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There is a developer in Cupertino who has been fighting with the city for years, who got awfully quiet lately. Now I know why. I suspect they have a plan for

There is a developer in Cupertino who has been fighting with the city for years, who got awfully quiet lately. Now I know why. I suspect they have a plan for an absolutely massive high rise behind my house that they will be submitting at 8am tomorrow morning. My neighbors are going to be pissed.

nemo44x 4y ago
Yes, people here celebrating this don't understand at all that all this does is give developers more power over communities they have no interest in but money. And of course, the politicians that they will fund/bribe to make this happen. We just went from democracy to oligarchy in this case.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  No, what this does is give developers the power to bring affordable housing to california. Them making money is just the incentive to do it. Silicon valley was already an oligarchy since housing affordability ensures only the wealthy can afford to vote in local elections.
- matchbok 4y ago
  They are building housing for people and are risking millions. How dare they make some money! How rude of them. Hint: Developers don't have power over communities, rich homeowners do.
- mullingitover 4y ago
  So much of the problems with housing in the state stem from the fact that lots of community members are valuing their investment in their own house over everything else. Housing can either be affordable or it can be a good investment, it really can't be both. At this point the market has been so perverted by entrenched interests blocking new development that I would be okay with a dictatorship of developers for a solid decade. It might be enough to dig us out of the hole we're in.
  - scop 4y ago
    This is a point I don't often see discussed. I have friends and family in CA whose primary asset is their home, with little to nothing invested elsewhere (perhaps because of the high cost of living)...resulting in a mortgage they have no intention of ever paying off, little retirement savings, and fingers crossed for a cash-out down the line.
    - nickspag 4y ago
      That's not all of it, either. Older buyers have gotten the lionshare of their wealth from housing appreciation by preventing new housing and pay a lower tax burden than new buyers due to Prop 13. There's a reason that when it made it to the supreme court Justice Stevens called it medeival and referred to entrenched owners as Squires. "During the two past decades, California property owners have enjoyed extraordinary prosperity. As the State's population has mushroomed, so has the value of its real estate. Between 1976 and 1986 alone, the total assessed value of California property subject to property taxation increased tenfold. Simply put, those who invested in California real estate in the 1970s are among the most fortunate capitalists in the world.Proposition 13 has provided these successful investors with a tremendous windfall and, in doing so, has created severe inequities in California's property tax scheme. These property owners (hereinafter "the Squires) are guaranteed that, so long as they retain their property and do not improve it, their taxes will not increase more than 2% in any given year. As a direct result of this windfall for the Squires, later purchasers must pay far more than their fair share of property taxes." https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-1912.ZD.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-1912.ZD.html
      - mullingitover 4y ago
        > and do not improve it This might be one of the craziest parts of it, and it makes me understand how a lot of neighborhoods in California just look sort of...dumpy. The system actively discourages you from improving a property! My dream is to see the state property tax code flipped to land value tax. No penalties for improving the property, just purely tax the value of the land and penalize people who park their vacant lots for year after year.
- rcpt 4y ago
  Home owners, not developers, get all the profits in real estate. https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2021/03/16/who-benefits-from-the-housing-market-graph-of-the-week/ https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2021/03/16/who-benefits-f...
