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I'm not sure it's a good idea to take away local control of zoning and other planing just because the result is something that YIMBY groups don't like. There is

I'm not sure it's a good idea to take away local control of zoning and other planing just because the result is something that YIMBY groups don't like. There is something very undemocratic about doing that. More housing and more density doesn't always make communities better. The people who live in an area, are voting in local elections and are paying local taxes should have a say in how their communities develop. Shouldn't they? Isn't that how our system of government is supposed to work? I mean I empathize with the YIMBY point of view -- I make about $56,00 a year as staff at a state university. That's right on the edge in the bay area. There will come a time when I can no longer afford to live here. I'm OK with that. That's how the market works. I don't think you have a right to live in San Francisco, or Malibu, or Los Gatos, etc. if you can't afford to live there. Everyone can't own a Ferrari. Everyone doesn't get to live where they want to.

door 9y ago
cities should be for everyone, especially cities like SF,LA. a city that is an enclave for the rich is a sad community. this isn't "how the market works". centralization of wealth and especially wealth in the form of housing is and has always been a result of state power. the fact that SF is unaffordable is the result of policy, not just the invisible hand of the market. And even if it was, that wouldn't make it OK
ardit33 9y ago
A city/town/neighborhood is part of a state and doesn't live in isolation. If you live in SF, your water comes from.... drum roll, Hetch Hetchy damn, which is a 3 h 49 min (177.7 mi) away. Now image if the people living where the pipes come along, decided not to have them in their backyard..... because of democracy, they vote to tear them away. No water for you.... Democracy can't exist without limits, otherwise you run the risk of 51% controller what the other 49% do in every way... Zoning laws are restriction on the rights of what can be build in a property, and they should exist in a Macro scale, Otherwise, your neighbors might decide against water pipes to come in your house, because democracy...
- exabrial 9y ago
  I think the lesson here is don't live in the desert... So your neighbors don't have to violate your rights
  - woah 9y ago
    SF is not in the desert.
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      In terms of locally-available water, it really pretty much is. As is almost all of the U.S. starting a couple hundred miles west of the Mississippi River and the Pacific, the Northwest excepted. San Francisco itself has next to no indigenous lakes or (fresh)waterways. Lake Merced, Laguna Honda, and Mountain Lake. A handful of springs. Already in the 19th century, water was in limited supply and brought in from the Peninsula. Much of San Francisco (the Richmond and Sunset districts) were sand dunes. The part that wasn't was in large part wetlands (Marina, Financial District, SoMa, Bayview). Rainfall ranges from about 12 in (30 cm) in a dry year to about 30 in (75 cm) in wet, but that's strongly concentrated in the winter months, meaning you need a large amount of water storage for the summer (and, again: no lakes). If you look at a population density map of the U.S., or one with higher levels of detail showing urbanisations, you note that the pattern devolves from very regular in the east to almost a desert-island scattering in the west. Much of that is accounted for by water availablility, and the water shadow of cities. Look at the map below, which shows the Colorado River, and realise that Los Angeles's watershed reaches very nearly to Denver. In many ways, it is effectively preventing any other cities from emerging throughout that region (not that several haven't tried). http://www.ancientrails.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/US_Population.png http://www.ancientrails.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/US_Po... A precipitation average map shows very nearly the same distribution. (Not precisely, of course, but close.) https://i.pinimg.com/originals/88/51/cc/8851cc3ed4f7e048b217014a7c21ec0a.gif https://i.pinimg.com/originals/88/51/cc/8851cc3ed4f7e048b217...
  - twobyfour 9y ago
    Right... You realize that unless you're getting your water from a well in your backyard it's being piped from somewhere? And the backyard well option is used virtually nowhere in the developed world, and vanishingly few places with robust economic opportunity.
yonran 9y ago
Speaking of the SF Bay Area, we are subdivided into small interconnected towns who have the incentive to underbuild housing (https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/). It is ironic to tell service workers that, in the name of democracy, they can’t vote for the councils who decide the zoning in any of the cities where they spend their economic lives because they happen to live across a town border. It’s more appropriate, and more democratic, to make land-use capacity planning at the regional level where more members of the economy can vote. (https://pedestrianobservations.com/2016/06/18/a-theory-of-zoning-and-local-decisionmaking/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2016/06/18/a-theory-of-zo...)
