15 ms·

Recognizing the signs of disruption in our urban habitat

203 points by oftenwrong 7y ago

com2kid 7y ago
Around Seattle, people bought up land in anticipation of light rail coming in a decade+ later. The gambling ones bought up the land before the propositions to fund light rail to those areas had even passed. One of my friends took that gamble, in another decade it is going to pay of handsomely.
- taffer 7y ago
  Is there no way that the government can buy large plots of land around planned stations, build the railroad and then sell back the land?
  - timerol 7y ago
    The government can, via eminent domain. This is how private railroads in the US were financed in the 1800s. The companies paid for land at pre-development prices via eminent domain, then built the railroad, then sold the much-improved land at higher prices. Basically, the land appreciation covered the capital costs, and fares only covered the operating costs. Japan and Hong Kong still use this strategy, and the new private railways in the US are attempting to do it as well. (Virgin Trains and Texas Central)
  - Kalium 7y ago
    Yes, with the caveat that none of those are fast and this is the kind of thing that can easily lose elections.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Wouldn't that drive up the prices of the land?
    - taffer 7y ago
      The only thing that could drive up the land prices is that some landowners try to hold out to demand unreasonably high prices. So what you need is a kind of squeeze-out mechanism like "If 2/3 of the landowners are willing to sell their land for price X, then the remaining 1/3 must sell for the same price".
      - com2kid 7y ago
        That is happening as well, land owners go to court to delay development, solely to wait for prices to increase. There are places were price to build out transit have skyrocketed because of this exact tactic being used.
  - jdavis703 7y ago
    Sure the government could do it. But any city council that tried to do this would likely find themselves voted out. Case in point: it was a tough push to get AB 2923 through the CA legislature. It allowed BART to build dense housing on their own parking lots. Thankfully common sense prevailed. The bill was approved and BART is now using their power to plan for more transit oriented development.
    - taffer 7y ago
      > Sure the government could do it. But any city council that tried to do this would likely find themselves voted out. Who votes them out and with what arguments?
      - cgy1 7y ago
        Mostly people who moved into what was a sleepy suburb 30 years ago wanting it to remain a sleepy suburb.
        wbl 7y ago
        Sleepy suburb with Sun headquarters.
        Decade 7y ago
        This makes it not just unnatural but an injustice. The sleepy suburb gets the commercial revenue from having a major tech firm, and then most of the workers leave and the residentialists get to keep the revenue for their city services. The service workers who had to drive until they qualified, they go home to more far-flung suburbs with financial problems and poor services. This is segregation by deliberate policy. But it’s starting to fall apart. When there were still nearby orchards to pave to put up parking lots, the new homes were cheaper than they are today, and the rich suburb could still hire workers to provide the services. Now that there’s not enough room for both new single-family homes and parking lots, and they are refusing to allow sufficient multi-family housing, the housing supply is not keeping up with demand and the service workers are increasingly refusing to take the jobs. This is manifesting as chronic short-handedness in the schools, in the police and fire departments, in the transit agencies. By greedily holding onto commercial revenues, these suburbs are destroying their own ability to provide services.
  - cagenut 7y ago
    if you're interested google "transit value capture", its a re-emerging trend in infrastructure finance and development.
- paxys 7y ago
  It was refreshing to see Seattle finally get serious about public transit. Even though I moved out before I could enjoy its benefits, having light rail connections all the way to Everett, Redmond, Issaquah and Tacoma is going to be a big help for the housing problem within the next 5-10 years.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Until buses get reserved lanes it's hard to say Seattle is serious. Last-mile is still terrible.
burlesona 7y ago
This kind of economic dysfunction is often cited as the reason to switch to a Land Value Tax, which is explained pretty well on Wikipedia[1]. It's also why so many people were interested in SB-50[2], which would have overridden local zoning controls to allow higher density development around transit stops. I think the biggest challenge is the transition. The current system is broken, but we typically look at changes in terms of the desired end-state, and when we look at it that way it's clear that the change will be very disruptive to a lot of people who are benefiting from the status quo. Those are the people who turn out and ensure that the changes cannot go through - even if they might agree that the long-term outcome would be better. Strong Towns has done a good job emphasizing incrementalism in its approach to urban problems[3], but I'd love to see more of a conversation around this in a legal / regulatory context. Are there ways that we can undo the harm of bad regulations and transition to better ones that aren't so disruptive to the people who have built their lives around the current rules? What would those look like? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax 2: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB50 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... 3: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/5/incrementalism https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/5/incrementalism
- zeveb 7y ago
  One way would be to buy people off: figure out the net economic benefit to the city, county or state of changing the rules, and as part of the rule change grant some fraction of those dollars to those who change in the way we want. I can see two bug problems with this, one practical and one political. The practical one is that estimating benefit is a black art — we really can't trust anyone, partisan or non-partisan, to make accurate predictions of future economic benefits (there's a secondary practical sub-problem, which is that such an estimate would be ripe for capture). The political problem is that we'd end up rewarding those who have been benefiting all these years (e.g. all the homeowners with unrealistically low property taxes for the last four decades).
