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I think the bigger risk is that California fails to fix the most pressing issues (mainly housing). Lots of people are leaving the state and lots of people can't
by nxc18 6y ago
I think the bigger risk is that California fails to fix the most pressing issues (mainly housing). Lots of people are leaving the state and lots of people can't afford to live where they work, which causes all sorts of problems, like forcing people to drive long distances and pushing people to build in fire zones.
In the context of the issues facing people, climate regulations just aren't top of mind, excepting the tea party folks.
I fully support the governor in general, but this feels like a band-aid on poor fundamentals. In the case of housing, the state is incompetent and _under_ controlling. I also tend to think the state is _under_ controlling when it is hard to breathe because the air is dirty, something that's happened to me regularly since I've moved here.
- mlindner 6y agoThe housing problem is because of _over_ control. Anyone with a hint of economics teaching could tell you that. There are very strict zoning laws everywhere in the bay area that prevent the building of massive apartment complexes and restricts everything to 3-4 stories at best. This causes massive housing undersupply causing the prices to rocket upwards. San Francisco is especially bad with their government's constant effort to pour amber over all of their "historical" districts full of decrepit falling apart housing that need to be bulldozed and have sky scrapers installed in their place. If you add rent control to try to lower the prices all you will cause is a massive increase in the price of any non-rentcontrolled housing (such as houses). If you think 1.5M dollar houses is expensive, wait till you see 3-4M houses.
- nxc18 6y agoYou've written as if you disagree with me, but I don't think you do. It is very important when discussing political issues to make a distinction between state and local control over issues. I live in a community that is desperately fighting any attempt to build more, denser housing. They are working hard to find loopholes around state initiatives to build more housing. This is a case where the state should be more controlling, specifically by preventing cities from interfering with the creation of housing. Cities should not be allowed to pour amber over historical districts.
- tstrimple 6y agoIf you tell people that housing is an investment and treat it like an investment, people resisting changes which would hurt their investment is entirely predictable. You can't complain about NIMBYism when the system is explicitly designed to promote it. The system is the problem.
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- mlindner 6y agoI guess it's a mixture of terminology. I view control as control no matter what level it's happening at. The state preventing a local government from controlling is not adding more control, it's reducing it.
- Sohcahtoa82 6y agoYeah. As long as the 3-4 story limit exists, then rent controls are the wrong answer. If you want rent controls, then developers need to be able to produce more housing. In other words, if rent controls mean a landlord can only profit $X per unit, then if they want to be able to produce $X*100 in profit, then they need to be able to produce 100 units.
- zbrozek 6y agoWe've also made it extremely slow to do anything. A million small rules. Now the planning department has to check every detail of your plan against all of them. And it means that it takes at least a year and a huge amount of labor to even come up with blueprints.