- rsync 9y ago
  (I live in Marin County, in the SFBA, and I employ quite a few service workers from Sonoma/CC/Napa counties) "It is ironic to tell service workers that, in the name of democracy, they can’t vote for the councils who decide the zoning in any of the cities where they spend their economic lives because they happen to live across a town border." I don't think this is a problem at all. These people are pursuing a very rational arbitrage strategy between place of work and place of living - and it is paying off for them. It is not the "service workers" who are clamoring for less regulation in trendy housing markets - it is overeducated, underemployed hipsters whose self identity is tied to living in a certain type of place and whose life script no longer accommodates the steps their parents took to climb up the housing ladder. If fancy coffee and cute stores are so important that one would sacrifice the basic building blocks of wealth building and family stability then so be it - but I am not giving up the progressive wins of the past[1] to enable this (bad) strategy. [1] Which, in my neighborhood, are quite profound. The Pt Reyes National Seashore, the Mt. Tam watershed and accompanying open spaces, agricultural zoning throughout west marin, etc. Remember that all of these were all achievements of the progressive left.
  - yonran 9y ago
    I think “overeducated, underemployed hipsters” would cover activists of many different political stripes. But I disagree that upzoning is desired mainly by people who want to live here due to their urban identity. Many of the people who stay in the Bay Area do so because their family is here. Many of the people who migrate to the Bay Area come for economic opportunities. And if you tell people to follow their parents’ “housing ladder,” I think it is also fair to recognize and fix the ways in which the ladder has stopped working in the Bay Area. I agree that parkland should be preserved. But communities that preserve a lot of park land should be even more eager to upzone residential land to accommodate regional growth needs. If a city wants to preserve land from development but refuses to upzone to make the remaining housing accessible, then this is indistinguishable from an exclusive gated community and I don’t think I would call it progressive. Edit: Also, I don’t think I agree with your “very rational arbitrage strategy” point. If my city provides jobs, amenities, and increasingly upscale housing while a town an hour away provides housing for the service workers, I don’t think the existence of the arbitraging town would reduce the moral responsibilities of the city in any way.
dba7dba 9y ago
Problem is the problem is not limited to "San Francisco, or Malibu, or Los Gatos". When Google/Facebook moved into Santa Monica and Playa Vista, house prices in near by cities shot up like 100% to 150% in about 4 - 5 years.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ido 9y ago
The problem is that its not just San Francisco - in a city like New York (which none would accuse of being affordable) you still have fairly decent options of living outside the city in at least somewhat affordable areas within halfway reasonable commute to jobs. in SFBA it's almost entirely either unaffordable and/or dangerously crime infested and the semi-affordable options that aren't require an insane commute. While there are some topological issues, the main differences between NYC and SFBA are transit infrastructure + density. SFBA[0]: 8.75m people at 859/square-mile density. Greater NYC[1]: 23.7m people at 1,781.3/square-mile density. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area
francisofascii 9y ago
I mostly agree. But our system of government should also have checks and balances. I agree the locals should have a say, but they should not have complete unchecked power.
yellowapple 9y ago
A better compromise might be to put the counties in control over this rather than cities/towns or the state itself. County governments sit close enough to local to be more in-tune with local needs, while at the same time having a broad enough jurisdiction for its decisions to benefit the region as a whole rather than a specific city/town.
taysic 9y ago
I agree with you - but we are increasingly moving toward a state where no community wants to grow or change esp in the Bay Area... which is not offering much for the next generation. Last I saw it’s something like 40% of those under 30 in CA live with their parents. Does it have any room to go up? https://www.google.com/amp/www.ocregister.com/2017/06/23/how-millenials-living-with-their-parents-has-become-the-norm-in-southern-california/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/www.ocregister.com/2017/06/23/how...
namlem 9y ago
Japan has national housing policy and it works quite well. The problem with local control is that it's often easier for special interests to undermine democracy.

