18 ms·

95% of Bay Area Cities Lost Zoning Authority

257 points by apozem 4y ago

tomohawk 4y ago
It'll be interesting to see what the unintended consequences of this big, sweeping gesture will be in the next few years.
encoderer 4y ago
Saving you the click - it really is a matter for the courts now. If developers have not begun to litigate these projects, then cities have not lost anything yet.
prottog 4y ago
There still seems to be quite a few strings attached: > ... As long as developments are 20% low-income or 100% middle-income and are environmentally sound ... What's the difference between "environmentally sound" and the onerous environmental review that Bay Area construction projects had to go through?
- aclatuts 4y ago
  I don't think there is much difference that's why all the projects plan for 20% low income units.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    You are misparsing the sentence: it is: ( 20% low-income or 100% middle-income ) and environmentally sound Not: 20% low-income or ( 100% middle-income and environmentally sound )
- yardie 4y ago
  Build housing with 20% low-income set asides or take your chances with environmental review. I think the intention is you can't shortcut all the bureaucratic bullshit with this neat trick.
  - 93po 4y ago
    I see this in Seattle and it makes no sense and just annoys the shit of me when I'm looking for housing. They'll list their income restricted units as their entry level price online, then you look at their actual listings and they're all $1000 more expensive per month. The real problem that makes no sense, however, is that these income restricted units are sometimes like $2000-2500 a month. And to qualify you have to make less than like 60k a year or something. They can't afford to the rent. I don't get it.
    - pandaman 4y ago
      From what I understand those are for the Section 8 tenants.
      - 93po 4y ago
        Right. But for section 8 it's still only for low income people right? And they can't afford the listed (already discounted) rent.
        pandaman 4y ago
        Section 8 pays their entire rent less 25% or 30% of their income (AGI) so they can afford anything, provided it fits Section 8 requirements.
        93po 4y ago
        That makes these make a lot more sense, thanks for clarifying this!
  - mannerheim 4y ago
    I don't think the 20% low-income gets you out of CEQA.
- steveklabnik 4y ago
  You're probably referring to the California Environmental Quality Act. It is very unclear how these two things intersect. My guess is some court will decide sometime in the future. By default, as far as I know, CEQA still applies. My understanding of the wording there comes from https://abag.ca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-10/Builders-Remedy-and-Housing-Elements.pdf https://abag.ca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-10/Bu... which says > The five findings which would allow denial of an eligible project can be summarized as follows: > <snip> > 4. The project is proposed on land zoned for agriculture or resource preservation that is surrounded on at least two sides by land being used for agriculture or resource preservation or there are not adequate water or sewage facilities to the serve the project. but I am not an expert on these details whatsoever.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > You're probably referring to the California Environmental Quality Act. It is very unclear how these two things intersect. My guess is some court will decide sometime in the future. A trial court already has already ruled that it does and that environmental review has to be completed before a project enters the Buklder’s Remedy process. Appeals and further legislation are likely.
    - steveklabnik 4y ago
      Thank you! I hadn't heard that yet.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > What's the difference between "environmentally sound" and the onerous environmental review that Bay Area construction projects had to go through? Its all (with narrow exemptions) California construction projects, not most Bay Area prohects, and there is no difference; this sentence is referring to the fact that Builder’s Remedy projects are not exempt from CEQA.
- psychlops 4y ago
  One of those options gets the inspector front row seats at a Lakers game.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    There is no inspector level override to allow projects. CEQA overrides all this. Here's a person that spent five years in courts, because a neighbor didn't want a single family home to expand due to aesthetic concerns, that suddenly shifted to fake "environmental" concerns as soon as the city level obstruction failed. https://twitter.com/tribtowerviews/status/1628517859101130753?s=46&t=ZnAYuhkDrh0HSFLIpSs7_Q https://twitter.com/tribtowerviews/status/162851785910113075... The threat of years of lawsuit is enough to kill most projects, as that amount of uncertainty and risk will eliminate all financial backing for any but the very most motivated, such as those living in their own homes with tons of money to burn. Discretionary approval of projects is definitely a corruption machine, as exposed recently in LA, and any politician that endorsed discretionary community review is almost certainly corrupt. However it's also the norm in California. Even with that discretionary review, CEQA is still a powerful tool for stopping projects that improve the environment, due to the long decision timelines.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  It’s not too hard for developers to build 20% low income.
