic is worse than ever. Sewer systems were built, but their was just never enough to enlarge them? They always had money to hire a new relative though? But--your Founders just have to live here, and set up shop in the high rise, with the hand finished wood tables. I don't quite get it. Yes--I do get it. It's they can buy the nice house in the nice neighborhood, and "Oh well?". But they always blame it on the Investors. "Investors need to be close to their money?" It's getting old. But blaming prop 13 in any way is just projecting. Take away prop 13. Within weeks REIT's, your Founders, Every DINK with money will be chasing those units. I give it a year, and the widows would be gone, and the 1 percenter's will be Landlords. Get ready for New York City rents.
- iamacynic 9y agothe recent ballot measure that uncorks development passed; it will get better in LA. the NIMBYs reigned supreme here for a while but they are being beaten.
- tomcam 9y ago> I also know many remote Chinese Hey, they're not all remote. Some of them are outgoing, a few even garrulous!
- tehlike 9y agoThe other side of the coin is this is akin to what employees from bay area are doing in, say, Texas. They buy properties and propping up the prices elsewhere.
- ganfortran 9y agoThe residents are blocking the construction to protect their real estate value. Nice move from the government, however I don't know how would this go through because there will surely be some intensive lobbying from the NIMBYs' side.
- mikekij 9y agoCurrently trying to build a house in San Diego county. Red tape, permitting, and waiting on the county to review things has consumed no less than 18% of our total budget. I'm happy that California protects our environment from negative environmental impacts, but the way in which they do it makes new housing almost entirely uneconomical.
- mythrwy 9y agoI've always suspected if not the overt aim, then a "side benefit" of this kind of activity was to restrict the inflow of people into desirable areas (rather than just protecting the environment or collecting taxes or else general bureaucratic nonsense). I'd love to live in San Diego. If I could afford it and live like I do now I'd be there in a heartbeat. Not the case with San Fransisco which I'd have to be paid a whole lot more than could reasonably be expected to go near.
- logicalmind 9y agoI live in North County San Diego and there are various communities of new construction available. From what I've seen, places are more willing to accept planned communities where you can account for traffic, water/sewer, schools, etc. I'm not sure if you're talking about building a new home that replaces an existing one, or building a new home where no home has ever been built. I assume the latter, but if so, there is certainly a lot involved.
- mrbabbage 9y agoI think it's really hard to overstate how deep of a hole we're in up in the Bay Area. With the kind of growth numbers we're predicting, I believe nothing short of a radical shift in planning and housing policy is going to produce any relief for the beleaguered Bay Area. The nine counties are currently permitting about 20,000 units of housing per year [1]. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments are expecting 27,000 new households (not people, households) and 43,000 new jobs per year in the thirty years to 2040 [2]. Thus, we're about 25% short of the units we need to preserve today's unaffordable status quo. To make any sort of dent in cost of living, the nine counties need to shoot far, far higher than what we're producing today. [1] http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Bay-Area-building-boom-may-not-end-housing-7223711.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Bay-Are... [2] http://2040.planbayarea.org/sites/default/files/2017-03/PBA_2040_033017%20web%20display.pdf http://2040.planbayarea.org/sites/default/files/2017-03/PBA_...
- ktRolster 9y agoThat's fine, but now they need to build new roads (or PT).
- golemotron 9y agoIt's a very anti-democratic move by California. They are willing to destroy local control of people in their communities to foster growth that will lead to further deterioration of living standards. Wouldn't it be better to try to grow tech outside of California in places like the Dakotas and Idaho where there is plenty of land and people in need of work? The American heartland could be a place rich in opportunity if we invest there as a nation. Considering urban/rural income differentials it would ease inequality also.
- favorited 9y agoWhy would you expect California to want to grow the tech industry in other states? California has a pretty vested interest in making sure that high-earning tech employees and companies continue to pay California state taxes.
- golemotron 9y agoIt is something we could do as a nation. There is so much land and there are so many people who need jobs. Many of them can't move to the cities.
- moultano 9y agoMostly they can't move to cities because zoning laws prevent the places they would live from being built.
- Tempest1981 9y agoOr how about jobs in Pleasanton/Tracy, close to where all the new cheap(er) housing is being built? Instead, those homeowners now have a 60-90 minute to SF or Sunnyvale, where all the jobs are.