door 9y ago

cities should be for everyone, especially cities like SF,LA. a city that is an enclave for the rich is a sad community. this isn't "how the market works". centralization of wealth and especially wealth in the form of housing is and has always been a result of state power. the fact that SF is unaffordable is the result of policy, not just the invisible hand of the market. And even if it was, that wouldn't make it OK

ardit33 9y ago

A city/town/neighborhood is part of a state and doesn't live in isolation. If you live in SF, your water comes from.... drum roll, Hetch Hetchy damn, which is a 3 h 49 min (177.7 mi) away. Now image if the people living where the pipes come along, decided not to have them in their backyard..... because of democracy, they vote to tear them away. No water for you.... Democracy can't exist without limits, otherwise you run the risk of 51% controller what the other 49% do in every way... Zoning laws are restriction on the rights of what can be build in a property, and they should exist in a Macro scale, Otherwise, your neighbors might decide against water pipes to come in your house, because democracy...

exabrial 9y ago
I think the lesson here is don't live in the desert... So your neighbors don't have to violate your rights
- woah 9y ago
  SF is not in the desert.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    In terms of locally-available water, it really pretty much is. As is almost all of the U.S. starting a couple hundred miles west of the Mississippi River and the Pacific, the Northwest excepted. San Francisco itself has next to no indigenous lakes or (fresh)waterways. Lake Merced, Laguna Honda, and Mountain Lake. A handful of springs. Already in the 19th century, water was in limited supply and brought in from the Peninsula. Much of San Francisco (the Richmond and Sunset districts) were sand dunes. The part that wasn't was in large part wetlands (Marina, Financial District, SoMa, Bayview). Rainfall ranges from about 12 in (30 cm) in a dry year to about 30 in (75 cm) in wet, but that's strongly concentrated in the winter months, meaning you need a large amount of water storage for the summer (and, again: no lakes). If you look at a population density map of the U.S., or one with higher levels of detail showing urbanisations, you note that the pattern devolves from very regular in the east to almost a desert-island scattering in the west. Much of that is accounted for by water availablility, and the water shadow of cities. Look at the map below, which shows the Colorado River, and realise that Los Angeles's watershed reaches very nearly to Denver. In many ways, it is effectively preventing any other cities from emerging throughout that region (not that several haven't tried). http://www.ancientrails.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/US_Population.png http://www.ancientrails.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/US_Po... A precipitation average map shows very nearly the same distribution. (Not precisely, of course, but close.) https://i.pinimg.com/originals/88/51/cc/8851cc3ed4f7e048b217014a7c21ec0a.gif https://i.pinimg.com/originals/88/51/cc/8851cc3ed4f7e048b217...
- twobyfour 9y ago
  Right... You realize that unless you're getting your water from a well in your backyard it's being piped from somewhere? And the backyard well option is used virtually nowhere in the developed world, and vanishingly few places with robust economic opportunity.

yonran 9y ago

Speaking of the SF Bay Area, we are subdivided into small interconnected towns who have the incentive to underbuild housing (https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/). It is ironic to tell service workers that, in the name of democracy, they can’t vote for the councils who decide the zoning in any of the cities where they spend their economic lives because they happen to live across a town border. It’s more appropriate, and more democratic, to make land-use capacity planning at the regional level where more members of the economy can vote. (https://pedestrianobservations.com/2016/06/18/a-theory-of-zoning-and-local-decisionmaking/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2016/06/18/a-theory-of-zo...)