  - ergothus 7y ago
    I'm in Seattle, and my house only a couple of blocks away from a new light-rail transit station that is opening. My neighborhood has been rezoned for MRU (condos and apartments vs the single family homes that are here now). Plus, the city is widening the main road my house is on (overdue anyway, but will definitely be further needed with the traffic to the rail station). So we're either going to be bought by a developer or bought by the city, whichever comes first. It's been an exercise in details for me, because I generally am not a NIMBY-ist and support the sorts of changes that will be moving us from our home. My objections are not to the fact that this will happen...but there's been VAST uncertainty. * Will be forced out? If so, on what terms? (City is currently saying "relocation" rather than "property purchase", but only vague terms so far) * Will a developer offer us enough money to match the way real estate costs have soared in the area? Would this be a nice payout, a basically flat deal, or a net reduction in convenience/comfort? * And the real kicker...When? We've been told more info would be available in 6-24 months for...at least 2 years, probably 3. As it stands now, other than more certainty that staying is not an option, we still don't have any answers, certainly not enough to make plans for. I've let house repairs and maintenance lapse (overdue for a new roof and the electrical system is woefully inadequate. Drainage needs to be improved, and our fence has started to sag. A tree came down and we've just left it.) When reading these sorts of debates I always imagined it was just a matter of "suck it up and accept that you have to have some inconvenience for the greater good". In practice, I didn't realize it would be years of uncertainty. Not knowing where you will live and what your resources will be like has been a real source of stress for my wife and I. Having a house that is creeping into disrepair and not knowing if you will put up with it for a year or 5 years before it is all torn down is a big pain. It puts another light on why someone might push back. I'm still in favor of the greater good - but the cost has not been "I have to move". It's been much more.
standardUser 7y ago
This reminds me of a similar land use issue I've seen a hundred times over. In major cities, in the middle of some of the densest, most trafficked, most transit-oriented neighborhoods, you'll find vacant lots and storefronts that sit there for years. Places that could, presumably, bring in many thousands of dollars every month in rent instead bring in $0 month after month. And the prime real estate sits unused, despite the thousands of residents and tourists that walk buy every single day. I've seen it in many different cities and towns. Maybe there is some real-estate-specific knowledge I lack that can explain this phenomenon?
- cesarb 7y ago
  The property might be tied up in a court dispute, a bankruptcy, or inheritance. As an example, a building near where I work sat vacant for years; I did a web search for the building's address, and found an article mentioning that the company which owned the building had been bankrupt.
- karthikb 7y ago
  The land value appreciates over time regardless of use. Why worry about setting up a business and trying to make money when you could do nothing and make a lot of money 10 years down the line when you sell?
  - hellisothers 7y ago
    The value of commercial real estate is also tied directly to what it can rent for so you’re encouraged to wait to maximize rent which may mean leaving it abandoned or vacant.
    - bmurphy1976 7y ago
      That's the ironic part. The more valuable the local market is, the more incentive there is for some people to sit on their asses. That tells me that taxes are too low. Not necessarily taxes for used property, but vacant/unused property could be taxed more effectively to promote development.
mempko 7y ago
This is definitely not true for older cities like NYC and Chicago. The land around train stops is valuable there. Chicago area grew outward from the train lines before cars showed up. Each stop has a town with its own higher density downtown.
Animats 7y ago
This is only a problem for a very few areas of the United States. Remember, US population is leveling off. The current growth rate is 0.8% per year. Without illegal immigration, that number will go negative, as it already has for Japan and most of Europe. The current US fertility rate is 1.8. 2.1 is breakeven. New York City had about the same population in 1950 and 2000. Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland have all shrunk. New York was once the largest city in the world; now it's in 9th place. Nationwide, there's no great need to build. Remember the 2008 recession in the Bay Area? FOR SALE signs everywhere? No traffic jams? It's coming again, probably within the next year.
- novok 7y ago
  Japan is also having a concentration effect. Japan might be shrinking, but tokyo is growing as everyone moves there. There is no signs of this general trend abaiting. Recessions are also only a few years long, the growth trend is the status quo for the majority of the time.
  - Animats 7y ago
    Yes, Tokyo and Osaka are up. The rest of Japan is emptying out.
- wil421 7y ago
  You’re cherry picking numbers and doing Apples to Oranges comparisons. The Midwest has been losing people for a long time Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio are some of the worst. The Dakota’s are only gaining due to fracking booms. New York City expanded outside its historic area and into Jersey and any surrounding areas cheap enough to build on. https://www.csgmidwest.org/policyresearch/0616-demographic-future-Midwest.aspx https://www.csgmidwest.org/policyresearch/0616-demographic-f...
- zanny 7y ago