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Collectively, perhaps, but the developer who built my house has by far the biggest house in the area, on the nicest property, with the nicest cars, and Facebook albums filled to the brim with pictures of him meeting famous people I'll not ever get to schmooze with. I think his profit margin must be okay.
- opportune 4y ago
  Where does this narrative about evil greedy developers come from? If the new housing represents a net increase in people, then the developers are filling unmet demand. It’s not that different from restricting the supply of milk and getting angry that milk producers will make more money when those restrictions are lifted. Yeah, they will, but only because there is more demand for their product than they were previously legally allowed to satisfy. Developer margins should actually decrease when zoning is more permissive anyway. Right now in SF there is a whole cottage industry of “facilitators” and direct graft/corruption making it hard to build housing unless you know how to work the system. While it’s absolutely true that developers can cut corners, I personally don’t see them as any more evil than any other business.
  - TedShiller 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      The fact that housing prices are high isn't a sign of greed: it's a sign of a constrained supply. Developers build housing, the price is set by what people are willing to pay.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - burntwater 4y ago
        The price is also set by developers. There's no reason for rent to increase 30-50% in a single year other than literal greed. Will people pay it? Yes, because they have no choice in the matter, they need a place to live. But it's still greed raising the price.
        fasteddie 4y ago
        The people actually building the buildings (developers) are, generally, different than the people renting out buildings (landlords). Developers profit when more units are built, landlords are hurt with increased competition. Also, recent California law was changed so that the maximum allowable annual rent increase is ~10% (still rough if you are hit with that, but better than 30%).
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Oh no, not companies making money by producing something people want! Anything but that! Seriously, I don't care if developers are "greedy". "Greedy" describes every business and most people!
- civilian 4y ago
  holy shit I love oligarchy now
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  And whose fault is it?
- mediaman 4y ago
  It's interesting to hear people describe government-organized supply restriction cartels as some sort of utopia, whereas, in their world, eliminating the cartel is in fact creating an "oligarchy."
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  > give developers more power over communities they have no interest in but money They make something that people would like. Calling that "power" is extremely unhelpful.
- jmeister 4y ago
  Who cares if the developers get rich? Do you(and the rest of society) get what you want? “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages” ― Adam Smith
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > Do you(and the rest of society) get what you want? That is an interesting question. In many cases people here are advocating that the locals don't get what they want, so that "the rest of society" does.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      The NIMBY locals always think they represent the community when poll after poll shows that they do not. The process has been setup to allow a few squeaky wheels to have veto power over change. It's just pure narcissism of the NIMBY that all the other community members have the same belief as them.
wrycoder 4y ago
[flagged]
- epistasis 4y ago
  This seems to be a completely baseless accusation of corruption... or is there some other meaning here I'm not understanding?
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
Vallco?
- jedberg 4y ago
  Yeah, Sand Hill Properties in particular.
stevehawk 4y ago
Is it Bob Tillman? Because I'm absolutely rooting for him if he's still stuck in San Fran building purgatory.
- raldi 4y ago
  Bob was the owner of the "Is this a historic laundromat?" property. He knew that his project was fully compliant with state laws that would force San Francisco to approve his permit for eight stories of mixed-use housing, and indeed, after much bluster, they eventually were. The building was demolished last year and construction is in progress.
Dowwie 4y ago
would be great if you let HN know the outcome!
xwdv 4y ago