  - microtherion 4y ago
    Especially since "low income" is defined relative to area income. One of the first builder's remedy projects is announced in Los Altos Hills, where median family income is $250K a year. "Low income housing" means it has to be affordable to somebody making 80% of that, i.e. $200K a year.
CalRobert 4y ago
The idea that owners of homes should be able to make it (almost) illegal to build more homes in an area with some of the highest housing costs in the country is grossly immoral. It enriches homeowners at the expense of other's misery. Grandkids grow up without knowing their grandparents, careers are stunted, and lives are wasted on horrendous commutes (or, considering the safety of driving, ended entirely). When a building is proposed, the benefactors are diffuse - any of the people looking for a home will benefit from its existence. But the people who oppose it are concentrated - anyone who lives near the new building. For too long our planning system has only considered the latter, and nobody has spoken for the person who will be seeking a home in the future (though groups like SFBARF come to mind).
- pirate787 4y ago
  The idea that a state government can seize land-use decision-making power from local communities is anti-democratic and grossly immoral.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    If the local communities are completely incapable of even a modicum of good governance, what choice is there?
    - enriquec 4y ago
      "incapable of even a modicum of good governance"? really? You can't point to a single way in which these local communities govern better than the State of California? Thats laughable - at best.
      - gjsman-1000 4y ago
        Perhaps you should re-read the article, where it shows that >90% of the local communities failed to create zoning plans that comply with state law. That's their fault - they had literally years to prepare, for a >30 year old law, and failed. The latest events are the consequences of their own ineptitude. They thought they could just get away with not zoning for new construction of any significance, which is basically a protection racket.
tnel77 4y ago
Let’s hope that we start to see some more dense building occur. I get not wanting a skyscraper next to your ranch-style home, but the housing affordability crisis needs to end. If not for the good of our fellow citizens, at the very least so people can have more money in their pockets to stimulate the economy more so than just by paying their rent.
steveklabnik 4y ago
Discussed three weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34597507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34597507 (And not to toot my own horn but that title does a much better job of explaining what's going on)
- enriquec 4y ago
  I disagree. This says what is actually being done - while that title uses a biased and meaningless marketing term.
  - steveklabnik 4y ago
    If a municipality truly lost zoning authority, anyone could build anything anywhere they wanted. That isn't the case. One very specific way of bypassing usual zoning codes in certain circumstances is a very different thing, and that specific way has a common name that's broader than just California, even.
  - alecnotthompson 4y ago
    we gotta nimby on our hands
ak217 4y ago
I doubt this applies to cities that adopted their housing elements by the Jan 31 deadline and submitted them as revisions that are still pending review by the HCD. I'm sure some of those will still eventually be judged out of compliance and builder's remedy may stand, but for now they're just pending review. The cities that are likely to actually be subjected to builder's remedy (which will be challenged in court, which might cause delays for any developers trying to use it, but is still a useful bargaining chip) are those marked as "NEW CYCLE". Those cities did not prepare any housing permitting plan submission to the HCD at all by the deadline.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Yes the question is not whether the plans were deemed to be compliant, it is whether the plans were in fact compliant. The only clear-cut cases are where cities failed to even adopt a plan. Less clear are those cities that are vocally subverting state law. Even less clear are those cities with adopted plans that are marginally compliant, like Berkeley, which helps explain why Berkeley has so far not attracted any "builder's remedy" plans.
- cryptonector 4y ago
  From TFA: | 96 of 101 Bay Area municipalities had their housing elements rejected Then TFA discusses one in particular at some length that did get their HE in by the deadline and had it rejected.
  - nikodunk 4y ago
    TFA?
  - ak217 4y ago
    Yes but I think that's incorrect. I see no evidence of those recent HEs getting rejected. All the article is going on is a flag in the HCD database, not actual official communications with the cities. The cities I'm familiar with have received no such letters (yet).
foolfoolz 4y ago
i think the 95% is not accurate. if you read the linked report many cities are in various stages of approval, but it appears a few are quite far along
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  Courts may disagree, but the head of the bureaucracy that runs this program said all cities that "are in various stages of approval"(a.k.a. not approved) as of Feb. 1 are out of approval and builders remedy is available.
newaccount2021 4y ago
[dead]
adamsmith143 4y ago
Fascinated to see the effect on the supply of housing and affordability in the Bay Area. Know lots of people who outright reject the idea of moving there because of housing costs despite the potential career boon.
- teaearlgraycold 4y ago
  Rent has gone down in recent years at least
- dangwhy 4y ago
  > because of housing costs despite the potential career boon. Tech jobs adjust for col though ? Its maybe 3k more/month at high estimate. I know bay area jobs in tech ajdust for 35k more for sure.