  Fortunately America isn't Japan or even in large part much of Europe in that it has a long history of constant immigration from often very culturally disjoint places. Countries like India, Nigeria, etc won't crest their growth for decades and in that time they will add another 1-2 billion people to the planet. Even after the cresting going below replacement will take another generation or two. So for at least the next hundred years there will be plenty of people in the world to import if you want to keep your population pyramid from changing. That is all aside the fact that its well established now that demographics are shifting even in limited population growth scenarios. Urban migration continues because the availability of productive labor anywhere except at the highest concentrations of human capital continue to diminish. There is no more gold rush of raw resources to establish whole states over and all the industry we have for resource extraction is getting automated away. In the next hundred years we should see the gradual centralization of human populations for purposes of survival. And as the available job pool shrinks, until the jump is made to a UBI / socialist / post-scarcity model in the future the increasing pressure basic necessities have on people will keep forcing the cost of labor to stay stagnant as it has been for 40 years and thus inflation will pressure people into living more efficiently. Right now having a car and commuting 4 hours a day from a 3000 square foot house with a yard you need to maintain, where in part you need to pay for all the roads you traverse, all the infrastructure wired to your house, the services required (fire, medical, police) is insanely expensive and insanely inefficient compared to people living in condos, apartments, etc with public transit in a proper metro. Automation will keep gnawing away at median disposable income until the median is forced to forgo luxuries like split housing. Those transitions and shifts will require legislative support, which given the fact those shifts will be made because of outdated state policy probably doesn't bode well for it being a smooth migration.
mmanfrin 7y ago
I'm glad the article brought up Prop 13. It is my belief that Prop 13 is the biggest cancer on the state of California, and one that we will almost never be rid of. Prop 13 is why people don't move. Prop 13 is why California occasionally has budget issues. Prop 13 makes my parents home property taxes 1/4th the amount of my own, despite their home being 4x the value of mine.
- dbcurtis 7y ago
  Prop 13 was a reaction against confiscatory taxes that broke an important social contract. The contract: If you save, invest, and pay off your home mortgage so that you own it free and clear, later in life when you are retired and living on a fixed income no one can come along and confiscate the property that you bought and paid for fair and square. The contract breech: Property taxes going up so fast that the only possible solution was to sell your home. Now, of course the value of the home was going up, which was what was driving the taxes. But forcing pensioners to sell their homes, disrupting/destroying a life-time of plans and work was never going to be a smooth ride -- who could have thought that it would be? The government pre-Prop 13 was viewed as kleptocratic by a sizeable portion of the population, with arguably good reason. So, do you have a better solution that has empathy for pensioners that played by the rules all their lives and have plans to settle into modest enjoyment of their so-called "golden years"? Prop 13 was an attempt to stop perceived thievery, a crude bludgeon, perhaps, but a sufficient number of desperate people saw it as a solution to get it enacted.
  - asdfgasd 7y ago
    >The contract breech: Property taxes going up so fast that the only possible solution was to sell your home. Now, of course the value of the home was going up, which was what was driving the taxes. But forcing pensioners to sell their homes, disrupting/destroying a life-time of plans and work was never going to be a smooth ride -- who could have thought that it would be? Financial instruments that prevent that already exist. If your home is worth millions of dollars it's not that hard to find a way to pay the property tax. "Having more money" is rarely a real problem. > a sufficient number of desperate people saw it as a solution to get it enacted. No, people who's material interests are in direct conflict with a functional society pushed for it. It passed through a combination of "think of the elders" concern-trolling and libertarian dark money.
m463 7y ago
There might be a stigma associated with being close to a railway. It's a meme in some movies - someone is staying in a run-down apartment or hotel near railway tracks and train will go by at night causing dust to shake loose from the ceiling. Caltrain stations are subject to these kinds of noise and vibration - during the day the baby bullets bypass stations at 60 mph, and at night endlessly long freight trains barrel past.
- taffer 7y ago
  That's probably more of an effect than a cause. In European cities it is often advertised how close an apartment is to a train station.
- izzydata 7y ago
  I just wanted to say that you should have used the word trope instead of meme.
  - m463 7y ago
    Yes, you're right (I would change my comment but missed the edit deadline)
- maerF0x0 7y ago
  > They made the striking observation that at station after station, the immediately adjacent land uses are remarkably low-value. Parking lots. Vacant lots. Strip malls, auto body shops... >> Caltrain stations are subject to these kinds of noise These trains mean someone has to wear earplugs to get a good night's sleep. No wonder the rich dont want to live near it.
carapace 7y ago
Keep in mind, Redwood City will be literally underwater along with the rest of the Bay Area in a few decades.
- dhruvrrp 7y ago
  If the Bay is still relevant at that time, then all it would take is a few hundred million to contain the rising water levels, in the form of barriers, flood walls, etc.
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    Who's paying?
    - asdff 7y ago
      How about the property owners whose property this build will protect.
- asdff 7y ago
  If nola can make a levee surely the richest city on this side of the pacific can too.
  - carapace 7y ago
    The levee that broke and destroyed the city? Because of the topology of the Bay we would basically have to build a levee all the way around it. IANACivil Engineer, but that seems like a big deal. All I'm saying is that if you're looking to buy or build in the Bay Area do your homework. A couple of years ago I was looking at buying a condo on the water in Redwood City and it dawned on me that, by the time I paid off the mortgage, it would be underwater both literally and figuratively. ( https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-is-underwater-mortgage.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-is-underwater-m... ) It doesn't make sense to build up new urban sites along CalTrain if we don't also deal with the effects of climate change, eh?
