7 ms·

The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking. That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut

The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking. That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots.

Lammy 6y ago
It makes a lot more sense when you realize the entire "environmental movement" arose as the justifiable/defensible workaround for the Fair Housing Act in 1968: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=environmentalist%2Cenvironmentalism%2C%22civil+rights%22%2C%22local+control%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cenvironmentalist%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cenvironmentalism%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%22%20civil%20rights%20%22%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%22%20local%20control%20%22%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=environmentali... e: I can't get the direct link to work properly, but press the blue "Search lots of books" button and it will work.
- riazrizvi 6y ago
  In 1968 the number of books on 'environment movement' here rockets up. It will be more compelling if there is a link between events related to housing regulations and the other massive upswing in 1985, and then the downswing in 1997.
- chucksmash 6y ago
  Linking to a ngrams graph that shows "environmentalism" graphed against "civil rights" as evidence that environmentalism is just a fig leaf for segregation is beyond flimsy. Surely this must be the arch example of correlation ≠ causation.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Of course there's so much more to it, but there isn't really a single source I can link you that makes this argument. One example I can easily show is the history of planned freeways in the Bay Area that were canceled due to environmental concerns. Take a look at what areas the canceled freeways would have connected, then take a look at the demographics of those areas. Notice in particular how no freeway (or rail!) connection to the Golden Gate was ever allowed, since that would have connected Marin to the Bay Area megalopolis. https://www.kurumi.com/roads/3di/sanfran.html https://www.kurumi.com/roads/3di/sanfran.html http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea
    - derrick_jensen 6y ago
      Robert Moses was criticized for doing similar things in New York City (making overpasses too low so buses couldn't go through, etc). Have you read The Power Broker by Robert Caro?
      - Lammy 6y ago
        Yep, I have. I'm not saying freeways would be all roses, but I generally believe that connecting people can only be an overall good thing. It's absolutely true that viaduct structures, for example, are visible separations between low-lying neighborhoods, but they weren't intended to stay low-lying neighborhoods. The original planning documents for e.g. the Embarcadero Freeway talk about the proposed developments that would complement it. I also think the common framing as freeways "cutting a path through neighborhoods" is exactly the wrong way to look at it. San Francisco's, for example, were based on this 1935 traffic study. The whole point was to get already-existing traffic up off the streets and keep neighborhoods livable: https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/5409261018/in/album-72157622139053795/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/5409261018/in/album-... There's (unfortunately) a real-world example I can point to showing this still holds up in the 21st Century. The northernmost part of the Central Freeway carried more than 50% crosstown (non-neighborhood) traffic in San Francisco but was torn down in the very early 2000s and replaced with the horrible Octavia Blvd that keeps killing cyclists and has made neighborhood traffic worse in every way, even necessitating crosswalk closures. Here's the full study on before and after the "Freeway Removal" (now there's a dogwhistle for ya!) https://www.sfcta.org/sites/default/files/2019-03/Final%20Report%20Executive%20Summary.pdf https://www.sfcta.org/sites/default/files/2019-03/Final%20Re... "In the absence of meaningful improvements to travel improvements, the reduction in automobile capacity has not been accompanied by noticeable mode shift. Instead, the neighborhood has been challenged to effectively deal with high peak‐period traffic levels and resulting congestion"
    - tropdrop 6y ago
      The canceling of those planned freeways for environmental concerns is not problematic in itself - the failure to deliver the planned rail alternative is. [1] 1 - https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5057/5423961825_2d5af7cef4_o.jpg https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5057/5423961825_2d5af7cef4_o.... (Proposed rail lines for BART, 1961)
- clairity 6y ago
  powerful forces aren't able to block decentralized developments dotting the country, but they're able to gather enough momentum to pass centralized and controversial regulations? that doesn't pass the smell test. that said, CEQA challenges have become a de facto tool in the nimby arsenal in CA.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    A lot of local governments were overtaken by the anti-growth environmental crowd at the time. Marin County in particular had their 1968 growth plan revoked and a famously anti-growth plan replaced it in 1971: http://www.sausalitohistoricalsociety.com/new-blog/2018/3/7/the-golden-gate-bridge-and-the-defining-of-marin http://www.sausalitohistoricalsociety.com/new-blog/2018/3/7/... 'The decisive blow against growth was initiated in 1971 with the issuance of a Marin Planning Department report that proposed preserving Marin's lands except along the Highway 101 corridor. Entitled "Can the Last Place Last?" the report took its theme from Lew Welch's 1969 poem "The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings" The poem lamented the "hordes" that were "now piling up" and contained a refrain that captured perfectly the sentiment in Marin: "This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go."'
    - clairity 6y ago
      yes, marin is a bastion of nimbyism (it's also quite pretty) but that's not the "entire environmental movement". the objection is to the exaggeration.
      - Lammy 6y ago