  - adamsmith143 4y ago
    35k per year doesn't cover the difference when I can live in a "lcol" city and buy a house for 400k that's probable 2M+ in the Bay. Mostly talking about people interested in raising a family in a home and not renters.
    - dangwhy 4y ago
      > 400k that's probable 2M+ This seems like an extreme example. I have friends raising 2 kids in Pleasanton, CA working for bigtech. They bought their houses at ~ 1M before the housing craziness started. They made a similar move from suburbs of chicago with 3k extra monthly mortgage for the new house in CA, with a salary bump of over 100k.
      - adamsmith143 4y ago
        >They bought their houses at ~ 1M before the housing craziness started. "Only 1M" And I mean sure I could have bought a big house in Palo Alto for 50k or whatever in 1950 but that's not really relevant anymore. Maybe dual tech worker couples can make it work but but there isn't a large pay increase for most other fields in the Bay.
debacle 4y ago
Municipalities should be allowed to lock down their zoning if they want to. That's democracy. This idea that we have to elevate all power to the state or federal government is antidemocratic. It doesn't matter if it's zoning, education, building codes, etc. Historically, the state/federal government has acted as a facilitator of local control, but more and more it seems as though one of the goals is to take local control away. I am not for this. Not because I'm against housing, but because I'm against taking away local control.
- klodolph 4y ago
  Historically, local governments have made a large number of horrible / immoral decisions, and sometimes the state or federal powers step in to override them. This is a constitutional democracy.
  - debacle 4y ago
    95% of municipalities are in the wrong here? Doubtful.
    - klodolph 4y ago
      What is the reasoning here? Why do you say that it is doubtful?
    - teaearlgraycold 4y ago
      Check the rent prices in 95% of the Bay Area vs. median income.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  Everyone, a priori, thinks "local control" means local power. But unfortunately it doesn't. It means the worst sort of leisurely fools who happen to be your neighbors monopolizing local power, at everyone's expense. This is the problem with "democracy" as such. In the american mythology it's about self-governance, but the more "direct, local" one makes it, the more absurd such a proposition becomes. As an empirical matter, people cannot govern themselves. People are too poor in time, energy, concern, care, etc. to do so; and those who arent are the least fit to do it. Democracy was never, nor should be, about "self-governance". It's about accountability. It's simply a mechanism to prevent tyranny. The right "level" of democracy is one which maximises one's daily experienced freedom. And "local democracy" so often is a daily oppression on those who experience it. America is overwhelmed by local corruption, housing-associations, and the like. It's one of the major reasons I would never live there.
LatteLazy 4y ago
People really will do anything to avoid building infrastructure and public transport...
seany 4y ago
This title just seems totally wrong? Not having zoning would be like Houston, where you can have big industry next to a day care (fwiw no zoning is my preference). This is much closer to "areas for SFHs have very relaxed rules if you follow these set of conditions".
- sangnoir 4y ago
  The non-conforming cities lost zoning authorities to the state: not that they no longer have zoning at all.
- soared 4y ago
  Yeah title is missing “over residential buildings”
1minusp 4y ago
Personal data point: I've had to move out of the bay area over a year ago after I failed to purchase a place due to the cost and competition for housing (tried hard, made multiple competitive offers, narrowly missed etc). Still hurts, its such a gorgeous part of the world to be. I doubt i'll ever be able to move back, most of the places we bid on are up several 100Ks over just a year.
HashThis 4y ago
NIMBYs are crying in their backyards
Nifty3929 4y ago
One under-appreciated topic is the extent to which we dis-incent people to sell their homes as they age. Through prop 13 (in California), and a stepped-up cost basis at death (in the US) - we give people very strong financial incentives to continue ownership. As a result you have (forgive me) old people who either remain in their homes or rent them out instead of selling them, long after they otherwise would. I think this is still not as big a factor as the simple lack of building - but it sure doesn't help.
- rcpt 4y ago
  It's the heart of the problem. Prop 13 means there's zero financial downside to appreciating home values which leads to NIMBYs on steroids.
- jj20cf 4y ago
  This will be exacerbated by the low mortgage rates which most homeowners are locked in for the next 20+ years. There should be a way to negotiate with the lender holding my mortgage to let me move it to another house for some increase in basis points which would result in a win-win for both sides.
  - cloverich 4y ago
    I think there is a way to do this? I'm not sure what it is called or how common it is, but we've been house hunting and one of the local Agent's brought it up.