Endy 7y ago
I can speak to the NJTransit example briefly buzzed past. In NJ, train stations are not destinations. Most people I see get off the train and into either an Uber or some other NJTransit vehicle. Edited because of a misclick.
- EliRivers 7y ago
  In NJ, train stations are not destinations. Isn't that the point the writer is making? That they should be bustling hives of residential, retail and commercial activity.
  - Endy 7y ago
    Yes, and the issue is that the trains were put in places that never were destinations. You would have to change the long-standing habits of businesses and commuters to alter that. Even they light rail doesn't change that. Mass transit fits in the edges and cracks here, and is something of a "necessary annoyance" to the state. For proof, look no further than the aggressive privatization of bus lines to companies who can't or won't run the buses on the schedule set by NJTransit. And they aren't being penalized in any meaningful way.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  Most aren't. Some towns are trying to change that. On the Montclair-Boonton line Bloomfield and Montclair (Bay Street) have higher-end apartment and mixed-use complexes either right next to the station or within a short walk. I know the Main-Bergen line pretty much fits that description, though. Hell, there's one "station" that is just a half-ass strip of asphalt that passes for a parking lot.
  - Endy 7y ago
    I can think of three that fit that description. Or the ones up a bunch of stairs, with no parking and no real signs.
- asdff 7y ago
  Those are commuter stations where you might live a couple miles away. Would you take an uber when you are a 10 min walk away? What if you had a bike lane and that became 3 mins with a scooter? All it takes is a place open at 6 am and a place open from 5pm on for an area like that to completely transform. People using uber is the fault of the transit area being zoned improperly.
musicale 7y ago
Low density notwithstanding, the Menlo Park example does seem like a nice, walkable downtown area near the train station. (And apparently the Menlo Park station was built in 1867, making it one of the oldest passenger rail stations in California!)
mjevans 7y ago
I like the concept of living near strong connectivity; however there are other downsides that NEED to be addressed. 1) The building code isn't good enough. I should not be able to hear my neighbors, let alone the train, at all when things are closed. I should also have fresh air that doesn't smell like laundry, perfumes, the garbage chute, or whatever cooking experiments are happening in other apartments. 2) Outside of cities cars are still needed; more so in America. That rail network needs to connect to multiple potential 'apartments for my car'. Those are also the places that would be a dropoff / interface for external to the city users to drive to and then take transit infrastructure the rest of the way in.
- davidw 7y ago
  There's an argument that outside of actual safety issues, maybe it's best to leave this up to the market. My wife and I looked at a house once in Padova, where we lived, that was right next to the train tracks. You couldn't help but feel the trains go by, let alone hearing them. It was not for us, but it was super cheap, and might have been an option for someone without a lot of other good options - or a great option for someone hearing impaired who didn't care too much.
achenatx 7y ago
In texas we only have property taxes. Commercial property tends to be undertaxed because the appraisal districts are not allowed to see actual sales prices. Property taxes tend to be around 2-2.5% and for non homestead properties there is no limit to the increase. We regularly hear about older people getting taxed out of their homes (though there are programs to somewhat hold their taxes constant). In austin we are starting to have an affordability crisis, whereas cities like houston are doing much better. The taxation is the same, what is different is the restrictive zoning in austin. In austin permitting can take 6-9 months and single family zoning restricts what can be built. The city council tried to revise zoning and failed due to NIMBYs, but they are trying again this year. This is a reminder that the more competing systems of laws we have the better. Every program implemented at the federal level only gives us one chance to get it right. The state level gives us 50 chances and the local level gives us thousands of chances.
- peteey 7y ago
  Florida lacks an income tax too. Property taxes are distorted due to a law called Save Our Homes. SOH limits increasing assessed value of home prices to inflation (Consumer Price Index) or 3%, whichever is lower. This mostly shift the tax burden to new home buyers and renters. You get odd effects like in 2009, when property values dramatically fell due to the market bubble bursting, taxes actually went up because the assessed values were so much lower then the just market value. In 2016, a 6.9 million dollar house was only taxed at 2.8 million. Source https://www.jacksonville.com/photogallery/LK/20170125/PHOTOGALLERY/301259950/PH/1 https://www.jacksonville.com/photogallery/LK/20170125/PHOTOG...
- UnFleshedOne 7y ago
  No opinion on the specific issue at hand, but wouldn't you eventually want to take the winning system of laws and implement it on federal level? Or would you expect better performing systems to naturally spread over? Are there any examples of that actually happening?
  - filoleg 7y ago
    I think it is not state spread vs. federal, but more like state spread -> federal. Disclaimer: talking about the US. For something simple that can stand on its own, that was what we saw with gay marriage and, I personally believe, what we will see with cannabis legalization. For something as complex and interconnected as property taxes, I don't think it will be that easy to convert it to federal, so state spread is what we can hope for in the near future. An example of a similar issue is income taxing, where we ended up with a two-tiered solution: one federal (same for every state) + one state (differs for each state, with some having none at all).
ImaCake 7y ago
North Sydney around Ryde used to be like this. Low density with lots of shuttered shopfronts. But Sydney has undergone a massive apartment development boom and the areas around these train stations often have high rise apartments now. The shops are all occupied. Eastwood even has a minimum height requirement for new buildings.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