- imbusy111 9y agoNot a lot of people want to live in places that you mentioned. The really smart people will find a way to stay in California forcing all others to gather around them.
- imbusy111 9y agoUnlikely to happen, in my opinion. Locals, who have lived in the Bay Area for a long time, have all the voting rights and they either own homes and want to see their property value increase or are considered poor and get cheap housing and plenty of handouts. Only those who move here actually suffer and pay all the taxes to support the locals and end up renting forever.
- sjg007 9y agoMore renters than owners. Renters need to get out and vote.
- imbusy111 9y agoToo bad most of them are probably immigrants with no voting rights.
- deathanatos 9y agoLocal renters, yes; but local renters are somewhat apathetic if their rent is governed by rent control and they're not paying market rate. (The ones that are paying market rate should absolutely be, and it's disheartening.) Those of us who are or feel priced out of those areas, however, have no voting rights, but are stuck with the outcomes.
- ThrustVectoring 9y agoIMO, it's gotten bad enough in the Bay Area that local control of zoning ought to get abolished. Make a new regional zoning commission, put together some clear and consistent rules about what can be built and where, and rubber-stamp everything that meets those rules. Literal rubber-stamp here, as in "you give us an affidavit saying that your plan meets the specified rules, and you get a permit to build the same day, and if stuff gets falsified on the affidavit we go after you after-the-fact".
- euyyn 9y agoJust for zoning requirements, not environmental ones, though.
- ThrustVectoring 9y agoEnvironmental requirements are often a back-door for NIMBY-ism. If you black-box the process, raising environmental concerns is a lever folks can pull to make specific proposed development more expensive and possibly cancelled. We have enough such levers. Everything of this "levers NIMBYs can pull to discourage development near them" category should get offloaded to a a bureaucracy that's empowered to ignore people yanking on them.
- red_hairing 9y agothat is why if trump does manage to cut the EPA, it could drive down housing prices by increasing supply of new homes and apartments.
- klipt 9y agoPretty sure California's CEQA is independent of the EPA.
- wahern 9y agoYes, it is. And it's _much_ easier to bring and maintain a lawsuit under CEQA. The costs of environmental review under the federal law is basically baked into the cost of doing business these days. But CEQA is too easy to abuse, and NIMBYs can and do tie up projects for years, often killing them altogether, without any serious threat of substantive environmental harm. The procedural rules of CEQA make it difficult for judges to handle the cases efficiently, and it effectively immunizes plaintiffs from repercussions. The reason why CEQA can't be amended or repealed is because it effectively gives the environmental lobby a veto over projects, and that lobby is a pillar of the governing coalition in California. Setting aside the wisdom of granting such leverage to non-state institutions, any amendments that cut down on NIMBY abuse would almost necessarily reduce the environmental lobby's de facto veto powers. California can keep putting the screws to city councils, but unless they amend CEQA you'll see very little change in number of units built, except for large projects or well-heeled (i.e. well-lawyered) developers. Alternatively, the Supreme Court could step in. A possible silver lining of adding another conservative vote to SCOTUS would be that it might strike down CEQA as commonly applied. Likewise, they would hopefully crack down on the "community input" process that makes it difficult for developers to clear zoning hurdles. In particular, in cities like San Francisco zoning laws are so loosely defined and applied that it's impossible to submit a plan with any degree of confidence that it meets zoning and other regulatory requirements. In reality you're basically bargaining with the city like you would bargain with a corrupt city political machine in the 19th century, except it has the imprimatur of the courts. It's a failure of Due Process, the most basic guarantee of Western constitutional law. Government is supposed to apply clearly defined laws. In particular, zoning boards and other instruments of government (courts in CEQA lawsuits) aren't supposed to be venues for democratic feedback. NIMBYs are free to lobby to change zoning and regulatory law to shape the character of their neighborhood; they shouldn't have a backdoor to change those rules on-the-fly as part of development plan approvals.
- rebootthesystem 9y agoRule number one of using acronyms: Do not assume everyone knows what they mean. NIMBY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY
- joeframbach 9y agoYou've gotta live under a nice large rock if you're on HN and you don't know NIMBY.
- wink 9y agoNot everyone is American.
- matt4077 9y agoRule number two: Right-click and choose "Look up" on any word you don't know.
