10 ms·

More housing near the Expo Line and other California transit stations

78 points by blondie9x 9y ago

api 9y ago
LA slowly transforms into an actual city.
rndmize 9y ago
It feels like every time I hear something about Wiener, he's doing stuff that needs to get done. I'm tempted to send him some money even though I'm not in his district.
- tmh79 9y ago
  do it! the good people need money to keep up! I just started political donations this year! Any amount, however small, helps.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- kevinburke 9y ago
  More useful would be to call your State Assemblymember and State Senator and reference these bills, ask them to vote yes, then tell your friends and ask them to do the same. You can find them here: https://sankarravi.github.io/yimbyscorecard/ https://sankarravi.github.io/yimbyscorecard/
blang 9y ago
> Koretz said the bill would lead to an increase in new home building that would snarl traffic and go against what his constituents want in their neighborhoods. > Better ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be eliminating gasoline-powered cars and even gas stations in the city over time, he said. Statements like this drive me crazy. While EVs can help in reduction of greenhouse gas, it will not do as much as allowing people to move less on a daily basis. Regardless of the source, moving less stuff (only yourself vs. yourself and a car) and doing it for a shorter distance will result in the use of less energy which leads to fewer emissions of greenhouse gases.
- bllguo 9y ago
  Yeah I want to throw expletives at him. Luckily just a city councilman. The guy doesn't even acknowledge there's a housing problem in his statements.
  - JBlue42 9y ago
    Because it's not a problem for his large, wealthy homeowner constituents.
- riazrizvi 9y ago
  I suspect there is a mutual understanding with his constituents that his job is to prevent big new development projects. It explains to me the half-assed talking point, since almost anything is more palatable than 'the wealth of my constituents depends on restricted housing'.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    I hate to always be siding with NIMBYs but it's not always about wealthy people's wealth. Can't it also be about families simply not wanting to be stacked and packed into dense urban sardine can housing? As amazing as it sounds, some people like suburban life and not everyone wants their neighborhood to transform into a big city.
    - antitouchscreen 9y ago
      Those should move to the actual suburbs then.
      - QAPereo 9y ago
        Why? Moving is expensive, stressful, and potentially fraught with risks as any major change in life can be. You do that, all while knowing with certainty that of the 7+ billion on Earth, few would move to accommodate you. So why? Out of the unrequited goodness of your heart?
oh-kumudo 9y ago
About time. Good move.
taway20171214 9y ago
> “I would have a neighborhood with little 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s single-family homes look like Dubai 10 years later,” Koretz said. yeah, well, that would be a shame, except of course that the homeowners will have each become multi-millionaires from the sale of their property, all for the great sacrifice of letting someone else pay even more money to live there.
dbatten 9y ago
Overall, this seems like a good policy to me. However, I'm not sure I like the means used to achieve it. Do we really want to set a precedent where the state government comes in and overrides local regulations about things like zoning which are usually purely the responsibility of the local governments? I'm not necessarily saying I don't like this either... just thinking through the implications of living in a federal system. You want people to have maximum voice in the things that affect the places where they live, but you also don't want those people to abuse the privilege with NIMBY policies.
- ebikelaw 9y ago
  The state and cities do not share the same relationship that the states and the nation enjoy. The federal system is a creation of the states, and has enumerated powers. The states also create cities. So all the power lies with the state.
- magila 9y ago
  I find moving authority from the cities to the state more acceptable in this case because it merely mandates allowing economic activity to occur. None of these policies prevent citizens from voting with their wallets, developers will still only build things they can make a profit on.
- asabjorn 9y ago
  Housing externalities of cities decisions to for instance build offices while not adding sufficient housing is not limited to that city, essentially pushing those externalities onto surrounding cities and having them pay the housing as well as infrastructure cost. As proven by our current long-lasting housing crisis this is not a good medium to long-term solution. Because cities are too fine grained for containing most externalities office/housing/infrastructure decisions it is appropriate to move some housing regulation up to the state level as it is one step up from cities, and therefore the best place to coordinate between cities.
- tmh79 9y ago
  > "Do we really want to set a precedent where the state government comes in and overrides local regulations about things like zoning which are usually purely the responsibility of the local governments?" Yes, yes we do. Local control of land use is the reason we are in this mess. Local control of land use is the reason why our neighborhoods are still de facto segregated by race even though de jure segregation ended 50 years ago. Local control constricts the policy influencers to a circle that is too small, because it exlcudes from the discourse people who: 1) work in the locale in question, but cannot afford to live there, 2) people who commute through the locale in question, 3) people who live in a community that is not in the locale, but is impacted by the locale's land use decisions (ex: brisbane building 8m square feet of office and expecting SF to build housing for the workers).