Good. Fuck your neighbors. The region is long overdue for more housing to fix the ridiculous situation that has formed down there. Hopefully the region will become more affordable as new housing floods the area and brings down prices and makes things generally more affordable.
- nostromo123 4y ago
  Yeah, f*k other people, let's cram as many souls as we can in affordable dystopian high rises... that's the spirit!
  - xwdv 4y ago
    Ah dystopian high rises, I never thought about it that way. Maybe you’re right. At least the dystopian homeless encampments we currently have are always out of your line of sight.
  - webkike 4y ago
    High rises are not dystopian. What is dystopian is people living in fucking tents
    - encryptluks2 4y ago
      I'd rather live in a tent in a rural area with access to nature than an inner city high rise.
      - anotheracctfo 4y ago
        Sure, you can go homestead in Alaska. That should reduce demand in your city :)
      - gretch 4y ago
        Okay fantastic. California and the USA has extremely huge amounts of 'rural area with access to nature'. Enough for everyone with those desires to set up shop. I really don't think anyone would complain at all as many people are already camped on city sidewalks and we tolerate it, so hey, it's a somewhat improvement. For everyone else, we are in desperate demand of 'inner city high rise'
jldugger 4y ago
Interest rates are super high right now, so you might get some reprieve in the short term. They'll probably slow play Vallco until rates come down, doing just enough to keep their zoning exemption?
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  The reprieve in the short term would be lots of new housing built as quickly as possible, to help alleviate massively rising rents. High interest rates preventing construction of new, desperately needed housing is exactly the opposite of what we need.
- jedberg 4y ago
  I think they only have to file for the permit, not sure how long they can wait to build. But they probably already had the financing locked up? You're right though, I'm sure they'll do as little as they can to get their project approved and stay approved while waiting for cheaper money.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Interest rates are not super high. They seem that way if you only look at the past few year, but they are close to normal if you look on a larger time scale.
  - jldugger 4y ago
    It's not me you have to convince buddy, its the Sand Hill Property team and their econometrist, who are probably expecting an interest rate cut cycle this year.
- cudgy 4y ago
  Rates are higher relative to last 10 years or so, but historically they are not “super high”. https://www.valuepenguin.com/mortgages/historical-mortgage-rates https://www.valuepenguin.com/mortgages/historical-mortgage-r...
telotortium 4y ago
By "high-rise", you must mean 5-over-1, right? I doubt anyone's going to build an actual high rise in the suburbs.
- threeseed 4y ago
  Why ? Developers are driven by what makes them money. A high rise in the middle of a popular suburb is an easy way to do that and does exist in many parts of the world.
- apozem 4y ago
  I mean, maybe it's a high rise. When the builder's remedy went into effect for Santa Monica, developers proposed 15- and 11-story apartment buildings [0]. There is a massive amount of demand for housing in California that is being choked by restrictive, ruinous zoning. Meeting that demand is going to take some big buildings. [0]: https://www.planetizen.com/news/2022/12/120313-first-full-builders-remedy-application-filed-santa-monica https://www.planetizen.com/news/2022/12/120313-first-full-bu...
  - tomtheelder 4y ago
    Well that's a little different as Santa Monica is already full of high rises- it's definitely a city and not a suburb.
- jedberg 4y ago
  The original plan from the developer included multiple 8 story towers. But the property is right off of a major freeway and just a few minutes from 20+ story towers in San Jose, so I see no reason to hold back.
  - telotortium 4y ago
    Interesting - I could see California cities attempting to force fairly tall towers (taller than 5-over-1s) into small areas in an attempt to prevent upzoning the rest of the SFH areas in their cities. Hopefully this will work better than the last time this strategy was attempted (housing projects in mid-20th-century USA).
Nition 4y ago
I had to laugh at the Santa Monica list in the article where someone, immediately after the Builder's Remedy came into effect, submitted a 2000 unit development. I wonder how long they'd been sitting on that one.