203 points by oftenwrong 7y ago

Around Seattle, people bought up land in anticipation of light rail coming in a decade+ later. The gambling ones bought up the land before the propositions to fund light rail to those areas had even passed. One of my friends took that gamble, in another decade it is going to pay of handsomely.

taffer 7y ago
Is there no way that the government can buy large plots of land around planned stations, build the railroad and then sell back the land?
- timerol 7y ago
  The government can, via eminent domain. This is how private railroads in the US were financed in the 1800s. The companies paid for land at pre-development prices via eminent domain, then built the railroad, then sold the much-improved land at higher prices. Basically, the land appreciation covered the capital costs, and fares only covered the operating costs. Japan and Hong Kong still use this strategy, and the new private railways in the US are attempting to do it as well. (Virgin Trains and Texas Central)
- Kalium 7y ago
  Yes, with the caveat that none of those are fast and this is the kind of thing that can easily lose elections.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Wouldn't that drive up the prices of the land?
  - taffer 7y ago
    The only thing that could drive up the land prices is that some landowners try to hold out to demand unreasonably high prices. So what you need is a kind of squeeze-out mechanism like "If 2/3 of the landowners are willing to sell their land for price X, then the remaining 1/3 must sell for the same price".
    - com2kid 7y ago
      That is happening as well, land owners go to court to delay development, solely to wait for prices to increase. There are places were price to build out transit have skyrocketed because of this exact tactic being used.
- jdavis703 7y ago
  Sure the government could do it. But any city council that tried to do this would likely find themselves voted out. Case in point: it was a tough push to get AB 2923 through the CA legislature. It allowed BART to build dense housing on their own parking lots. Thankfully common sense prevailed. The bill was approved and BART is now using their power to plan for more transit oriented development.
  - taffer 7y ago
    > Sure the government could do it. But any city council that tried to do this would likely find themselves voted out. Who votes them out and with what arguments?
    - cgy1 7y ago
      Mostly people who moved into what was a sleepy suburb 30 years ago wanting it to remain a sleepy suburb.
      - wbl 7y ago
        Sleepy suburb with Sun headquarters.
        Decade 7y ago
        This makes it not just unnatural but an injustice. The sleepy suburb gets the commercial revenue from having a major tech firm, and then most of the workers leave and the residentialists get to keep the revenue for their city services. The service workers who had to drive until they qualified, they go home to more far-flung suburbs with financial problems and poor services. This is segregation by deliberate policy. But it’s starting to fall apart. When there were still nearby orchards to pave to put up parking lots, the new homes were cheaper than they are today, and the rich suburb could still hire workers to provide the services. Now that there’s not enough room for both new single-family homes and parking lots, and they are refusing to allow sufficient multi-family housing, the housing supply is not keeping up with demand and the service workers are increasingly refusing to take the jobs. This is manifesting as chronic short-handedness in the schools, in the police and fire departments, in the transit agencies. By greedily holding onto commercial revenues, these suburbs are destroying their own ability to provide services.
- cagenut 7y ago
  if you're interested google "transit value capture", its a re-emerging trend in infrastructure finance and development.
paxys 7y ago
It was refreshing to see Seattle finally get serious about public transit. Even though I moved out before I could enjoy its benefits, having light rail connections all the way to Everett, Redmond, Issaquah and Tacoma is going to be a big help for the housing problem within the next 5-10 years.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Until buses get reserved lanes it's hard to say Seattle is serious. Last-mile is still terrible.

burlesona 7y ago

This kind of economic dysfunction is often cited as the reason to switch to a Land Value Tax, which is explained pretty well on Wikipedia[1]. It's also why so many people were interested in SB-50[2], which would have overridden local zoning controls to allow higher density development around transit stops. I think the biggest challenge is the transition. The current system is broken, but we typically look at changes in terms of the desired end-state, and when we look at it that way it's clear that the change will be very disruptive to a lot of people who are benefiting from the status quo. Those are the people who turn out and ensure that the changes cannot go through - even if they might agree that the long-term outcome would be better. Strong Towns has done a good job emphasizing incrementalism in its approach to urban problems[3], but I'd love to see more of a conversation around this in a legal / regulatory context. Are there ways that we can undo the harm of bad regulations and transition to better ones that aren't so disruptive to the people who have built their lives around the current rules? What would those look like? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax 2: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB50 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... 3: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/5/incrementalism https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/5/incrementalism

