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1. The people in Modesto are pissed! San Francisco’s housing prices have been spilling over into their city for years! And San Francisco imports almost its enti

1. The people in Modesto are pissed! San Francisco’s housing prices have been spilling over into their city for years! And San Francisco imports almost its entire population’s worth of people during the day to work in and contribute payroll taxes to the city. It’s not the great argument you think it is to claim that none of these people have a stake in its land use. Additionally, Nevada and Arizona share a jurisdiction with California: the United States of America. The state is already taking land use out of city hands through SB35 et al., and this will only become more acute as each city loses credibility as a good faith actor. The federal government also dictates what can be built through mortgage policy. The subdivision itself was a policy invention to make it easy to guarantee federal mortgages. 2. Most residents do not give a crap about apartment buildings. Surveys prove this over and over. SB50, an upzoning bill, polled quite well with the general population. The ones who do will quickly get over themselves when it becomes clear that apartments aren’t a “shot to the nuts.” Honestly, this sentiment is extremely weird and endemic to America; most countries with great standards of living manage to live in varied urban topologies just fine.

lazide 6y ago
That’s nice and all, but none of those things but SB35 actually matters in any real way that I can tell - and SB35 passed in ‘17 and so far hasn’t changed anything important, or we wouldn’t still all be bitching about the exact same thing we have been since well before then! SB50 never passed, Modesto can ‘be pissed’ (why exactly?) at the higher property values and income all their residents who work in SF are benefiting from - they don’t seem to be trying to change that equation much! Sure someone is complaining about it, but when is THAT not the case about... everything? I’m also curious what standing or stake they could claim (you assert they have one) - are they all paying property taxes in SF, or City residents who aren’t being allowed to vote because they commute to their second homes in Modesto? Or are they just driving in and out for jobs, and have as much claim to authority on how the city should run it’s business as a UPS driver dropping off a package? I’m also curious what legal standing Phoenix or SF could claim for a suit against each other for.... people moving of their own free will between those cities for economic reasons? That would be quite an interesting lawsuit at the federal level for sure! Who would end up paying whom anyway? The city that was too expensive for otherwise qualified labor; so they moved to somewhere cheaper and are now contributing, tax paying, members of society there? Or the evil ‘good citizen’ stealing city luring productive (but maybe not 7 figure earning) folks away with bribes like affordable housing?
- shuckles 6y ago
  1. You are naive about how this process works. SB35 has already led to thousands of new units of construction, including - finally - the construction of 2k units at what was formerly Vallco mall, despite lawsuits and general objections by Cupertino city council. That is only the beginning, because it was paired with reforms to the Regional Housing Needs Allocation process which has 10x'd the planned minimum requirement of new homes. Beverly Hills and Palo Alto are both quite upset about having to let people build homes or lose local control. Some more information here: https://www.sfweekly.com/news/bay-area-takes-step-toward-major-housing-growth/ https://www.sfweekly.com/news/bay-area-takes-step-toward-maj... These changes take years to make their real impact felt, and the crisis is half a century in the making. The future is _more_ state pre-emption of zoning, not less. The funny thing is: the ignorance of local voters to the larger systems at play lead to lots of recent decisions that will soon backfire. For example, San Mateo recently re-affirmed city-wide height limits which more or less guarantee that their RHNA requirements will require their planning department end single family zoning in large parts of the city; there's no place for them to shove apartment towers! 2. SB50 failed due to conservative state reps from SoCal, in particular LA. It had plenty of support with reps in NorCal, and in any case its mere existence disproves your point that there is no basis for states short-circuiting local control. 3. I'm not going to explain how delegation works to you in detail, since I assume you are intelligent enough to get it. There are many powers that are delegated to city governments which can be taken away if cities prove themselves incompetent at administering it. City departments go under conservatorship of the state all the time. 4. I'm not sure why you assume the legal remedy is a lawsuit. Changes to how federal mortgages are backed; removal of subsidy on home insurance which makes sprawl math workout (albeit in the short term); a shift away from federally mandated highway spending; changes to how housing assistance programs are managed and qualified for at the federal level could all manifest as land use changes in cities without explicitly being about zoning. There are probably individual bureaucrats at the DOT or FHWA who are deciding which expansions of 101 or 880 are worthwhile to fund and which aren't. Federal law could easily let them prioritize funding for BART instead.
  - shuckles 6y ago
    I missed that you specifically asked for legal standing. The basis of SFH zoning was created in Euclid, which required it be necessary to uphold safety and be reasonable. There are strong arguments against it on both grounds: https://ij.org/sc_podcast/148/ https://ij.org/sc_podcast/148/ In that case, standing was any landowner holding land zoned single family. A Phoenix landowner of a SFH subdivision could screw it for the whole country. Not narrowly zoning, but the viability of single family zoning also depends on property tax stabilization regimes, which themselves can be challenged under the equal protection clause.

