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California has a more principled approach to housing capacity planning called RHNA, in which the state sets a zoning budget (like that proposed by David Schleic
by yonran 7y ago
California has a more principled approach to housing capacity planning called RHNA, in which the state sets a zoning budget (like that proposed by David Schleicher https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/4955/ https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/4955/) and then delegates to local governments the responsibility to zone to allow enough houses to meet that budget. Unfortunately, the RHNA has numerous flaws including vastly underestimating the “need,” lax enforcement, and having very long cycles. Scott Wiener has previously addressed the flaws somewhat (SB 35 (2017) and SB 828 (2018)), but there is still a lot that must be done to fix the RHNA; see this good overview for more information and potential administrative improvements (https://law.ucdavis.edu/centers/environmental/files/Elmendorf_et_al_Making-It-Work1.pdf https://law.ucdavis.edu/centers/environmental/files/Elmendor...)
The appeal of Wiener’s SB 50 was that it would have quickly increased the capacity of housing using fairly good heuristics to improve access to opportunity (already residential, near transit stops or jobs, not high fire risk). It’s unfortunate that the state senate doesn’t seem to want to treat the housing shortage with the urgency that it deserves.
- SllX 7y agoNo policy, not one, out of Sacramento is going to solve affordable housing in a stagnant property market in which people are incentivized not to sell, rent or lease their properties. Sacramento could centralize zoning and effectively upzone the entire State tomorrow and it would be one State constitutional amendment away from being overturned, which is not nearly as high a bar as it should be.
- exjdjeejfh 7y agoPrincipled is a way of making it sound less terrible than 'restrained'. California is a perfect example of what happens when you let environmentalists handle housing policy, the poor suffer because environmentalism is classism in disguise in these social contexts.
- sitkack 7y agoNice how you slipped your pet bugaboo into your argument. Enviros are not responsible for the height caps and the sprawl.
- ogre_codes 7y agoThis is literally the exact opposite of what an environmentalist would want in terms of urban growth and planning. Environmentally friendly planning means you have housing near where people work to avoid highly polluting long commutes. The problem is NIMBY bullshit in the purest sense. People will use every excuse in the book to prevent new housing in their neighborhood. While a fair amount of the time environmental policies are abused to block development, zoning laws are also abused, parking/ land use legislation, hell I've seen houses blocked because they increase the shade in a park by 2% for half an hour during the evening. None of this is "environmentalism", its rich people standing on a high hill screwing over everyone else beneath them.
- turk73 7y agoI just love how all these Kali liberals are just such incredible hypocrites. It is astounding to watch. They blame everyone else but themselves and double down whenever challenged and then run headlong into these untenable situations. My liberal Kali relatives care about one thing and one thing only: The value of the two properties they own! They are their retirement nestegg and must be protected at all costs. Plus, they prance around like multi-millionaires based on those illiquid assets.
- Aperocky 7y agoAh, so exactly what happened with Hong Kong and their public housing. Blocked by homeowners who don't want their real estate to go down in value. Now it's one of the most expensive place in the world with New Territory largely empty.
- api 7y agoProperty owner cabals blocking development like this is cartel capitalism at the local level. What you have here is a cartel restricting supply to profit from scarcity.
- sbierwagen 7y ago>Environmentally friendly planning means you have housing near where people work to avoid highly polluting long commutes. Vehicle miles driven doesn't make as big of a difference as one might expect. A paper[0] I saw linked on reddit had an interesting graph: https://imgur.com/a/n7u8fGH https://imgur.com/a/n7u8fGH In this paper, what carbon emissions you lose by not driving you gain from building emissions. Maybe because the study area was New York, with more fuel oil-heated buildings? Presumably, decarbonized heating and electricity generation would make a difference, but New York state already is pretty good by that metric: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/newyork/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/newyork/ (Though nowhere near carbon neutral, or carbon negative, as would be required for keeping global warming to 2C) --- 0: Andrews, C. J. (2008). Greenhouse gas emissions along the rural-urban gradient. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09640560802423780 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09640560802423780 If you don't want to buy the PDF, then visit the crow site.
- yonran 7y agoBy “principled,” I mean that the RHNA sends the signal from the state government to the local governments of the state interest (regional quantity of housing to promote housing affordability and availability), while preserving local control over legitimate local concerns, which is what the opposition to SB 50 wanted. It makes sense theoretically; it just doesn’t work in practice due to the lowballed numbers and long time frames.
- alasdair_ 7y ago>California is a perfect example of what happens when you let environmentalists handle housing policy, the poor suffer because environmentalism is classism in disguise in these social contexts. Most of the environmentalists that I know are very much in favor of increasing housing density and reducing commute time in ICE vehicles. Current housing policy does neither of these things.
- linkregister 7y agoEnvironmentalist support for density increases is only about 20 years old. When these policies were created, it was done by the previous generation of lawmakers.
- njarboe 7y agoProgressives now desire to live in the urban cores of large cities. It make sense for them to have their various political views reinforce each other.