zeveb 7y ago
One way would be to buy people off: figure out the net economic benefit to the city, county or state of changing the rules, and as part of the rule change grant some fraction of those dollars to those who change in the way we want. I can see two bug problems with this, one practical and one political. The practical one is that estimating benefit is a black art — we really can't trust anyone, partisan or non-partisan, to make accurate predictions of future economic benefits (there's a secondary practical sub-problem, which is that such an estimate would be ripe for capture). The political problem is that we'd end up rewarding those who have been benefiting all these years (e.g. all the homeowners with unrealistically low property taxes for the last four decades).
- ergothus 7y ago
  I'm in Seattle, and my house only a couple of blocks away from a new light-rail transit station that is opening. My neighborhood has been rezoned for MRU (condos and apartments vs the single family homes that are here now). Plus, the city is widening the main road my house is on (overdue anyway, but will definitely be further needed with the traffic to the rail station). So we're either going to be bought by a developer or bought by the city, whichever comes first. It's been an exercise in details for me, because I generally am not a NIMBY-ist and support the sorts of changes that will be moving us from our home. My objections are not to the fact that this will happen...but there's been VAST uncertainty. * Will be forced out? If so, on what terms? (City is currently saying "relocation" rather than "property purchase", but only vague terms so far) * Will a developer offer us enough money to match the way real estate costs have soared in the area? Would this be a nice payout, a basically flat deal, or a net reduction in convenience/comfort? * And the real kicker...When? We've been told more info would be available in 6-24 months for...at least 2 years, probably 3. As it stands now, other than more certainty that staying is not an option, we still don't have any answers, certainly not enough to make plans for. I've let house repairs and maintenance lapse (overdue for a new roof and the electrical system is woefully inadequate. Drainage needs to be improved, and our fence has started to sag. A tree came down and we've just left it.) When reading these sorts of debates I always imagined it was just a matter of "suck it up and accept that you have to have some inconvenience for the greater good". In practice, I didn't realize it would be years of uncertainty. Not knowing where you will live and what your resources will be like has been a real source of stress for my wife and I. Having a house that is creeping into disrepair and not knowing if you will put up with it for a year or 5 years before it is all torn down is a big pain. It puts another light on why someone might push back. I'm still in favor of the greater good - but the cost has not been "I have to move". It's been much more.

standardUser 7y ago

This reminds me of a similar land use issue I've seen a hundred times over. In major cities, in the middle of some of the densest, most trafficked, most transit-oriented neighborhoods, you'll find vacant lots and storefronts that sit there for years. Places that could, presumably, bring in many thousands of dollars every month in rent instead bring in $0 month after month. And the prime real estate sits unused, despite the thousands of residents and tourists that walk buy every single day. I've seen it in many different cities and towns. Maybe there is some real-estate-specific knowledge I lack that can explain this phenomenon?

cesarb 7y ago
The property might be tied up in a court dispute, a bankruptcy, or inheritance. As an example, a building near where I work sat vacant for years; I did a web search for the building's address, and found an article mentioning that the company which owned the building had been bankrupt.
karthikb 7y ago
The land value appreciates over time regardless of use. Why worry about setting up a business and trying to make money when you could do nothing and make a lot of money 10 years down the line when you sell?
- hellisothers 7y ago
  The value of commercial real estate is also tied directly to what it can rent for so you’re encouraged to wait to maximize rent which may mean leaving it abandoned or vacant.
  - bmurphy1976 7y ago
    That's the ironic part. The more valuable the local market is, the more incentive there is for some people to sit on their asses. That tells me that taxes are too low. Not necessarily taxes for used property, but vacant/unused property could be taxed more effectively to promote development.

mempko 7y ago

This is definitely not true for older cities like NYC and Chicago. The land around train stops is valuable there. Chicago area grew outward from the train lines before cars showed up. Each stop has a town with its own higher density downtown.

Animats 7y ago

This is only a problem for a very few areas of the United States. Remember, US population is leveling off. The current growth rate is 0.8% per year. Without illegal immigration, that number will go negative, as it already has for Japan and most of Europe. The current US fertility rate is 1.8. 2.1 is breakeven. New York City had about the same population in 1950 and 2000. Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland have all shrunk. New York was once the largest city in the world; now it's in 9th place. Nationwide, there's no great need to build. Remember the 2008 recession in the Bay Area? FOR SALE signs everywhere? No traffic jams? It's coming again, probably within the next year.

novok 7y ago
Japan is also having a concentration effect. Japan might be shrinking, but tokyo is growing as everyone moves there. There is no signs of this general trend abaiting. Recessions are also only a few years long, the growth trend is the status quo for the majority of the time.
- Animats 7y ago
  Yes, Tokyo and Osaka are up. The rest of Japan is emptying out.
wil421 7y ago
You’re cherry picking numbers and doing Apples to Oranges comparisons. The Midwest has been losing people for a long time Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio are some of the worst. The Dakota’s are only gaining due to fracking booms. New York City expanded outside its historic area and into Jersey and any surrounding areas cheap enough to build on. https://www.csgmidwest.org/policyresearch/0616-demographic-future-Midwest.aspx https://www.csgmidwest.org/policyresearch/0616-demographic-f...
zanny 7y ago
Fortunately America isn't Japan or even in large part much of Europe in that it has a long history of constant immigration from often very culturally disjoint places. Countries like India, Nigeria, etc won't crest their growth for decades and in that time they will add another 1-2 billion people to the planet. Even after the cresting going below replacement will take another generation or two. So for at least the next hundred years there will be plenty of people in the world to import if you want to keep your population pyramid from changing. That is all aside the fact that its well established now that demographics are shifting even in limited population growth scenarios. Urban migration continues because the availability of productive labor anywhere except at the highest concentrations of human capital continue to diminish. There is no more gold rush of raw resources to establish whole states over and all the industry we have for resource extraction is getting automated away. In the next hundred years we should see the gradual centralization of human populations for purposes of survival. And as the available job pool shrinks, until the jump is made to a UBI / socialist / post-scarcity model in the future the increasing pressure basic necessities have on people will keep forcing the cost of labor to stay stagnant as it has been for 40 years and thus inflation will pressure people into living more efficiently. Right now having a car and commuting 4 hours a day from a 3000 square foot house with a yard you need to maintain, where in part you need to pay for all the roads you traverse, all the infrastructure wired to your house, the services required (fire, medical, police) is insanely expensive and insanely inefficient compared to people living in condos, apartments, etc with public transit in a proper metro. Automation will keep gnawing away at median disposable income until the median is forced to forgo luxuries like split housing. Those transitions and shifts will require legislative support, which given the fact those shifts will be made because of outdated state policy probably doesn't bode well for it being a smooth migration.