- rebootthesystem 9y agoOh, I know what it means. That was a public service. Acronym soup can be maddening. Sure, one can look up every acronym but this can reach the point of jarring the reader out of a story. It is often a better idea to help the reader retain the desired mental state by taking a second to clarify acronyms. Anyone who's read legal documents know just how easy it is to do this. The first time you use the acronym you define it, just like this (JLT). Any time after that the reader knows what it means without having to run a separate search and change mental states, JLT.
- wfunction 9y agoDoes the state have a plan for the water crisis that keeps getting worse if it were to make it easier and easier for more and more people to settle down in it?
- jkimmel 9y agoOnly ~10% of California's water use is residential/urban (varies a little bit year to year) [0]. The majority of non-environmental water is used to grow cash crops in the central valley, like almonds, which take 1 gal/almond. Overall, urban residents have far less impact on climate than exurban residents who drive around in SUVs. It is in the best interests of everyone on planet Earth to make our cities denser and more inviting [1, 2]. [0] - http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=1108 http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=1108 [1] - http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ [2] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/23/city-dwellers-smaller-carbon-footprints https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/23/city-dwe...
- wfunction 9y agoWouldn't you need to grow more food supporting the growing in-population though?
- SamReidHughes 9y agoYou can be sure California exports a ton of its food.
- golemotron 9y agoMaybe the answer is to stop growing and let other parts of the country grow. The brain drain to SV has been disastrous for other communities. It's contributed to inequality and deep geographic/political polarization. Yes, you can downvote me but consider formulating a counter-argument.
- Nav_Panel 9y agoThat's... not really how it works. Or, you could also argue that's what the area has been doing for the past 40 years, and look at the current state of housing. EDIT: I didn't downvote you, but I will elaborate: there's very little you can do to stop people from moving to California, short of forcefully putting them on buses and sending them away (which is what some cities actually do[1][2]). What you can do is figure out a plan before they show up to provide them decent housing for a fair price, or else they'll figure something out, something likely to be illegal/extremely uncomfortable/look a lot like homelessness. Some anecdotes: one friend of mine lived in a house-boat in Berkeley for 2 years while going to college. Another lived out of his van in Los Angeles. These are regular young people, both born in California, trying to make things work. It has been extremely hard to build new buildings in hotspots throughout the state for quite a long time. You could argue that preventing growth to meet demand is, in a sense, what it means to "stop growing" (short of turning folks away at the state line). This is what I meant by my comment. 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/nyregion/29oneway.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/nyregion/29oneway.html 2: https://thinkprogress.org/nevada-gets-sued-for-dumping-homeless-patients-with-mental-illnesses-onto-buses-271e5c518016 https://thinkprogress.org/nevada-gets-sued-for-dumping-homel...
- muninn_ 9y agoBut how many people are going to move there to live in a bus? I certainly wouldn't. If property values get too high I'll just not move there. I don't understand this mentality where everybody thinks they should be able to afford to live in the best cities in the country, especially in California. It's just simple supply and demand. If housing prices get too high and people can't afford to live there they will live somewhere else. Period. Now that's an oversimplification. There is a lot to be said for mixed income communities and whatnot, but just saying "oh I can't afford to live here this sucks" is not good enough.
- ProfessorLayton 9y agoRight now cities have all the incentive to create office space to bring in as many jobs as possible, and the taxes that come with them, while leaving housing and infrastructure as someone else's problem. There needs to be an incentive in place for this not to happen. Perhaps we need to force the municipalities to split their employment tax with the city where the employee actually lives? Admittedly I have no idea what legal mechanism would make that possible, but something like this would give cities an incentive to build more housing along with increasing their employment/tax base.
- mywittyname 9y agoAbolish local income taxes? Perhaps replace the income with state funds that are distributed based on population.
- gumby 9y agoFor a bit of micro NIMBYism: my street in Palo Alto just instituted resident-only parking (I was the only one to object). Thus the people who cut our hair, serve our meals etc will have to walk even farther to work (my house is about 1.25 miles from downtown) while the wealthy shoppers park downtown for free. Yes it was a pain having a lot of cars on the street but I didn't feel it was a hardship that I couldn't park in front of my house but occasionally (horrors) across the street. As my passive aggressive neighbor put it, "well they can just buy a downtown permit. It's just a tax." So again, the minimum wage earners get the shaft. The discount permit for low earners is $100. PS: my kid wants to buy up the extra parking permit allotment and offer them to folks parking the next street over.
