5 ms·

California and the Bay Area is so screwed. The Powers-that-be looked at SB827 like it was the work of lunatics, and did not engage in any of the significant con

California and the Bay Area is so screwed. The Powers-that-be looked at SB827 like it was the work of lunatics, and did not engage in any of the significant concessions that were made. The bill was completely impotent at the end ... local demolition control + 4-5 story buildings. It drew no interest nor alternative proposals to actually help solve the housing crisis. So yeah we're going to end up with middle class social housing lotteries, 1.5 hour commutes and crazy inflation of basic service costs ($3k/month child care, anyone?). Every neighborhood can't be a wealthy enclave of SFH. There is literally no where to live in the central Bay Area on teachers salary much less a Social Security Disability paycheck. The homelessness epidemic will grow. It's a rentier economy of land owners and the rent-controlled incumbents. How "Progressive".

tomkarlo 8y ago
You can substitute "Bay Area" with many of the major centers in the US at this point - Seattle, LA, Denver, Austin all have the same issues, they're just a few years behind the Bay. We need fixes to zoning and development rules and tax laws, they help cities be more liveable as it will help everyone. Cities overseas have figured this out, to some degree - rent as a % of income is lower in both Europe and Asia, generally, and it's a lot easier to build effective mass transit when housing densities are a bit higher. The single family home is one of the worst things to happen to the US, and it's slowly killing us with traffic and spiraling housing prices.
- loeg 8y ago
  > You can substitute "Bay Area" with many of the major centers in the US at this point - Seattle, LA, Denver, Austin all have the same issues, they're just a few years behind the Bay. Not the same issues. Seattle doesn't have anything like Prop 13, or nearly as bad height restrictions. City residents and council are much more supportive of upzoning than SFBA — as in, it actually happens.[0] Plenty of actual issues, and development still lags demand. But the situation is not nearly as dire as SFBA, and it's not getting worse quite as fast. [0]: https://seattle.curbed.com/2017/11/9/16629248/seattle-hala-mha-upzone-plan https://seattle.curbed.com/2017/11/9/16629248/seattle-hala-m...
  - tomkarlo 8y ago
    Maybe to not the same degree, but the same issues - NIMBYism, a focus on SFH, a sense that established residents are pursuing housing policy that punishes younger / newer residents. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/upshot/zoning-housing-property-rights-nimby-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/upshot/zoning-housing-pro...
    - loeg 8y ago
      Yep, you are absolutely right that there is still (some) NIMBYism and an overemphasis on SFH in Seattle. The distinction I want to draw with SFBA is the degree. There's a tipping point where the NIMBYs have enough power to block all or most upzoning and development, and I think — fortunately for us — Seattle has not passed that threshold. SFBA has.
sloreti 8y ago
To say the final bill was impotent is unfair. It still removed parking requirements within 1/4 mile of transit stops and reduced it 0.5 automobiles elsewhere. It exempted projects from density maximums and some FAR maximums. In effect, it would've converted a lot of the Bay Area's SFH into much denser condominiums.
- jakelarkin 8y ago
  not if the local planning department refuses to issue demolition permits for the existing structures
onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
Prop 13 to me seems to be at the root of all these problems. I'm almost finished with Picketty's Capital in the 21st Century, and Prop 13 seems to be a godsend for rentiers seeking the inequality of 1900-1910. Overturning Prop 13 isn't realistic since voters are selfish. Prop 13 has GOT to be the biggest reason behind NIMBY-ism. If the little old lady in the 3 bedroom $2M house had to pay $20K a year in taxes, she'd have sold a long time ago. But because of Prop 13, her taxes are likely less than $1K a year. But the sick thing about Prop 13 is that it applies to landlords. You know why LA is filled with all these single-story rental properties from the 70s in prime locations? Because the taxes hardly budge, so they're paying about $1 per year per square foot in taxes. Even if they sold for the huge premium, it'd be impossible to re-invest that money into something with a higher rate of return. It also applies to businesses. It's why you see a lot of car washes making < $1M/year sitting on land worth $20M. We could potentially modify Prop 13 to eliminate the benefits for rental properties and have the benefits only apply to the first $1M of real estate. That'd only affect the top 5%, and only marginally. But it could eliminate a lot of NIMBYism, I think.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  Proposition 13 as a whole needs to go, it has horribly distorted the market, and moved the property tax burden onto those who own the least land. Meanwhile, schools, towns and counties are desperately revenue starved due to Prop 13.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Proposition 13 as a whole needs to go Well, the limitation on increases in tax basis value probably needs to go, but I think the case is less clear for the tax rate limits and other parts of it.
    - Decade 8y ago
      The tax rate limits have also turned out to be problematic. They limit how much taxes can be, relative to property value, but they haven’t limited taxes overall. We now have a whole lot of parcel taxes, and Mello-Roos taxes, where a stick hut pays just as much as a mansion, to pay for a lot of city services. It’s incredibly regressive.
eldavido 8y ago
So I just bought a house (condo actually) in Oakland and I have to agree. There's a huge class of people who aren't particularly impressive, hard-working, or otherwise "deserving" in my admittedly-morally-loaded-sense of the term, who happened to buy a ton of real estate over the last 30 years, and are now earning eye-popping rates of return (20%+/year on millions of invested capital) owing to the combination of increased desire to live in city centers, and prop 13. It's really shocking. If you look at most small towns in America, the wealthy people tend to be small business owners, successful professionals, and perhaps a few landowners. Here in the SFBA, the serious peninsula wealth is all tech (early employees and execs) and everywhere else it's landowners by a mile. Here in Oakland, restaurants are closing practically every day because this rentier class is bleeding them dry of any profit. Both directly through rents, and indirectly by the wages employees are demanding to live in an area where prevailing rents are 2-3k/month. I wouldn't even be mad about this except that they're using bad government policy to line their pockets, and they're just shameless about it. It boils my blood. These people are just leeching off of the huge south bay productivity engines (Google, facebook, Apple, etc) and taking a pound of flesh by restricting supply of a necessary good. Their entire livelihood rests with the stubbornness of execs at the big tech companies to stay here and put up with it. These companies end up paying exorbitant salaries just so that this rentier class can line their pockets with what would otherwise be shareholder profit or personal income of employees.

