5 ms·
California's housing policy failures have repercussions up and down the west coast. It's sad they didn't follow Oregon's lead and legalize some more diverse ho
by davidw 7y ago
California's housing policy failures have repercussions up and down the west coast.
It's sad they didn't follow Oregon's lead and legalize some more diverse housing options.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago“Legalize” housing options. The way we talk about housing reflects part of the problem: the government wants you to ask for permission (and take their cut) before you can do anything, via permitting and zoning laws. They could care less if they’re a big part of the problem.
- zozbot234 7y agoThe real answer is to legalize and tax it. Prop 13 is a huge distortion on the California real estate market.
- rcpt 7y ago> legalize and tax it Thank you for this.
- wahern 7y agoProp 13 is a huge distortion to tax and revenue generally, but it doesn't promote anti-development NIMBYism. If anything, Prop 13 should make denser development more tolerable to existing residents as otherwise denser development in their neighborhood would lead to accelerated increases in assessed land values. That's the very reason Prop 13 was enacted in the first place--to improve ownership security in the face of rapid changes in the neighborhood. The one and only fix for NIMBYism is to remove local control. Cities have every incentive to continue restrictive zoning because the immediate costs are externalized to the larger region, while the benefits--satisfaction of home owning voters who don't want multi-family dwellings in their neighborhood--inure directly to the city leaders. It's a collective action problem. Mandates don't work well because leaders who comply are voted out of office, while those who find loopholes or simply ignore mandates are favored at the polls. So when politicians complain that SB50 and similar bills remove local control, that's exactly the point. But nobody wants to say that aloud because to most people "local control" is in the abstract a good thing, and losing local control a bad thing.
- harryh 7y agoProp 13 is a huge distortion to tax and revenue generally, but it doesn't promote anti-development NIMBYism. When the carrying costs of a piece of property are artificially low there isn't nearly as much incentive to put that piece of property to its best and highest use, so you end up with people being just fine with single family houses instead of multi story apartment buildings.