        Fair, sorry for my histrionic wording. The "roots of the environmental movement" is more like what I'm getting at. Put it this way: I care about the environment more than ever but no longer consider myself an Environmentalist™ after learning more of its history :)
        clairity 6y ago
        no worries, labels like "environmentalist" don't matter nearly as much as intent and action.
algeoMA 6y ago
From the article: "“Low-income people tend to own cars that are in disrepair and ride motorcycles adding to the noise of a ‘lights out at 8 p.m. community,’” Marylyn Rinaldi, a neighboring condominium owner, wrote in 2011 in a letter to the City Council that was later cited in a lawsuit over the project." Nimbyism at its finest.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Why shouldn't a community be able to decide that they want quiet nights?
  - algeoMA 6y ago
    It's more the sneering, condescending tone of the comment that I thought was jaw-dropping. Sure, noise ordinances are reasonable. But labeling poor people as loud - and thus undesirable - is not okay. I can't believe I even had to explain this to be honest.
  - nerfhammer 6y ago
    what percent of "low-income people" own motorcycles? what would the occupants of 10 apartments have to do such that a small city would no longer be said to be able to have "quiet nights" that could not be enforced against by any method other than excluding the apartments completely?
    - stevehawk 6y ago
      ooh, I'm gonna go with "a lot". Because motorcycles are a lot cheaper to buy, own, and maintain that cars. And a lot of them don't even require licenses in the US (49cc and smaller, if I'm not mistaken).
      - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        A cheap used car provides a lot more utility than an equivalently priced used motorcycle so that's what most people tend to buy if they can only have one vehicle.
three_seagrass 6y ago
Obligatory plug: https://yimbyaction.org/about/ https://yimbyaction.org/about/
- chriswphoto 6y ago
  Loving seems these orgs operating!
spamizbad 6y ago
Absolutely crazy. 53 parking spaces for 10 units? Every unit gets 3 spaces and 2 guest spaces?
- ToFundorNot 6y ago
  It's for public use...which was originally supposed to be paid(to help make the apartments affordable), but got turned into free parking. It was an odd turn of words, but was explained later on.
Medicalidiot 6y ago
A friend of mine lived in the bay area for a bit and ended up leaving because he couldn't handle the virtue signaling. From his experience a significant amount of people would talk about helping low socioeconomic folk, oppression, or any other in vogue topic but never actually do anything. These would then be the loudest voices lobbying against having a methadone clinic in their neighborhood. He's living in Denver now which has a similar problem but on a palatable scale, according to him.
- kradroy 6y ago
  My summary of civic philosophy in the Bay Area: "Think liberally. Act conservatively." In addition to San Francisco I've lived in the US South, the Northeast an in Europe. And out of all those regions I feel the Bay Area has been the most conservative and discordant. It's really a shame how a combination of the Byzantine legal processes and small cadres who know and shape the system have created a tyranny of the minority in the Bay Area and San Francisco in particular.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    The culture is fairly different between the South Bay vs. San Francisco. South Bay is largely full of immigrants living the American dream: they work hard at a FANG during the day, buy an expensive suburban house to go home to at night, take their kids to parks and cultural attractions on the weekends and do their best to make sure they get into a good college, and otherwise mind their own business. Basically like the rest of America but less white. SF has many more people who like to stick their nose in other people's business to enact radical social change. It also has more genuine diversity and weirdness. SF is where people like to do large-scale social experiments, the South Bay largely sticks to large-scale technical experiments. This same distinction also applies to the type of startup that gets founded in each place. South Bay attracts more companies that are capitalizing on a technical change in the world - Google, Apple, Netflix, hardware companies like NVidia and Memorex, drone startups, large scale enterprise software like Cloudera or Palantir. San Francisco attracts more companies that are capitalizing on a social change: AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, Stripe, Zynga, Bird, Lime, Twitter, Medium, etc. Notable exceptions are Facebook (social change but in the South Bay, though they've also built a top-notch technology org) and DropBox (technical, but in SF).
doorstar 6y ago
I admit I don't know much about the affordable housing efforts, but I don't know why anyone would put a lot of work into building affordable housing in Solana Beach. https://goo.gl/maps/X1MN673Pwc57eS2C9 https://goo.gl/maps/X1MN673Pwc57eS2C9 It's a tiny ( by CA standards ) town right on the beach and most non-service jobs are a crowded commute away. I don't object to having affordable housing everywhere, but if I wanted to build some in San Diego county, it's about the last place I would go.
- somethoughts 6y ago
  Yes this feels a bit like clickbait. The town definitely seems to have gentrified in the past 2 decades. Its like trying to build affordable housing in an area where everyone wants to live. It'd be the equivalent to trying to build affordable housing next to Central Park in NYC or Waikiki in Hawaii. Its great to try but don't make a big fuss when it is expensive.
- TA_askhn_iplaw 6y ago
  > ... the last place I would go. A slight exaggeration. The Pearl site is only a 5-minute walk from the train station. Other than that yes, grossly uneconomical. As to your question "why": State of California mandate enforced on all incorporated cities, waste of money or no. And this is why other ritzy areas have no interest in incorporating as cities proper. Rancho Santa Fe has a "Covenant" that performs usual city functions to the maximum extent legally possible e.g. private security guards, while dodging State mandates.
mnm1 6y ago
Until the state starts preempting these idiotic local laws and push builders to build, nothing will change. They have the power. Do they have the votes?