ebikelaw 9y ago
An interesting feature of this bill, and SB35 before, is that it makes operations of local bus agencies far more relevant. As written, I could build a 55-foot-tall building without parking on my land in Oakland. But if AC Transit moves the bus stop a little bit, cancels my local bus line, or increases the headway above 15 minutes, then I’m right back to 25 feet with two car parking minimum. Edit: actually 85 feet under this proposed bill.
pchristensen 9y ago
Nice. I didn't like the part where it said "allowing single family homes near transit". Moves like this are about allowing more things, not taking away any options. Anyone with a house near transit is allowed to continue living there. It's just that, when confronted with new economic options, many of their neighbors will sell their houses, which will be torn down and redeveloped. But you can stay in your house as long as you want.
- jccooper 9y ago
  It meant "allowing single family zoning near transit".
  - pchristensen 9y ago
    Thanks, that's better.
dragonwriter 9y ago
This is well-intentioned, but I predict will very often result in development of superificially attractive high-density housing with inadequate parking near transit lines with inadequate capacity and existing connected services. Development limits and parking requirements are often abused, to be sure, but they do have real purposes, and the mere presence of a transit station doesn't eliminate the development externalities they legitimately exist to address.
- ebikelaw 9y ago
  This bill is saying that cities can’t take state money to build transit and then sabotage it with sparse housing and cars. Cars in the vicinity of transit unquestionably reduce the utility of transit projects. This is also a big middle finger to Berkeley which for decades has refused to put residential zoning around its incredibly expensive subway stations. Berkeley’s BART parking lots are zoned “unclassified” and can’t be developed without a giant NIMBY hissy fit. This bill short-circuits the hissy fit and allows BART to build 85-foot apartment buildings without parking at Ashby and N. Berkeley stations. This will provide way, way more riders for BART than a handful of parking spaces provide.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > This bill is saying that cities can’t take state money to build transit and then sabotage it with sparse housing and cars. And, that's a fine general idea; the specific implementation is a bit different than that. > Cars in the vicinity of transit unquestionably reduce the utility of transit projects. So does an overbalance of residential property without adequate alternative transportation compared to the employment, retail, etc., services accessible by transit. > This is also a big middle finger to Berkeley Yeah, look, I think on balance this is likely to be a net benefit, if something of a blunt instrument, in the Bay Area and L.A. Basin, but it's not limited to those places, and it's triggering transit conditions have no consideration of the connected services and only limited consideration of capacity.
    - asabjorn 9y ago
kevinburke 9y ago
If you support these bills, please call your California State Assemblymember and State Senator and ask them to vote yes. This is probably going to lead to a really big fight and these will need lots of support. You can find them here: https://sankarravi.github.io/yimbyscorecard https://sankarravi.github.io/yimbyscorecard
- arthurjj 9y ago
  I think YIMBY related issues are one of those issues where directly contacting your rep. does the most good. It's a locally decided issue that can reap huge benefits. So go call your rep!
electricslpnsld 9y ago
Whats to stop municipalities that don't want to play along from simply cutting public transit? I wouldn't put this past Marin or Atherton.
- philsnow 9y ago
  I'm reminded that Atherton has a Caltrain stop that trains only stop at on weekends.
omegaworks 9y ago
My one worry about this is that it will intensify opposition to new transit projects and transit improvements. Otherwise, great job Senator Wiener. Please call your Assembly member and State Senator and support. Find them here: https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org/ https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org/
- asabjorn 9y ago
  In that case the opponents have to be explicit in why they fight against any kind of dense transit-near development, which would be an improvement over the current situation where in my opinion many opponents are not honest about why they oppose it.
mrfusion 9y ago
What’s in the actual bill?
- yonran 9y ago
  SB 827 upzones for apartments half a mile around every major transit stop https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB827 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... SB 828 would double the amount of zoning capacity that each city is required to provide in the Housing Element report (currently each city must provide zoning capacity for only 100% of estimated RHNA population growth; this would increase it to 200%) and carry over approval deficits (currently if a city does not approve any housing, the deficit is forgiven every 8 years and the city can reuse the unbuilt parcels in the next Housing Element report). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB828 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... SB 829 would allow farmers to build farmworker housing https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB829 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... All of these bills have just been announced by Senator Wiener (https://medium.com/@Scott_Wiener/california-needs-a-housing-first-agenda-my-2018-housing-package-1b6fe95e41da https://medium.com/@Scott_Wiener/california-needs-a-housing-...) and may be watered down, heavily amended, or dropped over the next year.