- jkimmel 9y agoIf SF housing politics has taught me anything, it's that the nastiest of human behavior is revealed by parking disagreements :( I never understood the residential parking permit argument anyway. Public dollars built the road, which now contains public parking spots. Implementing residential parking permits is a transfer of value from the public domain to private land owners. In Palo Alto (and the rest of the Bay Area, where land owners are inherently millionaires), this constitutes a transfer of wealth from the public to the wealthiest few.
- ethbro 9y agoPeople tend to forget things are public when they're using them, but accutely remember that fact when others are doing so.
- closeparen 9y agoA street's sewer infrastructure, for example, is treated as a public good for the residents of that particular block. They, and only they, will be assessed extra property taxes when it needs work. Where it snows, homeowners are on the hook to shovel the portion of the public sidewalk along their property. It's not exactly unprecedented for municipal governments to treat the properties nearest infrastructure as more responsible for it than the rest of the city. It's not unreasonable that they then have preferential access to it. An RPP program is a formalization of, "look, it'd be a waste for us all to build off-street parking when there's perfectly good street frontage here, let's agree to be reasonable and share the street frontage equally."
- whyenot 9y agoI have what would appear to be a good middle class job at a state university but because I live in the Bay Area, half my paycheck goes to rent. Many of my coworkers are now working weekend jobs just to stay ahead. Positions remain unfilled for many months because the jobs don't pay enough. The chances that the state will give us a meaningful pay raise is basically zero. The California Faculty Association negotiated a 10% pay raise over 3 years and that required major arm twisting right up to a strike vote. Forget home ownership, forget starting a family. This current situation just isn't sustainable.
- averagewall 9y agoIt sounds like working at a university in the Bay Area is what's unsustainable. Why not just let the market sort itself out? If the university can't find staff, they'll have no choice but to raise salaries or move out. No need for union pressure. You've chosen to take the low pay and high cost of living, so it must be good enough for you. Perhaps at some point you'll be pushed over your limit and move out yourself.
- twoodfin 9y agoThe point of this article is that "the market" in housing is not functioning as one. Supply isn't rising to meet demand because it's being constrained by arguably unjust political restrictions.
- forgottenpass 9y agoSupply isn't the thing expected to raise boundlessly whenever demand goes up. Prices are. In this case supply is said to be bounded by government. But imagine an alternate reality where SF was Tokoyo-fied to the max. The city has every last housing unit that could possibly be squeezed in. The peninsula is slowly sinking into the ocean. And there is still more demand for housing. What then? Supply isn't going to rise then, either. So all I see is a whine that the government should prioritize one interest group's desires for lower prices over all the other desires and interest groups that coalesced to constrain housing in the first place. Want to talk about the market not functioning like a market is "supposed to"? Look no further than consumers overpaying to pack into a city for salaries that do not offset the higher cost of living.
- Tempest1981 9y agoSome of us just wanted a 3 bedroom house on a 5000 sq ft lot -- so we could have a small yard with room for a dog and BBQ. Maybe a kid playing outside. Now we're being told we're greedy, and our neighborhoods should be replaced with 3 story townhouses on 1200 sq ft lots. No room for Fido. Makes me wonder what we're working insane hours for -- to settle for permanent apartment style living. At least we don't have cage houses yet.
- enf 9y agoEvery person who moves into one of the new townhouses on the 1200 sqft lots is a person who is not outbidding you for the house on the 5000 sqft lot.
- Tempest1981 9y agoSome are proposing state-forced re-zoning, converting residential neighborhoods into multi-family condos. Essentially the eminent domain taking of property. "Your land is too valuable; others need it". Kind of a slap in the face, after working a lifetime to afford a small home.
- enf 9y agoRezoning gives nothing but the right to rebuild your own property as you wish to. No one is being forced to sell.
- maverick_iceman 9y agoIt's fascinating to see how the NIMBYs couch their arguments in terms of environmentalism and morality, when they are motivated by nothing else than greed and shallow personal interest at the cost of everyone else.
- tn135 9y agoMoving power away from local bodies to State is a bad idea. This is a recipe for corruption.