Lammy 6y ago

It makes a lot more sense when you realize the entire "environmental movement" arose as the justifiable/defensible workaround for the Fair Housing Act in 1968: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=environmentalist%2Cenvironmentalism%2C%22civil+rights%22%2C%22local+control%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cenvironmentalist%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cenvironmentalism%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%22%20civil%20rights%20%22%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%22%20local%20control%20%22%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=environmentali... e: I can't get the direct link to work properly, but press the blue "Search lots of books" button and it will work.

riazrizvi 6y ago
In 1968 the number of books on 'environment movement' here rockets up. It will be more compelling if there is a link between events related to housing regulations and the other massive upswing in 1985, and then the downswing in 1997.
chucksmash 6y ago
Linking to a ngrams graph that shows "environmentalism" graphed against "civil rights" as evidence that environmentalism is just a fig leaf for segregation is beyond flimsy. Surely this must be the arch example of correlation ≠ causation.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Of course there's so much more to it, but there isn't really a single source I can link you that makes this argument. One example I can easily show is the history of planned freeways in the Bay Area that were canceled due to environmental concerns. Take a look at what areas the canceled freeways would have connected, then take a look at the demographics of those areas. Notice in particular how no freeway (or rail!) connection to the Golden Gate was ever allowed, since that would have connected Marin to the Bay Area megalopolis. https://www.kurumi.com/roads/3di/sanfran.html https://www.kurumi.com/roads/3di/sanfran.html http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea
  - derrick_jensen 6y ago
    Robert Moses was criticized for doing similar things in New York City (making overpasses too low so buses couldn't go through, etc). Have you read The Power Broker by Robert Caro?
    - Lammy 6y ago
      Yep, I have. I'm not saying freeways would be all roses, but I generally believe that connecting people can only be an overall good thing. It's absolutely true that viaduct structures, for example, are visible separations between low-lying neighborhoods, but they weren't intended to stay low-lying neighborhoods. The original planning documents for e.g. the Embarcadero Freeway talk about the proposed developments that would complement it. I also think the common framing as freeways "cutting a path through neighborhoods" is exactly the wrong way to look at it. San Francisco's, for example, were based on this 1935 traffic study. The whole point was to get already-existing traffic up off the streets and keep neighborhoods livable: https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/5409261018/in/album-72157622139053795/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/5409261018/in/album-... There's (unfortunately) a real-world example I can point to showing this still holds up in the 21st Century. The northernmost part of the Central Freeway carried more than 50% crosstown (non-neighborhood) traffic in San Francisco but was torn down in the very early 2000s and replaced with the horrible Octavia Blvd that keeps killing cyclists and has made neighborhood traffic worse in every way, even necessitating crosswalk closures. Here's the full study on before and after the "Freeway Removal" (now there's a dogwhistle for ya!) https://www.sfcta.org/sites/default/files/2019-03/Final%20Report%20Executive%20Summary.pdf https://www.sfcta.org/sites/default/files/2019-03/Final%20Re... "In the absence of meaningful improvements to travel improvements, the reduction in automobile capacity has not been accompanied by noticeable mode shift. Instead, the neighborhood has been challenged to effectively deal with high peak‐period traffic levels and resulting congestion"