mmanfrin 7y ago

I'm glad the article brought up Prop 13. It is my belief that Prop 13 is the biggest cancer on the state of California, and one that we will almost never be rid of. Prop 13 is why people don't move. Prop 13 is why California occasionally has budget issues. Prop 13 makes my parents home property taxes 1/4th the amount of my own, despite their home being 4x the value of mine.

dbcurtis 7y ago
Prop 13 was a reaction against confiscatory taxes that broke an important social contract. The contract: If you save, invest, and pay off your home mortgage so that you own it free and clear, later in life when you are retired and living on a fixed income no one can come along and confiscate the property that you bought and paid for fair and square. The contract breech: Property taxes going up so fast that the only possible solution was to sell your home. Now, of course the value of the home was going up, which was what was driving the taxes. But forcing pensioners to sell their homes, disrupting/destroying a life-time of plans and work was never going to be a smooth ride -- who could have thought that it would be? The government pre-Prop 13 was viewed as kleptocratic by a sizeable portion of the population, with arguably good reason. So, do you have a better solution that has empathy for pensioners that played by the rules all their lives and have plans to settle into modest enjoyment of their so-called "golden years"? Prop 13 was an attempt to stop perceived thievery, a crude bludgeon, perhaps, but a sufficient number of desperate people saw it as a solution to get it enacted.
- asdfgasd 7y ago
  >The contract breech: Property taxes going up so fast that the only possible solution was to sell your home. Now, of course the value of the home was going up, which was what was driving the taxes. But forcing pensioners to sell their homes, disrupting/destroying a life-time of plans and work was never going to be a smooth ride -- who could have thought that it would be? Financial instruments that prevent that already exist. If your home is worth millions of dollars it's not that hard to find a way to pay the property tax. "Having more money" is rarely a real problem. > a sufficient number of desperate people saw it as a solution to get it enacted. No, people who's material interests are in direct conflict with a functional society pushed for it. It passed through a combination of "think of the elders" concern-trolling and libertarian dark money.

m463 7y ago

There might be a stigma associated with being close to a railway. It's a meme in some movies - someone is staying in a run-down apartment or hotel near railway tracks and train will go by at night causing dust to shake loose from the ceiling. Caltrain stations are subject to these kinds of noise and vibration - during the day the baby bullets bypass stations at 60 mph, and at night endlessly long freight trains barrel past.

taffer 7y ago
That's probably more of an effect than a cause. In European cities it is often advertised how close an apartment is to a train station.
izzydata 7y ago
I just wanted to say that you should have used the word trope instead of meme.
- m463 7y ago
  Yes, you're right (I would change my comment but missed the edit deadline)
maerF0x0 7y ago
> They made the striking observation that at station after station, the immediately adjacent land uses are remarkably low-value. Parking lots. Vacant lots. Strip malls, auto body shops... >> Caltrain stations are subject to these kinds of noise These trains mean someone has to wear earplugs to get a good night's sleep. No wonder the rich dont want to live near it.

carapace 7y ago

Keep in mind, Redwood City will be literally underwater along with the rest of the Bay Area in a few decades.

dhruvrrp 7y ago
If the Bay is still relevant at that time, then all it would take is a few hundred million to contain the rising water levels, in the form of barriers, flood walls, etc.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  Who's paying?
  - asdff 7y ago
    How about the property owners whose property this build will protect.
asdff 7y ago
If nola can make a levee surely the richest city on this side of the pacific can too.
- carapace 7y ago
  The levee that broke and destroyed the city? Because of the topology of the Bay we would basically have to build a levee all the way around it. IANACivil Engineer, but that seems like a big deal. All I'm saying is that if you're looking to buy or build in the Bay Area do your homework. A couple of years ago I was looking at buying a condo on the water in Redwood City and it dawned on me that, by the time I paid off the mortgage, it would be underwater both literally and figuratively. ( https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-is-underwater-mortgage.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-is-underwater-m... ) It doesn't make sense to build up new urban sites along CalTrain if we don't also deal with the effects of climate change, eh?

Endy 7y ago

I can speak to the NJTransit example briefly buzzed past. In NJ, train stations are not destinations. Most people I see get off the train and into either an Uber or some other NJTransit vehicle. Edited because of a misclick.