- azernik 9y agoOh my: 'During the recession, many market-rate projects that had been OK’d were abandoned by cash-strapped developers and converted into affordable housing projects because the government was the only entity doing any building. The community’s reception of a market-rate project compared with the same project when it became an affordable housing project was noticeably different, says Gloria, who was a San Diego city council member at the time. “Whatever reason that might be, it could just be a pure no-growth approach or it could be a true fear of what affordable housing is perceived to be—and it’s never what it really is—maybe this [bill] is a way to address that,” he says.' Amazing how they described this odd reaction without once uttering the words "black people".
- CalRobert 9y ago(Former San Diegan) While you have the general idea right, it really could be more accurately described as "poor people of a variety of backgrounds". I mean, there's plenty of poor latino (especially in San Diego), black, and white folks who need housing. It's particularly galling when it happens in a charming neighborhood that used to be run-down and redlined but now that people are discovering trees and walkability are a nice thing has mostly $750k+ houses and residents who oppose any new construction of any sort. I mean, reading the nextdoor feed these are people who wanted to fight a discount grocer opening on an empty lot because it wasn't classy enough for them. They also oppose bike lanes and street calming, which is one of the reasons I left. (I refer of course to Golden Hill)
- ReligiousFlames 9y agoInstead of growing vertically up, cities ought to consider down because it doesn't ruin existing property owners' view and the community's beauty of not turning into a concrete, brutalist jungle. Furtheremore, there's effectively infinite subsurface real-estate while the maximum usable height of buildings is finite. Musk's Boring Company transport ideas are also onto something but housing and office space should also be deployed underground to maximize spatial efficiency. For example, the Mountain View San Antonio Shopping Center development has become an uninspired eyesore. I don't live there but it's unattractive.
- twobyfour 9y agoBuilding downwards into space that has no natural light makes for housing that is unpleasant and in many cases dangerous in case of fire (on the 1st to 4th stories, roughly; windows provide a secondary means of egress; and above that, fire escapes). Additionally, building downwards is extremely impractical where downwards is below the water table, which is the case in many parts of most major cities (since cities tend to have historically developed along rivers or shoreline for access to drinking water and transportation).
- mamon 9y ago<sarcasm> It recently occurred to me that NIMBY policies probably are secretly promoted by US government as a way of protecting cities against nuclear attack: thanks to them cities get spread on the largest possible area, minimizing potential casualties and damages by exploding nukes. </sarcasm>
- ericd 9y agoThat actually was a design consideration in the 50s, especially for infrastructure. Part of the reason that highways were more favored was that they're more resistant to attack than trains.
- moftz 9y agoThe Interstate Highway system was also sold as a way for the military to easily move around should there ever be an invasion.
- scarface74 9y agoWhat I really don't get is why isn't the free market working? It seems like other cities in other states would compete for high tech jobs aggressively enough to make companies willing to move to cheaper areas where they could pay their employees less and the employees have a better cost of living.
- pimmen89 9y agoBecause there are two demands competing; my demand for a home and the demand for a home without stuff bothering me.
- matwood 9y ago>It seems like other cities in other states would compete for high tech jobs aggressively enough to make companies willing to move to cheaper areas where they could pay their employees less and the employees have a better cost of living. There are towns doing this, but it takes time. http://custom.forbes.com/2015/12/03/charleston-s-c/ http://custom.forbes.com/2015/12/03/charleston-s-c/
- mbillie1 9y ago> What I really don't get is why isn't the free market working? That is an excellent question that you could ask about many of our modern social dilemmas. The beginning to an answer might be found in Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century
- Paul-ish 9y agoIn NJ a state supreme court ruling created something called the Mount Laurel doctrine, which according to Wikipedia: requires that municipalities use their zoning powers in an affirmative manner to provide a realistic opportunity for the production of housing affordable to low and moderate income households. How hard would this be in CA? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Laurel_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Laurel_doctrine