78 points by blondie9x 9y ago

api 9y ago

LA slowly transforms into an actual city.

It feels like every time I hear something about Wiener, he's doing stuff that needs to get done. I'm tempted to send him some money even though I'm not in his district.

tmh79 9y ago
do it! the good people need money to keep up! I just started political donations this year! Any amount, however small, helps.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
kevinburke 9y ago
More useful would be to call your State Assemblymember and State Senator and reference these bills, ask them to vote yes, then tell your friends and ask them to do the same. You can find them here: https://sankarravi.github.io/yimbyscorecard/ https://sankarravi.github.io/yimbyscorecard/

blang 9y ago

> Koretz said the bill would lead to an increase in new home building that would snarl traffic and go against what his constituents want in their neighborhoods. > Better ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be eliminating gasoline-powered cars and even gas stations in the city over time, he said. Statements like this drive me crazy. While EVs can help in reduction of greenhouse gas, it will not do as much as allowing people to move less on a daily basis. Regardless of the source, moving less stuff (only yourself vs. yourself and a car) and doing it for a shorter distance will result in the use of less energy which leads to fewer emissions of greenhouse gases.

bllguo 9y ago
Yeah I want to throw expletives at him. Luckily just a city councilman. The guy doesn't even acknowledge there's a housing problem in his statements.
- JBlue42 9y ago
  Because it's not a problem for his large, wealthy homeowner constituents.
riazrizvi 9y ago
I suspect there is a mutual understanding with his constituents that his job is to prevent big new development projects. It explains to me the half-assed talking point, since almost anything is more palatable than 'the wealth of my constituents depends on restricted housing'.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  I hate to always be siding with NIMBYs but it's not always about wealthy people's wealth. Can't it also be about families simply not wanting to be stacked and packed into dense urban sardine can housing? As amazing as it sounds, some people like suburban life and not everyone wants their neighborhood to transform into a big city.
  - antitouchscreen 9y ago
    Those should move to the actual suburbs then.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      Why? Moving is expensive, stressful, and potentially fraught with risks as any major change in life can be. You do that, all while knowing with certainty that of the 7+ billion on Earth, few would move to accommodate you. So why? Out of the unrequited goodness of your heart?

oh-kumudo 9y ago

About time. Good move.

taway20171214 9y ago

> “I would have a neighborhood with little 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s single-family homes look like Dubai 10 years later,” Koretz said. yeah, well, that would be a shame, except of course that the homeowners will have each become multi-millionaires from the sale of their property, all for the great sacrifice of letting someone else pay even more money to live there.

dbatten 9y ago

Overall, this seems like a good policy to me. However, I'm not sure I like the means used to achieve it. Do we really want to set a precedent where the state government comes in and overrides local regulations about things like zoning which are usually purely the responsibility of the local governments? I'm not necessarily saying I don't like this either... just thinking through the implications of living in a federal system. You want people to have maximum voice in the things that affect the places where they live, but you also don't want those people to abuse the privilege with NIMBY policies.

ebikelaw 9y ago
The state and cities do not share the same relationship that the states and the nation enjoy. The federal system is a creation of the states, and has enumerated powers. The states also create cities. So all the power lies with the state.
magila 9y ago
I find moving authority from the cities to the state more acceptable in this case because it merely mandates allowing economic activity to occur. None of these policies prevent citizens from voting with their wallets, developers will still only build things they can make a profit on.
asabjorn 9y ago
Housing externalities of cities decisions to for instance build offices while not adding sufficient housing is not limited to that city, essentially pushing those externalities onto surrounding cities and having them pay the housing as well as infrastructure cost. As proven by our current long-lasting housing crisis this is not a good medium to long-term solution. Because cities are too fine grained for containing most externalities office/housing/infrastructure decisions it is appropriate to move some housing regulation up to the state level as it is one step up from cities, and therefore the best place to coordinate between cities.
tmh79 9y ago
> "Do we really want to set a precedent where the state government comes in and overrides local regulations about things like zoning which are usually purely the responsibility of the local governments?" Yes, yes we do. Local control of land use is the reason we are in this mess. Local control of land use is the reason why our neighborhoods are still de facto segregated by race even though de jure segregation ended 50 years ago. Local control constricts the policy influencers to a circle that is too small, because it exlcudes from the discourse people who: 1) work in the locale in question, but cannot afford to live there, 2) people who commute through the locale in question, 3) people who live in a community that is not in the locale, but is impacted by the locale's land use decisions (ex: brisbane building 8m square feet of office and expecting SF to build housing for the workers).