EliRivers 7y ago
In NJ, train stations are not destinations. Isn't that the point the writer is making? That they should be bustling hives of residential, retail and commercial activity.
- Endy 7y ago
  Yes, and the issue is that the trains were put in places that never were destinations. You would have to change the long-standing habits of businesses and commuters to alter that. Even they light rail doesn't change that. Mass transit fits in the edges and cracks here, and is something of a "necessary annoyance" to the state. For proof, look no further than the aggressive privatization of bus lines to companies who can't or won't run the buses on the schedule set by NJTransit. And they aren't being penalized in any meaningful way.
vonmoltke 7y ago
Most aren't. Some towns are trying to change that. On the Montclair-Boonton line Bloomfield and Montclair (Bay Street) have higher-end apartment and mixed-use complexes either right next to the station or within a short walk. I know the Main-Bergen line pretty much fits that description, though. Hell, there's one "station" that is just a half-ass strip of asphalt that passes for a parking lot.
- Endy 7y ago
  I can think of three that fit that description. Or the ones up a bunch of stairs, with no parking and no real signs.
asdff 7y ago
Those are commuter stations where you might live a couple miles away. Would you take an uber when you are a 10 min walk away? What if you had a bike lane and that became 3 mins with a scooter? All it takes is a place open at 6 am and a place open from 5pm on for an area like that to completely transform. People using uber is the fault of the transit area being zoned improperly.

musicale 7y ago

Low density notwithstanding, the Menlo Park example does seem like a nice, walkable downtown area near the train station. (And apparently the Menlo Park station was built in 1867, making it one of the oldest passenger rail stations in California!)

mjevans 7y ago

I like the concept of living near strong connectivity; however there are other downsides that NEED to be addressed. 1) The building code isn't good enough. I should not be able to hear my neighbors, let alone the train, at all when things are closed. I should also have fresh air that doesn't smell like laundry, perfumes, the garbage chute, or whatever cooking experiments are happening in other apartments. 2) Outside of cities cars are still needed; more so in America. That rail network needs to connect to multiple potential 'apartments for my car'. Those are also the places that would be a dropoff / interface for external to the city users to drive to and then take transit infrastructure the rest of the way in.

davidw 7y ago
There's an argument that outside of actual safety issues, maybe it's best to leave this up to the market. My wife and I looked at a house once in Padova, where we lived, that was right next to the train tracks. You couldn't help but feel the trains go by, let alone hearing them. It was not for us, but it was super cheap, and might have been an option for someone without a lot of other good options - or a great option for someone hearing impaired who didn't care too much.

achenatx 7y ago

In texas we only have property taxes. Commercial property tends to be undertaxed because the appraisal districts are not allowed to see actual sales prices. Property taxes tend to be around 2-2.5% and for non homestead properties there is no limit to the increase. We regularly hear about older people getting taxed out of their homes (though there are programs to somewhat hold their taxes constant). In austin we are starting to have an affordability crisis, whereas cities like houston are doing much better. The taxation is the same, what is different is the restrictive zoning in austin. In austin permitting can take 6-9 months and single family zoning restricts what can be built. The city council tried to revise zoning and failed due to NIMBYs, but they are trying again this year. This is a reminder that the more competing systems of laws we have the better. Every program implemented at the federal level only gives us one chance to get it right. The state level gives us 50 chances and the local level gives us thousands of chances.

peteey 7y ago
Florida lacks an income tax too. Property taxes are distorted due to a law called Save Our Homes. SOH limits increasing assessed value of home prices to inflation (Consumer Price Index) or 3%, whichever is lower. This mostly shift the tax burden to new home buyers and renters. You get odd effects like in 2009, when property values dramatically fell due to the market bubble bursting, taxes actually went up because the assessed values were so much lower then the just market value. In 2016, a 6.9 million dollar house was only taxed at 2.8 million. Source https://www.jacksonville.com/photogallery/LK/20170125/PHOTOGALLERY/301259950/PH/1 https://www.jacksonville.com/photogallery/LK/20170125/PHOTOG...
UnFleshedOne 7y ago
No opinion on the specific issue at hand, but wouldn't you eventually want to take the winning system of laws and implement it on federal level? Or would you expect better performing systems to naturally spread over? Are there any examples of that actually happening?
- filoleg 7y ago
  I think it is not state spread vs. federal, but more like state spread -> federal. Disclaimer: talking about the US. For something simple that can stand on its own, that was what we saw with gay marriage and, I personally believe, what we will see with cannabis legalization. For something as complex and interconnected as property taxes, I don't think it will be that easy to convert it to federal, so state spread is what we can hope for in the near future. An example of a similar issue is income taxing, where we ended up with a two-tiered solution: one federal (same for every state) + one state (differs for each state, with some having none at all).

ImaCake 7y ago

North Sydney around Ryde used to be like this. Low density with lots of shuttered shopfronts. But Sydney has undergone a massive apartment development boom and the areas around these train stations often have high rise apartments now. The shops are all occupied. Eastwood even has a minimum height requirement for new buildings.

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