- jibe 7y agoMost of the environmentalists that I know are very much in favor of increasing housing density as long as it isn't in their neighborhood.
- mc3 7y agoBut doesn't rezoning land to higher density increase it's value?
- p1necone 7y agoI don't think that's unique to environmentalists, turns out a big subset of everyone is selfish like that.
- jibe 7y agoYes, it may be selfish, but for environmentalists it is selfish and hypocritical. I'm specifically looking at the wealthy, anti-growth, green community on the SF Peninsula.
- codemac 7y agoAre Napa, Atherton, and Malibu filled with environmentalists? I'm so confused by your reaction, are there specific housing policies that are focused on the environment that have had bigger effects than things like prop 13? or cities with 30k jobs in a year but 300 units of housing (looking at you, mountain view)?
- jibe 7y agoThe endangered species act probably had 10x the effect on stifling building as Prop 13. Can you imagine a project like Foster City happening in the current environment? https://www.fostercity.org/community/page/creation-foster-city-land https://www.fostercity.org/community/page/creation-foster-ci... It takes Palo Alto 30 years to do flood mitigation because of a couple frogs in the creek. If Mountain View needs housing, make more land. It will never happen because there are always myriad obstacles to building. https://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2010/09/30/landfill-and-liquefaction/ https://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2010/09/30/landfill-and-liquefact... Look how much of the city of SF was built on landfill. When was the last time a major bay area development was done on reclaimed land?
- Gibbon1 7y agoAfter WWII the Army Core of Engineers had a plan to fill most of the bay.
- avocado4 7y agoAtherton looks so funny from a satellite: https://imgur.com/a/kKpymj9 https://imgur.com/a/kKpymj9 You can see the NIMBY lines so clearly.
- zpallin 7y agoWhile Environmentalism is definitely classist, and CEQA has played a part in preventing affordable development in cities, there are so many other factors that boiling it down to environmentalism is absurd. If anything, CEQA and other environmental regulations have contributed more to improving the quality of life for working class people and the poor than it has contributed to their detriment. California is the median for poverty in the US and also happens to be in the top 15 for quality of life while also being in the top 10 most environmentally friendly states. Because of that, I don't see a correlation between environmentalism and poverty.
- rayiner 7y agoCalifornia is at the bottom for poverty on the only measure that matters (the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for cost of living): https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sd-california-poverty-rate-20180913-htmlstory.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversatio...
- zpallin 7y agoFair enough, but even considering that, the other states at the top of the list are a grab bag consisting of some of the worst states in terms of environmental regulations. My point is that there is no absolute correlation with environmentalism and poverty.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- api 7y agoMost environmentalists are in favor of increased density. The opposition is more NIMBYs who either don't want their neighborhood to ever change, don't want poor people anywhere near them, or want their house value to go up.
- rednerrus 7y ago> environmentalism is classism in disguise.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Karishma1234 7y agoThank you for saying this. Environmentalism is an old fashioned imperialism dressed up in new clothes. "Some" people who think they are better than others decide that "denser" housing is somehow better and when someone disagrees with them obviously those people are too selfish for protecting their own interest and not accepting the vision of these masterminds.
- CalRobert 7y agoIt's what happens when you let homeowners form a cartel and vote on how much new housing to create (and thus how much to dilute their own home's worth by). Environmentalism has nothing to do with it.
- supercow12 7y agoThe article says that SB 50 was supported by environmentalist groups. >The bill also garnered support from environmental organizations, including Natural Resources Defense Council and California PIRG, because of its potential to reduce the carbon pollution that comes from long driving commutes.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agowhen you restrain housing, everyone suffers.
- eli_gottlieb 7y ago>It’s unfortunate that the state senate doesn’t seem to want to treat the housing shortage with the urgency that it deserves. The state senators are probably making quite a bit of money off this housing shortage that they wouldn't make with an adequate housing supply on the market.
- potatoz2 7y agoIt's much likelier that they are responding to the voters that have the time and money to make their reelection difficult.
- baddox 7y agoOkay, change "state senators are probably making quite a bit of money off this housing shortage" to "state senators are probably being awarded with a lot of power by supporting this housing shortage." Decision-making on the basis of wanting to be powerful is certainly not better than decision-making on the basis of wanting to be wealthy.
- potatoz2 7y agoIt's very different though, because in the former case the assumption is that direct financial benefit is blocking all chance of change. In the second you realize that organizing by different interest groups (renters for example) can easily change the calculus. Senators who are landlords will gladly vote against their financial interests to stay in office, by and large (or be replaced by senators who are will to do so).
- eli_gottlieb 7y agoWho are also making large sums of money off the housing crisis. I really don't think the State Senators are likely to consist overwhelmingly of renters, anyway: if their property value is appreciating, they're benefiting.
- 0xB31B1B 7y agoI think all 40 senators in CA own a home in CA and something like 65% own at least one unit they rent out. This decision is extremely frustrating coming from a legislature filled with landlords.
- api 7y agoI don't care if it's principled or not. It's obviously not working.
- generalpass 7y agoPrinciple over efficacy, donchyaknow.