tomkarlo 8y ago

You can substitute "Bay Area" with many of the major centers in the US at this point - Seattle, LA, Denver, Austin all have the same issues, they're just a few years behind the Bay. We need fixes to zoning and development rules and tax laws, they help cities be more liveable as it will help everyone. Cities overseas have figured this out, to some degree - rent as a % of income is lower in both Europe and Asia, generally, and it's a lot easier to build effective mass transit when housing densities are a bit higher. The single family home is one of the worst things to happen to the US, and it's slowly killing us with traffic and spiraling housing prices.

loeg 8y ago
> You can substitute "Bay Area" with many of the major centers in the US at this point - Seattle, LA, Denver, Austin all have the same issues, they're just a few years behind the Bay. Not the same issues. Seattle doesn't have anything like Prop 13, or nearly as bad height restrictions. City residents and council are much more supportive of upzoning than SFBA — as in, it actually happens.[0] Plenty of actual issues, and development still lags demand. But the situation is not nearly as dire as SFBA, and it's not getting worse quite as fast. [0]: https://seattle.curbed.com/2017/11/9/16629248/seattle-hala-mha-upzone-plan https://seattle.curbed.com/2017/11/9/16629248/seattle-hala-m...
- tomkarlo 8y ago
  Maybe to not the same degree, but the same issues - NIMBYism, a focus on SFH, a sense that established residents are pursuing housing policy that punishes younger / newer residents. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/upshot/zoning-housing-property-rights-nimby-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/upshot/zoning-housing-pro...
  - loeg 8y ago
    Yep, you are absolutely right that there is still (some) NIMBYism and an overemphasis on SFH in Seattle. The distinction I want to draw with SFBA is the degree. There's a tipping point where the NIMBYs have enough power to block all or most upzoning and development, and I think — fortunately for us — Seattle has not passed that threshold. SFBA has.

