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First builder’s remedy plan for Bay Area revealed in Los Altos Hills
- pvg 4y agoTopic was discussed at great length a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34597507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34597507 1236 comments
- gardenfelder 4y agoWow! 28 cars dumping onto a tiny road. Hard to see this idea ending well... https://www.google.com/maps/place/11511+Summit+Wood+Rd,+Los+Altos+Hills,+CA+94022/@37.353741,-122.1368223,368m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x808fb1af25da643f:0x6fa5178b0173b743!8m2!3d37.3537368!4d-122.135728!16s%2Fg%2F11c1gg34v_ https://www.google.com/maps/place/11511+Summit+Wood+Rd,+Los+...
- malermeister 4y agoMaybe we should stop overrelying on cars and build some public transport while we're at it?
- acchow 4y agoThe Bay Area has absolutely perfect weather for walking and cycling. Wish we would design more for that
- refurb 4y agoIn a suburban area far from a major city? Not going to happen. Even other countries with great public transit dont do have that.
- eddsh1994 4y agoHave you ever tried to use public transport to get from Los Altos to San Jose? Any other developed country trumps public transport in the middle of the Bay. My wife, who loves public transport, gave up almost immediately when we moved here - I just Uber but would use public transport if available. Cycling just can't get you far enough sadly.
- refurb 4y agoThats my point. Its not reasonable to expect rapid public transit in a place like PA. You could run buses, but youve just turned a 30 min commute by car into a 1.5hr bus ride with multiple bus changes. Transit only works in medium to high density cities.
- CPLX 4y agoVisit Switzerland some time it’ll blow your mind. Basically every square inch of that country is connected to convenient and frequent public transit. And it’s one of the most naturally inhospitable places for building anything you can imagine, we’re talking towns on the side of cliffs and so on. But if you’re in a tiny village at minimum there’s a bus that connects to rail, frequently, and that rail is frequent and highly reliable and goes literally everywhere. It’s possible and we have the resources to do it too we just don’t.
- refurb 4y agoThere are buses in PA that connect to Caltrain. Turning a 30 min commute by car into 1.5hr by transit means few uses it.
- 4y ago
- gotoeleven 4y agoYou know that these 28 cars are unlikely to be driving all at the same time right? Most of these neighborhoods you could 10x the traffic without anyone noticing.
- ed25519FUUU 4y agoIn CA there’s at least one or two cars per bedroom of housing. They’ll be parking all along the street. But so what? This is a last ditch effort to beef up the critically low housing supply, not intended to be the ideal solution.
- ryan93 4y agoFunny to imagine all 28 people leaving for work everyday at the exact same time.
- tennisflyi 4y agoI guess. Like they all have the same length commute?
- epistasis 4y agoThats not many cars, and it's a short road. If each car takes 5 seconds to pass a particular point, that's only a few minutes overall of cars in a day. I would suggest that Los Altos Hills should start enabling transit if their roads are overloaded. Or even better, they should have done some planning.
- acdha 4y agoPretty sure you could fill that entire place with people who would like the 10 minute bike commute to Foothill College. The weather will be fine for that like 360 days a year.
- ETHisso2017 4y agoThis is going to be so fun to watch
- zbrozek 4y agoOh hey, I didn't expect my submission would make the front page of HN.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- triyambakam 4y agoHave you received any complaints yet?
- zbrozek 4y agoNope!
- triyambakam 4y agoThanks for answering. Are you building with a demographic in mind?
- zbrozek 4y agoNot really, tbh. There's a mix of unit types and the depth of the shortage is so extreme that I'm not worried at all about finding takers for pretty much anything.
- pirate787 4y agoIt is a kind of tyranny to override the democratic will of local communities regarding their land use preferences.
- epistasis 4y agoIt's a greater kind of tyranny to monopolize land use and build walls to block the free association of people, and limit what a person can do with their own land.
- BurningFrog 4y agoWhat about the land owner's will to build what they wish on their own land?
- guardiangod 4y agoIf people want absolute control over the land in their town, they can buy the land and put a fence around it.