  - Nifty3929 4y ago
    This is a great point! However I'm not sure about your proposed solution. You'd have to give up a fair bit of the difference in interest rate to incent the banks to agree to this. There would likely be a selection bias that most of the people who would take advantage of it were going to sell anyway, and now the bank is stuck carrying a sub-market-rate loan they otherwise would have gotten out of.
- Invictus0 4y ago
  Forgive you what? For saying "old people"?
notfunnyrando 4y ago
authority is a scheme to distribute power (in a 'social' sense, not physical a one) without giving it away
trynewideas 4y ago
> Now the wealthiest community in the United States has the unique distinction of also being the first community in the Bay Area to have a Builder’s Remedy project proposed. A young homeowner and computer engineer, frustrated that the town has been slow to permit the reconstruction of his water-damaged home, has announced plans to use the zoning holiday to build a 15-unit apartment complex and five townhomes on his property. Per the rules, four of those homes will house Los Altos Hills’ first low-income families. ... > Local media speculates that this project may be out of spite by the young engineer regarding the NIMBY government of his town. Maybe, but it’s good nevertheless. Undoubtedly, this project will be sued by neighbors, but the courts have mostly ruled in favor of the Builder’s Remedy and other state housing laws so far. More details about that part here: https://www.siliconvalley.com/2023/02/13/homeowner-invokes-builders-remedy-in-brazen-plan-to-build-20-unit-housing-complex-in-los-altos-hills/ https://www.siliconvalley.com/2023/02/13/homeowner-invokes-b... Zbrozek previously made the news with Los Altos Hills Community Fiber, after fighting a $210,000 Comcast quote for fiber internet service: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/comcast-wanted-210000-for-internet-so-this-man-helped-expand-a-co-op-fiber-isp/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/comcast-wanted-2...
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  This guy is my new hero.
nemo44x 4y ago
> Now the wealthiest community in the United States has the unique distinction of also being the first community in the Bay Area to have a Builder’s Remedy project proposed. A young homeowner and computer engineer, frustrated that the town has been slow to permit the reconstruction of his water-damaged home, has announced plans to use the zoning holiday to build a 15-unit apartment complex and five townhomes on his property. Per the rules, four of those homes will house Los Altos Hills’ first low-income families. This is hilarious. I hope these people who voted for the communists and ran companies that allowed the commissars to take over are happy to reap what they have sown. They now have the gall to act surprised by all of this. It's probably time to take inclusionary housing policy to the Supreme Court because it's clearly unconstitutional.
option 4y ago
so all the water, grid and transport issues we have just magically disappeared with this legislation?
- steveklabnik 4y ago
  I'm not aware of anyone claiming that.
- rcpt 4y ago
  If you honestly believe that aqueducts and roads are outside the scope of human technology then you might be in the wrong line of work
  - option 4y ago
    I honestly believe anyone has a right to live anywhere if they can. But no one is entitled to live anywhere they want.
runsWphotons 4y ago
the bay area will start building just in time for everyone to move out
Yahivin 4y ago
Why not let developers build all the luxury housing they want? Affordable housing is often luxury housing built 30 years ago. It's very difficult to solve affordability today but much easier to solve it in the future. Let time do the work.
- iamwpj 4y ago
  Yes, two generations of working homelessness and we'll be all sorted! After all, it's the best we can do! /s
  - Yahivin 4y ago
    What's the alternative? Ban the only kind of housing that developers, residents, and municipalities are excited to build and then blame capitalism?
    - addisonl 4y ago
      You know things can land somewhere in the middle right? No need to be so intentionally black and white.
    - mkaic 4y ago
      No! The alternative is explicitly to unban the kind of housing that there's demand for. Single-family zoning prevents capitalism from doing its job properly by limiting developers' ability to respond to demand for high-density and low-income housing. Getting rid of most single-family zoning wouldn't make it illegal to build single-family homes, but as the article says regarding Santa Monica, developers are eager to build high-rises and denser housing.
- lukas099 4y ago
  That part seems more like feelgoods than sound economics, but sometimes you need feelgoods to make something politically viable.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
sollewitt 4y ago
You can't have property simultaneously be affordable and a tax advantaged investment vehicle.