sloreti 8y ago

To say the final bill was impotent is unfair. It still removed parking requirements within 1/4 mile of transit stops and reduced it 0.5 automobiles elsewhere. It exempted projects from density maximums and some FAR maximums. In effect, it would've converted a lot of the Bay Area's SFH into much denser condominiums.

jakelarkin 8y ago
not if the local planning department refuses to issue demolition permits for the existing structures

onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago

Prop 13 to me seems to be at the root of all these problems. I'm almost finished with Picketty's Capital in the 21st Century, and Prop 13 seems to be a godsend for rentiers seeking the inequality of 1900-1910. Overturning Prop 13 isn't realistic since voters are selfish. Prop 13 has GOT to be the biggest reason behind NIMBY-ism. If the little old lady in the 3 bedroom $2M house had to pay $20K a year in taxes, she'd have sold a long time ago. But because of Prop 13, her taxes are likely less than $1K a year. But the sick thing about Prop 13 is that it applies to landlords. You know why LA is filled with all these single-story rental properties from the 70s in prime locations? Because the taxes hardly budge, so they're paying about $1 per year per square foot in taxes. Even if they sold for the huge premium, it'd be impossible to re-invest that money into something with a higher rate of return. It also applies to businesses. It's why you see a lot of car washes making < $1M/year sitting on land worth $20M. We could potentially modify Prop 13 to eliminate the benefits for rental properties and have the benefits only apply to the first $1M of real estate. That'd only affect the top 5%, and only marginally. But it could eliminate a lot of NIMBYism, I think.

StudentStuff 8y ago
Proposition 13 as a whole needs to go, it has horribly distorted the market, and moved the property tax burden onto those who own the least land. Meanwhile, schools, towns and counties are desperately revenue starved due to Prop 13.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Proposition 13 as a whole needs to go Well, the limitation on increases in tax basis value probably needs to go, but I think the case is less clear for the tax rate limits and other parts of it.
  - Decade 8y ago
    The tax rate limits have also turned out to be problematic. They limit how much taxes can be, relative to property value, but they haven’t limited taxes overall. We now have a whole lot of parcel taxes, and Mello-Roos taxes, where a stick hut pays just as much as a mansion, to pay for a lot of city services. It’s incredibly regressive.

eldavido 8y ago

So I just bought a house (condo actually) in Oakland and I have to agree. There's a huge class of people who aren't particularly impressive, hard-working, or otherwise "deserving" in my admittedly-morally-loaded-sense of the term, who happened to buy a ton of real estate over the last 30 years, and are now earning eye-popping rates of return (20%+/year on millions of invested capital) owing to the combination of increased desire to live in city centers, and prop 13. It's really shocking. If you look at most small towns in America, the wealthy people tend to be small business owners, successful professionals, and perhaps a few landowners. Here in the SFBA, the serious peninsula wealth is all tech (early employees and execs) and everywhere else it's landowners by a mile. Here in Oakland, restaurants are closing practically every day because this rentier class is bleeding them dry of any profit. Both directly through rents, and indirectly by the wages employees are demanding to live in an area where prevailing rents are 2-3k/month. I wouldn't even be mad about this except that they're using bad government policy to line their pockets, and they're just shameless about it. It boils my blood. These people are just leeching off of the huge south bay productivity engines (Google, facebook, Apple, etc) and taking a pound of flesh by restricting supply of a necessary good. Their entire livelihood rests with the stubbornness of execs at the big tech companies to stay here and put up with it. These companies end up paying exorbitant salaries just so that this rentier class can line their pockets with what would otherwise be shareholder profit or personal income of employees.