- ChefDenominator 9y agoI've been in Silicon Valley for close to 20 years, and I have been concerned about this for a long time. I want to say it was somewhere around 2010 that I began noticing a sudden increase in the number RVs I see in non-RV places, such as large parking lots and along industrial area roads. Now it seems like I hardly go anywhere and not see several RVs that are clearly out of place - they used to only be found in sideyards, RV parks, or driving down the highway. Next, the homeless situation has truly grown to epic proportions. Take a peak into any of the inbetween areas, and you'll find a small encampment. How many of these exist, I can't say, but once I began to understand where the homeless go, I started to venture and take small peaks - they're everywhere. Next, the homeless started showing up, en masse, in large public places. The most obvious is the parks near San Pedro square in San Jose. Yes, this area has always had an "element" to it, but that element used to live in the nearby housing. Now, the element is in the park. I was talking with a friend who lives in a very expensive and beautiful home near this park, and this friend was really annoyed at how the homeless population around this house has really exploded. At the same time, this friend had not identified any link to the homeless population and crazy median home prices, now approaching $1 million for San Jose. I asked this friend to please consider the statistic of a $1 million median home price in a city with a population of 1 million, and what does that really mean for its residents? My feeling is that, in time, this is going to be incredibly bad. The first problem is an increase in property crime. When people are forced out of their shelter, they will become desperate. Some percentage of any population is going to be pre-disposed to considering crime, so increasing the number of people who are desperate will increase the absolute number of people who will turn to crime. Police forces do not exist to protect - they are really just for cleanup, and currently there is a new trend that will eventually get reported of how the nature of burglaries, especially in the San Jose area, have changed. It used to be that perps would case and then burglarize when owners were out for a weekend or vacation. Now, the owners are out for only a few hours and return home to find they have been burgled. Obviously they are using some more sophisticated surveillance or network tech of some sort. In at least one precinct, the police have yet to catch anyone performing burglaries in this manner. With this new trend, a group of, say, five clever people can do 10s of millions in property damage annually. As these small groups are increased, the dollars in damage become very real, plus the emotional impact of feeling insecure in your own property will often push people over the edge to sell their homes or at least move away, converting their residence into a rental unit. The second trend that I fear will begin to occur is the less clever criminals who simply mug, loot, and smash-and-grab. Finally, there will simply be violence against the property owners. People are not dumb, as we can see by this article that even the politicians and bureaucrats are beginning to get concerned for their jobs. In San Francisco, there was the violent demonstrations against the Google buses. I don't know in exactly which way the violence comes out or is directed, but when you force enough people in to desperate circumstances, you will eventually have enough of those who are pre-disposed to violent "solutions" that they will find a target. In all of this, people will begin selling and moving out. The property values will drop, not because of increased supply of housing, but because of an exodus of existing buyers coupled with a sharp reduction in new buyers. Eventually, companies start moving jobs or entire companies to other areas (owners, executives, and managers don't want to live in all of that), and demand for residential housing falls yet further. As the prices drop, people will consider selling to get equity, so the prices drop further (selling encourages selling). Getting things to go up from here will be a serious problem. All of the governments are maxed out, credit-wise, and their revenues will tank. At this moment, today, it seems like increasing housing is a bad idea for cities and property owners because they will lose at least some of the current equity in their homes, but depending on the property owner's time-horizon, they may well lose all of their equity.
- g_sch 9y ago> Residents might be less likely to rally against a new project, the thinking goes, if it means their new neighbors will be teachers and firefighters in addition to those receiving housing subsidies. I suppose the implication here is that teachers and firefighters make a middle-income salary. The author is gonna freak when they find out how much housing a teacher or firefighter salary will buy you in a major US metro city real estate market.
- dmode 9y agoI am tired of NIMBY's in Bay Area and all over California. I am wondering if there is some economic analysis on the impact of NIMBY on job growth and poverty. I am convinced that at least some of the joblessness in Central Valley is due to NIMBYism in Bay Area. Having said that, I don't believe any amount of legislation will solve the housing problem in California. The appeal for living in California extends beyond US borders and there is a large population abroad willing to move to CA.
- makecheck 9y agoIf they want to solve housing, they need to incentivize the hell out of "permanently remote" positions. It is insane that so many teams in such dense areas have these butt-in-chair policies that require employees to live in expensive areas and commute great distances. Frankly, there are tons of jobs that can be done just fine from anywhere. Managers have to get over this idea that they can't keep track of people wherever they are.
- pascalxus 9y agoI'm glad they're starting to crack down in NIMBYs. we desperately need a vast increase in housing. One of the long term side effects of this enormous housing shortage and the presence of prop 13, is that 50+ aged people are making up a larger and larger % of the population, as many of the younger people get pushed out (the next generation has nowhere to live). Already just in the last 10 years, % of 65 years olds and up has increased from from 13% to 18%. I'm guessing this trend will continue for the next 10-20 years, until the housing starts to correct.