- km3r 4y ago
  Maybe treating an essential good as an investment was the wrong way to go about it.
rsync 4y ago
From the article: "The housing element is important. The Builder’s Remedy is nice, but we want compliant housing elements to house population growth, combat segregation, reduce home prices and combat sprawl." I was surprised to see "sprawl" called out in the op because that is directly opposed to the flattening of building restrictions and the deregulation that is being pursued by both the state and housing activists. I thought that sprawl and homogenization of built environments and the flattening of transitions between built spaces was a necessary evil that has been conceded in order to pursue housing deregulation. So ... I'm surprised to see it mentioned - especially as a pejorative - and it seems incoherent in this context.
- slaymaker1907 4y ago
  Sprawl is somewhat the result of over-zoning for SFH. That severely limits the height and density of the city while sprawl is concerned with the total area of the city (compare an area like Manhattan with Atlanta).
- orangeoxidation 4y ago
  > I was surprised to see "sprawl" called out in the op because that is directly opposed to the flattening of building restrictions and the deregulation that is being pursued by both the state and housing activists Strange. I understand sprawl (especially suburban sprawl) to be the direct result of housing regulations. The "natural" ("unregulated") trend seems for cities to become denser and for buildings to become higher (e.g. single family homes getting replaced by multi apartment buildings). Density being the opposite of sprawl. More housing in an already populated area leads to denser populations leads to less sprawl.
  - rsync 4y ago
    "The "natural" ("unregulated") trend seems for cities to become denser and for buildings to become higher (e.g. single family homes getting replaced by multi apartment buildings)." I agree with that. Further, I would like to see cities like San Francisco and Oakland and San Jose become denser/taller in just the ways you are describing. However, the article speaks of the entire Bay Area which runs the gamut from Point Reyes Station to Atherton to Strawberry to Dublin - and everything in between. I don't live in a residential area and I have no financial exposure to residential housing in the Bay Area - so this is purely academic for me - but I really don't see why our inability to make San Francisco denser means people in Atherton (for instance) can't decline apartment high rises. That outcome is, in fact, sprawl. Further, the impacts of that sprawl go beyond the aesthetic: it starves infrastructure advances that depend on a critical mass of density. Every unit of housing that gets distributed outside of the city center is a missing unit of density that would have gotten us closer to another subway, another terminal connection, another tunnel, another rebuilt blighted area, etc.
O__________O 4y ago
Maybe I am missing something, but seems unlikely this will impact housing availability, developers will simply build luxury housing to extract the maximum the market will offer. Government will not build any affordable housing at scale, since it will only increase demand for government services while at the same time reducing average tax revenue per taxpayer. If there’s a solution to the problem, I am not aware of it.
- dan-robertson 4y ago
  Aren’t the projects only exempt from zoning if they are 20% below-market-rate or 100% middle income?
- camel_Snake 4y ago
  100 luxury homes are still 100 more homes in the supply pool. The people that move in are presumably vacating their previous, more affordable homes.
- km3r 4y ago
  > the maximum the market will offer This is a function of supply (and demand), increase the supply the market will offer less.
moneywoes 4y ago
When will we see the effects?
esotericimpl 4y ago
[dead]
nerddadnear40 4y ago
"Los Altos Hills, California is one of the wealthiest communities in the world, home to Silicon Valley’s upper echelons of technology billionaires and millionaires such as the founder of Google and its current CEO. The non-diverse town boasts a median household income north of $400,000. Its zoning prohibits multifamily housing, whether apartments, townhomes or condos, along with commercial stores and shops in the entirety of its city limits." This kind of hypocrisy where CEOs look down from the stratosphere on the common rabble yet have their corporations espouse a kind of elitist morality about diversity, equity, and inclusion is dumbfounding and disgusting. https://about.google/belonging/ https://about.google/belonging/
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  > This kind of hypocrisy where CEOs look down from the stratosphere on the common rabble yet have their corporations espouse a kind of elitist morality about diversity, equity, and inclusion is dumbfounding and disgusting. You're really missing the forest for the trees. Which is OK, because a lot of people are. On every side of this issue. It's not hypocrisy, its just business. They don't give a shit because they see where society is going, and they want to make sure they remain as profitable as possible. This is also why all the fighting and gnashing of teeth is pointless. CEOs aren't pushing the agenda. They're just following profits, like they always have. If you don't like that, well, welcome to the club, lots of us have been here for a very long time.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    > It's not hypocrisy, its just business. The problem with prepackaged political beliefs is that it leads to dissonance where ones view on society is at odds with "the free hand of the market", but capitalism does no wrong, so it has to be a conspiracy of CEOs and their personal politics.