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- newaccount2021 4y ago[dead]
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- BurningFrog 4y agoMoney quote: > The developer hazards to guess construction will take at least five years to start
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwaway2037 4y agoAgree. They will need to win some court cases that will set precedent. That will be brutally hard. After, it will be much simpler going forward. Ten years from now, there will be plenty of precedent in California courts to wave away most objections. Plus, I expect cities will try to enact all kinds of sneaky, unfair legislation to create as many delays and hurdles as possible. Again, these will need to be challenged in local courts as (state-wise) unconstitutional and discarded. This will take time.
- quacked 4y agoI think it's so funny how almost all new housing is incredibly ugly. You could convert a lot of NIMBYs to MIMBYs (Maybe In My Back Yard) if developers picked a style to build other than "box with cheap siding that juts right up to the edge of the lot". I am aware that many currently-loved styles were considered atrocious when they were invented, and I direct your attention to the thousands of disgusting strip malls, regular malls, and faux-brutalist office buildings from the 50s-70s that the public is at best apathetic towards as proof that simply because some styles became loved, not all styles will do so.
- arcticbull 4y agoI actually really like it haha. But either way my opinion is their property, their call. So long as it's safe. [edit] It's NIMBY's own fault if they don't like what gets built. They had their chance to participate in the process by designing a reasonable and fair housing element. They said no, and chose violence. It's time to enter the 'find-out' phase.
- quacked 4y agoThere is of course no accounting for taste. My most recent comment that wasn't this was similar denouncement of the most contemporary UI design trend--I just can't stand flat, rectangular black-grey-beige minimalism, especially when it's compared to the past 10,000 years of colorful, angular ornamentation from thousands of cultures both alive and extinct. As for the "find-out" phase--many cities are going into that phase, including my beloved hometown. I'm founding out that what The People want is 5-over-1 stick frame buildings owned by out-of-state development companies. I don't even know what I could possibly do in order to motivate my city to take itself seriously architecturally and build some new housing that doesn't scream "warehouse". Perhaps I should become a housing developer and propagandist and do it myself.
- acdha 4y agoI kind of see where you’re coming from but I would look around the suburbs and note how many houses were constructed on the grounds of “hey, it’s cheap!” — and people generally didn’t mind if it was reasonably built. They probably planted something in front anyway and got on with life. Given the number of people desperate for housing, I’m content leaving this for the rich people who want custom builds. The NIMBYs aren’t going to relax even if the entire project is designed by a who’s who of architecture.
- newaccount2021 4y ago[dead]
- 88913527 4y agoA breath of fresh air. The biggest consequence of locking people out of wealth-building opportunities like homeownership is the terminal state of such decisions leaves us looking more like Mexico than Switzerland. Shouldn't we have all have a shared desire to lift society up? It's the same argument for how I'd prefer the average person in society to have more education than not. When people have no opportunity to get ahead, they have nothing to lose, which is net loss for society at large. We want to encourage people to live in good areas.
- jeffbee 4y agoOK but let's be clear: in any future steady state that actually works, nobody will have a rational expectation of building wealth through homeownership.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- djha-skin 4y agoHomeownership shouldn't be about building wealth. It should be about having a place for your family to live while you grow old. The best thing about the rate hike is that it has banished real estate investors and others who drive prices high and are only there to get rich.
- epistasis 4y agoHomeownership should be like a piggy-bank, not like a stock. Because let's be clear, any other homeownership wealth building scheme is a pyramid scheme. And I don't know how you could say this will stop homeownership being a wealth building scheme, because it certainly allows that to continue.
- bumbledraven 4y agoUnless perhaps your home is on a rural property with enough acres.
- floren 4y agoThank god.
- mperham 4y ago> The vehicular capacity [28 spaces] is far below the city’s required zoning for 80 spaces. Holy cow, mandating that many parking spaces is outrageous. That's four parking spaces per unit.
- arcticbull 4y agoYep minimum parking mandates are wild. Imagine how few buildings you'd have in Manhattan with those kinds of mandates.
- StillBored 4y agoManhattan isn't the bay area, which has better transit than most places but cars are still needed to go many places. 4 spots is very reasonable for a midside+ single family home if you consider two adults and a child or two of driving age, or visitors. Given that this appears to be basically 5 single family townhomes, and 15 apartments, its probably going to cause real parking nightmares for people who live there if any of those single bedroom units have two adults living in them. Its going to require a hard cap of 1 car per apartment unit and 2 cars per townhome which leaves 3 spots for visitors. I hope the people who live there enjoy walking to the closest public transport because some number of them aren't going to have any choice unless the place is full of single adults who never have live in friends. Except its the bay area, 800sf apartment will probably be full of couples, invariably with kids. So that isn't to say 80 is the right number either, but i'm guessing anything below 1.5 spots per apartment and 3 spots per townhome (~40 total) is legitimately too few.