  - tropdrop 6y ago
    The canceling of those planned freeways for environmental concerns is not problematic in itself - the failure to deliver the planned rail alternative is. [1] 1 - https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5057/5423961825_2d5af7cef4_o.jpg https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5057/5423961825_2d5af7cef4_o.... (Proposed rail lines for BART, 1961)
clairity 6y ago
powerful forces aren't able to block decentralized developments dotting the country, but they're able to gather enough momentum to pass centralized and controversial regulations? that doesn't pass the smell test. that said, CEQA challenges have become a de facto tool in the nimby arsenal in CA.
- Lammy 6y ago
  A lot of local governments were overtaken by the anti-growth environmental crowd at the time. Marin County in particular had their 1968 growth plan revoked and a famously anti-growth plan replaced it in 1971: http://www.sausalitohistoricalsociety.com/new-blog/2018/3/7/the-golden-gate-bridge-and-the-defining-of-marin http://www.sausalitohistoricalsociety.com/new-blog/2018/3/7/... 'The decisive blow against growth was initiated in 1971 with the issuance of a Marin Planning Department report that proposed preserving Marin's lands except along the Highway 101 corridor. Entitled "Can the Last Place Last?" the report took its theme from Lew Welch's 1969 poem "The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings" The poem lamented the "hordes" that were "now piling up" and contained a refrain that captured perfectly the sentiment in Marin: "This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go."'
  - clairity 6y ago
    yes, marin is a bastion of nimbyism (it's also quite pretty) but that's not the "entire environmental movement". the objection is to the exaggeration.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      Fair, sorry for my histrionic wording. The "roots of the environmental movement" is more like what I'm getting at. Put it this way: I care about the environment more than ever but no longer consider myself an Environmentalist™ after learning more of its history :)
      - clairity 6y ago
        no worries, labels like "environmentalist" don't matter nearly as much as intent and action.

algeoMA 6y ago

From the article: "“Low-income people tend to own cars that are in disrepair and ride motorcycles adding to the noise of a ‘lights out at 8 p.m. community,’” Marylyn Rinaldi, a neighboring condominium owner, wrote in 2011 in a letter to the City Council that was later cited in a lawsuit over the project." Nimbyism at its finest.

nitrogen 6y ago
Why shouldn't a community be able to decide that they want quiet nights?
- algeoMA 6y ago
  It's more the sneering, condescending tone of the comment that I thought was jaw-dropping. Sure, noise ordinances are reasonable. But labeling poor people as loud - and thus undesirable - is not okay. I can't believe I even had to explain this to be honest.
- nerfhammer 6y ago
  what percent of "low-income people" own motorcycles? what would the occupants of 10 apartments have to do such that a small city would no longer be said to be able to have "quiet nights" that could not be enforced against by any method other than excluding the apartments completely?
  - stevehawk 6y ago
    ooh, I'm gonna go with "a lot". Because motorcycles are a lot cheaper to buy, own, and maintain that cars. And a lot of them don't even require licenses in the US (49cc and smaller, if I'm not mistaken).
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      A cheap used car provides a lot more utility than an equivalently priced used motorcycle so that's what most people tend to buy if they can only have one vehicle.

three_seagrass 6y ago

Obligatory plug: https://yimbyaction.org/about/ https://yimbyaction.org/about/

chriswphoto 6y ago
Loving seems these orgs operating!

spamizbad 6y ago

Absolutely crazy. 53 parking spaces for 10 units? Every unit gets 3 spaces and 2 guest spaces?