lazide 6y ago

That’s nice and all, but none of those things but SB35 actually matters in any real way that I can tell - and SB35 passed in ‘17 and so far hasn’t changed anything important, or we wouldn’t still all be bitching about the exact same thing we have been since well before then! SB50 never passed, Modesto can ‘be pissed’ (why exactly?) at the higher property values and income all their residents who work in SF are benefiting from - they don’t seem to be trying to change that equation much! Sure someone is complaining about it, but when is THAT not the case about... everything? I’m also curious what standing or stake they could claim (you assert they have one) - are they all paying property taxes in SF, or City residents who aren’t being allowed to vote because they commute to their second homes in Modesto? Or are they just driving in and out for jobs, and have as much claim to authority on how the city should run it’s business as a UPS driver dropping off a package? I’m also curious what legal standing Phoenix or SF could claim for a suit against each other for.... people moving of their own free will between those cities for economic reasons? That would be quite an interesting lawsuit at the federal level for sure! Who would end up paying whom anyway? The city that was too expensive for otherwise qualified labor; so they moved to somewhere cheaper and are now contributing, tax paying, members of society there? Or the evil ‘good citizen’ stealing city luring productive (but maybe not 7 figure earning) folks away with bribes like affordable housing?

shuckles 6y ago
1. You are naive about how this process works. SB35 has already led to thousands of new units of construction, including - finally - the construction of 2k units at what was formerly Vallco mall, despite lawsuits and general objections by Cupertino city council. That is only the beginning, because it was paired with reforms to the Regional Housing Needs Allocation process which has 10x'd the planned minimum requirement of new homes. Beverly Hills and Palo Alto are both quite upset about having to let people build homes or lose local control. Some more information here: https://www.sfweekly.com/news/bay-area-takes-step-toward-major-housing-growth/ https://www.sfweekly.com/news/bay-area-takes-step-toward-maj... These changes take years to make their real impact felt, and the crisis is half a century in the making. The future is _more_ state pre-emption of zoning, not less. The funny thing is: the ignorance of local voters to the larger systems at play lead to lots of recent decisions that will soon backfire. For example, San Mateo recently re-affirmed city-wide height limits which more or less guarantee that their RHNA requirements will require their planning department end single family zoning in large parts of the city; there's no place for them to shove apartment towers! 2. SB50 failed due to conservative state reps from SoCal, in particular LA. It had plenty of support with reps in NorCal, and in any case its mere existence disproves your point that there is no basis for states short-circuiting local control. 3. I'm not going to explain how delegation works to you in detail, since I assume you are intelligent enough to get it. There are many powers that are delegated to city governments which can be taken away if cities prove themselves incompetent at administering it. City departments go under conservatorship of the state all the time. 4. I'm not sure why you assume the legal remedy is a lawsuit. Changes to how federal mortgages are backed; removal of subsidy on home insurance which makes sprawl math workout (albeit in the short term); a shift away from federally mandated highway spending; changes to how housing assistance programs are managed and qualified for at the federal level could all manifest as land use changes in cities without explicitly being about zoning. There are probably individual bureaucrats at the DOT or FHWA who are deciding which expansions of 101 or 880 are worthwhile to fund and which aren't. Federal law could easily let them prioritize funding for BART instead.
- shuckles 6y ago
  I missed that you specifically asked for legal standing. The basis of SFH zoning was created in Euclid, which required it be necessary to uphold safety and be reasonable. There are strong arguments against it on both grounds: https://ij.org/sc_podcast/148/ https://ij.org/sc_podcast/148/ In that case, standing was any landowner holding land zoned single family. A Phoenix landowner of a SFH subdivision could screw it for the whole country. Not narrowly zoning, but the viability of single family zoning also depends on property tax stabilization regimes, which themselves can be challenged under the equal protection clause.