ebikelaw 9y ago

An interesting feature of this bill, and SB35 before, is that it makes operations of local bus agencies far more relevant. As written, I could build a 55-foot-tall building without parking on my land in Oakland. But if AC Transit moves the bus stop a little bit, cancels my local bus line, or increases the headway above 15 minutes, then I’m right back to 25 feet with two car parking minimum. Edit: actually 85 feet under this proposed bill.

pchristensen 9y ago

Nice. I didn't like the part where it said "allowing single family homes near transit". Moves like this are about allowing more things, not taking away any options. Anyone with a house near transit is allowed to continue living there. It's just that, when confronted with new economic options, many of their neighbors will sell their houses, which will be torn down and redeveloped. But you can stay in your house as long as you want.

jccooper 9y ago
It meant "allowing single family zoning near transit".
- pchristensen 9y ago
  Thanks, that's better.

dragonwriter 9y ago

This is well-intentioned, but I predict will very often result in development of superificially attractive high-density housing with inadequate parking near transit lines with inadequate capacity and existing connected services. Development limits and parking requirements are often abused, to be sure, but they do have real purposes, and the mere presence of a transit station doesn't eliminate the development externalities they legitimately exist to address.

ebikelaw 9y ago
This bill is saying that cities can’t take state money to build transit and then sabotage it with sparse housing and cars. Cars in the vicinity of transit unquestionably reduce the utility of transit projects. This is also a big middle finger to Berkeley which for decades has refused to put residential zoning around its incredibly expensive subway stations. Berkeley’s BART parking lots are zoned “unclassified” and can’t be developed without a giant NIMBY hissy fit. This bill short-circuits the hissy fit and allows BART to build 85-foot apartment buildings without parking at Ashby and N. Berkeley stations. This will provide way, way more riders for BART than a handful of parking spaces provide.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > This bill is saying that cities can’t take state money to build transit and then sabotage it with sparse housing and cars. And, that's a fine general idea; the specific implementation is a bit different than that. > Cars in the vicinity of transit unquestionably reduce the utility of transit projects. So does an overbalance of residential property without adequate alternative transportation compared to the employment, retail, etc., services accessible by transit. > This is also a big middle finger to Berkeley Yeah, look, I think on balance this is likely to be a net benefit, if something of a blunt instrument, in the Bay Area and L.A. Basin, but it's not limited to those places, and it's triggering transit conditions have no consideration of the connected services and only limited consideration of capacity.
  - asabjorn 9y ago

kevinburke 9y ago

If you support these bills, please call your California State Assemblymember and State Senator and ask them to vote yes. This is probably going to lead to a really big fight and these will need lots of support. You can find them here: https://sankarravi.github.io/yimbyscorecard https://sankarravi.github.io/yimbyscorecard

arthurjj 9y ago
I think YIMBY related issues are one of those issues where directly contacting your rep. does the most good. It's a locally decided issue that can reap huge benefits. So go call your rep!

electricslpnsld 9y ago

Whats to stop municipalities that don't want to play along from simply cutting public transit? I wouldn't put this past Marin or Atherton.

philsnow 9y ago
I'm reminded that Atherton has a Caltrain stop that trains only stop at on weekends.

omegaworks 9y ago

My one worry about this is that it will intensify opposition to new transit projects and transit improvements. Otherwise, great job Senator Wiener. Please call your Assembly member and State Senator and support. Find them here: https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org/ https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org/

asabjorn 9y ago
In that case the opponents have to be explicit in why they fight against any kind of dense transit-near development, which would be an improvement over the current situation where in my opinion many opponents are not honest about why they oppose it.

mrfusion 9y ago

What’s in the actual bill?

yonran 9y ago
SB 827 upzones for apartments half a mile around every major transit stop https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB827 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... SB 828 would double the amount of zoning capacity that each city is required to provide in the Housing Element report (currently each city must provide zoning capacity for only 100% of estimated RHNA population growth; this would increase it to 200%) and carry over approval deficits (currently if a city does not approve any housing, the deficit is forgiven every 8 years and the city can reuse the unbuilt parcels in the next Housing Element report). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB828 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... SB 829 would allow farmers to build farmworker housing https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB829 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... All of these bills have just been announced by Senator Wiener (https://medium.com/@Scott_Wiener/california-needs-a-housing-first-agenda-my-2018-housing-package-1b6fe95e41da https://medium.com/@Scott_Wiener/california-needs-a-housing-...) and may be watered down, heavily amended, or dropped over the next year.