ToFundorNot 6y ago
It's for public use...which was originally supposed to be paid(to help make the apartments affordable), but got turned into free parking. It was an odd turn of words, but was explained later on.

Medicalidiot 6y ago

A friend of mine lived in the bay area for a bit and ended up leaving because he couldn't handle the virtue signaling. From his experience a significant amount of people would talk about helping low socioeconomic folk, oppression, or any other in vogue topic but never actually do anything. These would then be the loudest voices lobbying against having a methadone clinic in their neighborhood. He's living in Denver now which has a similar problem but on a palatable scale, according to him.

kradroy 6y ago
My summary of civic philosophy in the Bay Area: "Think liberally. Act conservatively." In addition to San Francisco I've lived in the US South, the Northeast an in Europe. And out of all those regions I feel the Bay Area has been the most conservative and discordant. It's really a shame how a combination of the Byzantine legal processes and small cadres who know and shape the system have created a tyranny of the minority in the Bay Area and San Francisco in particular.
- nostrademons 6y ago
  The culture is fairly different between the South Bay vs. San Francisco. South Bay is largely full of immigrants living the American dream: they work hard at a FANG during the day, buy an expensive suburban house to go home to at night, take their kids to parks and cultural attractions on the weekends and do their best to make sure they get into a good college, and otherwise mind their own business. Basically like the rest of America but less white. SF has many more people who like to stick their nose in other people's business to enact radical social change. It also has more genuine diversity and weirdness. SF is where people like to do large-scale social experiments, the South Bay largely sticks to large-scale technical experiments. This same distinction also applies to the type of startup that gets founded in each place. South Bay attracts more companies that are capitalizing on a technical change in the world - Google, Apple, Netflix, hardware companies like NVidia and Memorex, drone startups, large scale enterprise software like Cloudera or Palantir. San Francisco attracts more companies that are capitalizing on a social change: AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, Stripe, Zynga, Bird, Lime, Twitter, Medium, etc. Notable exceptions are Facebook (social change but in the South Bay, though they've also built a top-notch technology org) and DropBox (technical, but in SF).

doorstar 6y ago

I admit I don't know much about the affordable housing efforts, but I don't know why anyone would put a lot of work into building affordable housing in Solana Beach. https://goo.gl/maps/X1MN673Pwc57eS2C9 https://goo.gl/maps/X1MN673Pwc57eS2C9 It's a tiny ( by CA standards ) town right on the beach and most non-service jobs are a crowded commute away. I don't object to having affordable housing everywhere, but if I wanted to build some in San Diego county, it's about the last place I would go.

somethoughts 6y ago
Yes this feels a bit like clickbait. The town definitely seems to have gentrified in the past 2 decades. Its like trying to build affordable housing in an area where everyone wants to live. It'd be the equivalent to trying to build affordable housing next to Central Park in NYC or Waikiki in Hawaii. Its great to try but don't make a big fuss when it is expensive.
TA_askhn_iplaw 6y ago
> ... the last place I would go. A slight exaggeration. The Pearl site is only a 5-minute walk from the train station. Other than that yes, grossly uneconomical. As to your question "why": State of California mandate enforced on all incorporated cities, waste of money or no. And this is why other ritzy areas have no interest in incorporating as cities proper. Rancho Santa Fe has a "Covenant" that performs usual city functions to the maximum extent legally possible e.g. private security guards, while dodging State mandates.

mnm1 6y ago

Until the state starts preempting these idiotic local laws and push builders to build, nothing will change. They have the power. Do they have the votes?