nemo44x 4y ago

Yes, people here celebrating this don't understand at all that all this does is give developers more power over communities they have no interest in but money. And of course, the politicians that they will fund/bribe to make this happen. We just went from democracy to oligarchy in this case.

HDThoreaun 4y ago
No, what this does is give developers the power to bring affordable housing to california. Them making money is just the incentive to do it. Silicon valley was already an oligarchy since housing affordability ensures only the wealthy can afford to vote in local elections.
matchbok 4y ago
They are building housing for people and are risking millions. How dare they make some money! How rude of them. Hint: Developers don't have power over communities, rich homeowners do.
mullingitover 4y ago
So much of the problems with housing in the state stem from the fact that lots of community members are valuing their investment in their own house over everything else. Housing can either be affordable or it can be a good investment, it really can't be both. At this point the market has been so perverted by entrenched interests blocking new development that I would be okay with a dictatorship of developers for a solid decade. It might be enough to dig us out of the hole we're in.
- scop 4y ago
  This is a point I don't often see discussed. I have friends and family in CA whose primary asset is their home, with little to nothing invested elsewhere (perhaps because of the high cost of living)...resulting in a mortgage they have no intention of ever paying off, little retirement savings, and fingers crossed for a cash-out down the line.
  - nickspag 4y ago
    That's not all of it, either. Older buyers have gotten the lionshare of their wealth from housing appreciation by preventing new housing and pay a lower tax burden than new buyers due to Prop 13. There's a reason that when it made it to the supreme court Justice Stevens called it medeival and referred to entrenched owners as Squires. "During the two past decades, California property owners have enjoyed extraordinary prosperity. As the State's population has mushroomed, so has the value of its real estate. Between 1976 and 1986 alone, the total assessed value of California property subject to property taxation increased tenfold. Simply put, those who invested in California real estate in the 1970s are among the most fortunate capitalists in the world.Proposition 13 has provided these successful investors with a tremendous windfall and, in doing so, has created severe inequities in California's property tax scheme. These property owners (hereinafter "the Squires) are guaranteed that, so long as they retain their property and do not improve it, their taxes will not increase more than 2% in any given year. As a direct result of this windfall for the Squires, later purchasers must pay far more than their fair share of property taxes." https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-1912.ZD.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-1912.ZD.html
    - mullingitover 4y ago
      > and do not improve it This might be one of the craziest parts of it, and it makes me understand how a lot of neighborhoods in California just look sort of...dumpy. The system actively discourages you from improving a property! My dream is to see the state property tax code flipped to land value tax. No penalties for improving the property, just purely tax the value of the land and penalize people who park their vacant lots for year after year.
rcpt 4y ago
Home owners, not developers, get all the profits in real estate. https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2021/03/16/who-benefits-from-the-housing-market-graph-of-the-week/ https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2021/03/16/who-benefits-f...
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Collectively, perhaps, but the developer who built my house has by far the biggest house in the area, on the nicest property, with the nicest cars, and Facebook albums filled to the brim with pictures of him meeting famous people I'll not ever get to schmooze with. I think his profit margin must be okay.
opportune 4y ago
Where does this narrative about evil greedy developers come from? If the new housing represents a net increase in people, then the developers are filling unmet demand. It’s not that different from restricting the supply of milk and getting angry that milk producers will make more money when those restrictions are lifted. Yeah, they will, but only because there is more demand for their product than they were previously legally allowed to satisfy. Developer margins should actually decrease when zoning is more permissive anyway. Right now in SF there is a whole cottage industry of “facilitators” and direct graft/corruption making it hard to build housing unless you know how to work the system. While it’s absolutely true that developers can cut corners, I personally don’t see them as any more evil than any other business.
- TedShiller 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    The fact that housing prices are high isn't a sign of greed: it's a sign of a constrained supply. Developers build housing, the price is set by what people are willing to pay.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - burntwater 4y ago
      The price is also set by developers. There's no reason for rent to increase 30-50% in a single year other than literal greed. Will people pay it? Yes, because they have no choice in the matter, they need a place to live. But it's still greed raising the price.
      - fasteddie 4y ago
        The people actually building the buildings (developers) are, generally, different than the people renting out buildings (landlords). Developers profit when more units are built, landlords are hurt with increased competition. Also, recent California law was changed so that the maximum allowable annual rent increase is ~10% (still rough if you are hit with that, but better than 30%).
TulliusCicero 4y ago
Oh no, not companies making money by producing something people want! Anything but that! Seriously, I don't care if developers are "greedy". "Greedy" describes every business and most people!
civilian 4y ago
holy shit I love oligarchy now
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
darth_avocado 4y ago
And whose fault is it?
mediaman 4y ago
It's interesting to hear people describe government-organized supply restriction cartels as some sort of utopia, whereas, in their world, eliminating the cartel is in fact creating an "oligarchy."
robertlagrant 4y ago
> give developers more power over communities they have no interest in but money They make something that people would like. Calling that "power" is extremely unhelpful.
jmeister 4y ago
Who cares if the developers get rich? Do you(and the rest of society) get what you want? “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages” ― Adam Smith
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Do you(and the rest of society) get what you want? That is an interesting question. In many cases people here are advocating that the locals don't get what they want, so that "the rest of society" does.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    The NIMBY locals always think they represent the community when poll after poll shows that they do not. The process has been setup to allow a few squeaky wheels to have veto power over change. It's just pure narcissism of the NIMBY that all the other community members have the same belief as them.

wrycoder 4y ago

[flagged]

epistasis 4y ago
This seems to be a completely baseless accusation of corruption... or is there some other meaning here I'm not understanding?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

Vallco?

jedberg 4y ago
Yeah, Sand Hill Properties in particular.

stevehawk 4y ago

Is it Bob Tillman? Because I'm absolutely rooting for him if he's still stuck in San Fran building purgatory.

raldi 4y ago
Bob was the owner of the "Is this a historic laundromat?" property. He knew that his project was fully compliant with state laws that would force San Francisco to approve his permit for eight stories of mixed-use housing, and indeed, after much bluster, they eventually were. The building was demolished last year and construction is in progress.