rsync 9y ago
(I live in Marin County, in the SFBA, and I employ quite a few service workers from Sonoma/CC/Napa counties) "It is ironic to tell service workers that, in the name of democracy, they can’t vote for the councils who decide the zoning in any of the cities where they spend their economic lives because they happen to live across a town border." I don't think this is a problem at all. These people are pursuing a very rational arbitrage strategy between place of work and place of living - and it is paying off for them. It is not the "service workers" who are clamoring for less regulation in trendy housing markets - it is overeducated, underemployed hipsters whose self identity is tied to living in a certain type of place and whose life script no longer accommodates the steps their parents took to climb up the housing ladder. If fancy coffee and cute stores are so important that one would sacrifice the basic building blocks of wealth building and family stability then so be it - but I am not giving up the progressive wins of the past[1] to enable this (bad) strategy. [1] Which, in my neighborhood, are quite profound. The Pt Reyes National Seashore, the Mt. Tam watershed and accompanying open spaces, agricultural zoning throughout west marin, etc. Remember that all of these were all achievements of the progressive left.
- yonran 9y ago
  I think “overeducated, underemployed hipsters” would cover activists of many different political stripes. But I disagree that upzoning is desired mainly by people who want to live here due to their urban identity. Many of the people who stay in the Bay Area do so because their family is here. Many of the people who migrate to the Bay Area come for economic opportunities. And if you tell people to follow their parents’ “housing ladder,” I think it is also fair to recognize and fix the ways in which the ladder has stopped working in the Bay Area. I agree that parkland should be preserved. But communities that preserve a lot of park land should be even more eager to upzone residential land to accommodate regional growth needs. If a city wants to preserve land from development but refuses to upzone to make the remaining housing accessible, then this is indistinguishable from an exclusive gated community and I don’t think I would call it progressive. Edit: Also, I don’t think I agree with your “very rational arbitrage strategy” point. If my city provides jobs, amenities, and increasingly upscale housing while a town an hour away provides housing for the service workers, I don’t think the existence of the arbitraging town would reduce the moral responsibilities of the city in any way.

dba7dba 9y ago

Problem is the problem is not limited to "San Francisco, or Malibu, or Los Gatos". When Google/Facebook moved into Santa Monica and Playa Vista, house prices in near by cities shot up like 100% to 150% in about 4 - 5 years.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ido 9y ago

The problem is that its not just San Francisco - in a city like New York (which none would accuse of being affordable) you still have fairly decent options of living outside the city in at least somewhat affordable areas within halfway reasonable commute to jobs. in SFBA it's almost entirely either unaffordable and/or dangerously crime infested and the semi-affordable options that aren't require an insane commute. While there are some topological issues, the main differences between NYC and SFBA are transit infrastructure + density. SFBA[0]: 8.75m people at 859/square-mile density. Greater NYC[1]: 23.7m people at 1,781.3/square-mile density. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area

francisofascii 9y ago

I mostly agree. But our system of government should also have checks and balances. I agree the locals should have a say, but they should not have complete unchecked power.

yellowapple 9y ago

A better compromise might be to put the counties in control over this rather than cities/towns or the state itself. County governments sit close enough to local to be more in-tune with local needs, while at the same time having a broad enough jurisdiction for its decisions to benefit the region as a whole rather than a specific city/town.

taysic 9y ago

I agree with you - but we are increasingly moving toward a state where no community wants to grow or change esp in the Bay Area... which is not offering much for the next generation. Last I saw it’s something like 40% of those under 30 in CA live with their parents. Does it have any room to go up? https://www.google.com/amp/www.ocregister.com/2017/06/23/how-millenials-living-with-their-parents-has-become-the-norm-in-southern-california/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/www.ocregister.com/2017/06/23/how...

namlem 9y ago

Japan has national housing policy and it works quite well. The problem with local control is that it's often easier for special interests to undermine democracy.