- zbrozek 4y agoI lived in a townhouse complex in Sunnyvale which had either 1 or 2 spots per ~1500 sqft unit, and it was totally fine. Most homes were occupied by couples, most whose kids had long since moved out and a few who had small children. I lived in a two-spot unit and had either one (when I lived alone) or two (when my girlfriend moved in) cars during the ten years I lived there.
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
- ed25519FUUU 4y agoI love the builders remedy. I feel like it doesn’t go far enough though. All local zoning should be removed without any “affordable housing” requirements at all. Just build high density. That’s it.
- outside1234 4y agoAmen - the solution to affordable housing is lots and lots of housing.
- eganist 4y agoNah the affordable housing stipulation is needed so there's not a glut of luxe homes where builders and sellers collude to prop prices. At least with that requirement, some people will get into homes sooner. And frankly it's for the best; it'll enable service staff etc. to live closer to the cities that need them.
- arcticbull 4y agoDevelopers build what the market will pay for. If they overbuild luxury houses, they'll go down in price. All new supply is good supply, period. We need everything from SROs to luxury penthouses. That's the only way we land on affordable housing in a market economy.
- eganist 4y ago> Developers build what the market will pay for. Developers build for whatever profits the most, and they'll avoid taking a loss just as an entrepreneur will do what they can to avoid a down round. That's why we're short millions of housing units but no one's addressing the need; developers would rather create market at the top than address low margin markets at the bottom. > If they overbuild luxury houses, they'll go down in price. Tons of overbuilt supply isn't doing much against new build pricing (not enough to make it affordable. 10% tops when we instead need homes that are 50+% discounted relative to market). In fact, many developers are instead subsidizing points on mortgages through preferred lenders so they can justify that original pricing, and the points are often cheaper than a market adjustment on a home. > All new supply is good supply, period. That's not the case when developers would rather hold than sell at a loss. See my first point and the homes going off the market waiting for housing to pick up steam again. > We need everything from SROs to luxury penthouses. That's the only way we land on affordable housing in a market economy. Lol. That's the extent of my rebuttal. I'm not here to debate, I apologize. But I'd advise you sit down with a few local builders to understand their strategies to maximize gain in this market; quite a few are prepared to hold as long as needed rather than build cheap and sell to lower-margin markets. And that does exactly nothing to address today's housing problem; if it was a simple matter of supply and demand, it'd have already been addressed with the vast swaths of land we've got.
- jeffbee 4y agoRelatedly, YIMBY Law also launched another fusillade of a dozen lawsuits against jurisdictions that failed to adopt plans by the ABAG deadline. https://twitter.com/Yimby_Law/status/1622994623613358082 https://twitter.com/Yimby_Law/status/1622994623613358082
- epistasis 4y agoThis is very refreshing to see. One of the faux-leftist points that NIMBYs use to block housing in California is to say that developers only want to build in communities with lower rents, and displace existing residents, and therefore all development should be stopped to prevent gentrification. However, the past year has shown the opposite, and completely disproven this line of argument. What causes gentrification is that city planning forces all development into the communities with the lowest rents. And the bills that would have broadly upzoned, and included protections for at risk communities, would have accomplished more housing affordability without displacing the most at-risk tenants. Seeing where builder's remedy projects have gone should be a mask-off moment for those that opposed SB50 and SB827, two bills that would have allowed a ton of new development that enables transit. Projects like this one in Los Altos Hills are good for increasing economic integration of the Bay Area, but they do it at a cost of reinforcing car-dependent living.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Fatnino 4y agoInterestingly, that address is blurred on Google Street view. The roads to access the property (Summit Wood as well as Rhus Ridge and especially Bassett Lane) are at most a car and a half wide in some places. Quadrupling the number of cars that come and go is going to be catastrophicly hilarious for those of us who don't live there. Probably a little less funny when a wildfire rips through there.