Dowwie 4y ago

would be great if you let HN know the outcome!

xwdv 4y ago

Good. Fuck your neighbors. The region is long overdue for more housing to fix the ridiculous situation that has formed down there. Hopefully the region will become more affordable as new housing floods the area and brings down prices and makes things generally more affordable.

nostromo123 4y ago
Yeah, f*k other people, let's cram as many souls as we can in affordable dystopian high rises... that's the spirit!
- xwdv 4y ago
  Ah dystopian high rises, I never thought about it that way. Maybe you’re right. At least the dystopian homeless encampments we currently have are always out of your line of sight.
- webkike 4y ago
  High rises are not dystopian. What is dystopian is people living in fucking tents
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    I'd rather live in a tent in a rural area with access to nature than an inner city high rise.
    - anotheracctfo 4y ago
      Sure, you can go homestead in Alaska. That should reduce demand in your city :)
    - gretch 4y ago
      Okay fantastic. California and the USA has extremely huge amounts of 'rural area with access to nature'. Enough for everyone with those desires to set up shop. I really don't think anyone would complain at all as many people are already camped on city sidewalks and we tolerate it, so hey, it's a somewhat improvement. For everyone else, we are in desperate demand of 'inner city high rise'

jldugger 4y ago

Interest rates are super high right now, so you might get some reprieve in the short term. They'll probably slow play Vallco until rates come down, doing just enough to keep their zoning exemption?

CydeWeys 4y ago
The reprieve in the short term would be lots of new housing built as quickly as possible, to help alleviate massively rising rents. High interest rates preventing construction of new, desperately needed housing is exactly the opposite of what we need.
jedberg 4y ago
I think they only have to file for the permit, not sure how long they can wait to build. But they probably already had the financing locked up? You're right though, I'm sure they'll do as little as they can to get their project approved and stay approved while waiting for cheaper money.
bluGill 4y ago
Interest rates are not super high. They seem that way if you only look at the past few year, but they are close to normal if you look on a larger time scale.
- jldugger 4y ago
  It's not me you have to convince buddy, its the Sand Hill Property team and their econometrist, who are probably expecting an interest rate cut cycle this year.
cudgy 4y ago
Rates are higher relative to last 10 years or so, but historically they are not “super high”. https://www.valuepenguin.com/mortgages/historical-mortgage-rates https://www.valuepenguin.com/mortgages/historical-mortgage-r...

telotortium 4y ago

By "high-rise", you must mean 5-over-1, right? I doubt anyone's going to build an actual high rise in the suburbs.

threeseed 4y ago
Why ? Developers are driven by what makes them money. A high rise in the middle of a popular suburb is an easy way to do that and does exist in many parts of the world.
apozem 4y ago
I mean, maybe it's a high rise. When the builder's remedy went into effect for Santa Monica, developers proposed 15- and 11-story apartment buildings [0]. There is a massive amount of demand for housing in California that is being choked by restrictive, ruinous zoning. Meeting that demand is going to take some big buildings. [0]: https://www.planetizen.com/news/2022/12/120313-first-full-builders-remedy-application-filed-santa-monica https://www.planetizen.com/news/2022/12/120313-first-full-bu...
- tomtheelder 4y ago
  Well that's a little different as Santa Monica is already full of high rises- it's definitely a city and not a suburb.
jedberg 4y ago
The original plan from the developer included multiple 8 story towers. But the property is right off of a major freeway and just a few minutes from 20+ story towers in San Jose, so I see no reason to hold back.
- telotortium 4y ago
  Interesting - I could see California cities attempting to force fairly tall towers (taller than 5-over-1s) into small areas in an attempt to prevent upzoning the rest of the SFH areas in their cities. Hopefully this will work better than the last time this strategy was attempted (housing projects in mid-20th-century USA).

Nition 4y ago

I had to laugh at the Santa Monica list in the article where someone, immediately after the Builder's Remedy came into effect, submitted a 2000 unit development. I wonder how long they'd been sitting on that one.