- vdnkh 4y ago
  Conservative HN never misses an opportunity to punch air about "wokeness"
jrobbins 4y ago
Even if California adds housing, how can it possibly add enough water, roads, schools, parks, etc? It's just trading one crisis for another. The coastal regions are already over-crowded at current prices. The overall cost is just too high. It's wasteful compared to building in other regions. And, it's unnecessary because so much of modern work can be done remotely. Instead of allowing 80% of housing at market rate to subsidize 20% low-income housing in an unsustainable growth pattern, California should mandate that large employers offer at least 20% of their office employees the opportunity to work remotely. Creating an escape valve for local demand would slow the growth of housing costs without adding new infrastructure requirements.
- dumbfoundded 4y ago
  Many other places have solved this problem. San Francisco has relatively low population density compared even when only looking at US cities. NYC is very livable. It's in CA best long term interest to support as many people as possible. Remote work isn't going to solve the problem that someone who works at Walgreens cannot afford to live within 20 mi of the city.

257 points by apozem 4y ago

It'll be interesting to see what the unintended consequences of this big, sweeping gesture will be in the next few years.

encoderer 4y ago

Saving you the click - it really is a matter for the courts now. If developers have not begun to litigate these projects, then cities have not lost anything yet.

prottog 4y ago

There still seems to be quite a few strings attached: > ... As long as developments are 20% low-income or 100% middle-income and are environmentally sound ... What's the difference between "environmentally sound" and the onerous environmental review that Bay Area construction projects had to go through?

aclatuts 4y ago
I don't think there is much difference that's why all the projects plan for 20% low income units.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  You are misparsing the sentence: it is: ( 20% low-income or 100% middle-income ) and environmentally sound Not: 20% low-income or ( 100% middle-income and environmentally sound )
yardie 4y ago
Build housing with 20% low-income set asides or take your chances with environmental review. I think the intention is you can't shortcut all the bureaucratic bullshit with this neat trick.
- 93po 4y ago
  I see this in Seattle and it makes no sense and just annoys the shit of me when I'm looking for housing. They'll list their income restricted units as their entry level price online, then you look at their actual listings and they're all $1000 more expensive per month. The real problem that makes no sense, however, is that these income restricted units are sometimes like $2000-2500 a month. And to qualify you have to make less than like 60k a year or something. They can't afford to the rent. I don't get it.
  - pandaman 4y ago
    From what I understand those are for the Section 8 tenants.
    - 93po 4y ago
      Right. But for section 8 it's still only for low income people right? And they can't afford the listed (already discounted) rent.
      - pandaman 4y ago
        Section 8 pays their entire rent less 25% or 30% of their income (AGI) so they can afford anything, provided it fits Section 8 requirements.
        93po 4y ago
        That makes these make a lot more sense, thanks for clarifying this!
- mannerheim 4y ago
  I don't think the 20% low-income gets you out of CEQA.
steveklabnik 4y ago
You're probably referring to the California Environmental Quality Act. It is very unclear how these two things intersect. My guess is some court will decide sometime in the future. By default, as far as I know, CEQA still applies. My understanding of the wording there comes from https://abag.ca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-10/Builders-Remedy-and-Housing-Elements.pdf https://abag.ca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-10/Bu... which says > The five findings which would allow denial of an eligible project can be summarized as follows: > <snip> > 4. The project is proposed on land zoned for agriculture or resource preservation that is surrounded on at least two sides by land being used for agriculture or resource preservation or there are not adequate water or sewage facilities to the serve the project. but I am not an expert on these details whatsoever.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > You're probably referring to the California Environmental Quality Act. It is very unclear how these two things intersect. My guess is some court will decide sometime in the future. A trial court already has already ruled that it does and that environmental review has to be completed before a project enters the Buklder’s Remedy process. Appeals and further legislation are likely.
  - steveklabnik 4y ago
    Thank you! I hadn't heard that yet.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> What's the difference between "environmentally sound" and the onerous environmental review that Bay Area construction projects had to go through? Its all (with narrow exemptions) California construction projects, not most Bay Area prohects, and there is no difference; this sentence is referring to the fact that Builder’s Remedy projects are not exempt from CEQA.
psychlops 4y ago
One of those options gets the inspector front row seats at a Lakers game.
- epistasis 4y ago
  There is no inspector level override to allow projects. CEQA overrides all this. Here's a person that spent five years in courts, because a neighbor didn't want a single family home to expand due to aesthetic concerns, that suddenly shifted to fake "environmental" concerns as soon as the city level obstruction failed. https://twitter.com/tribtowerviews/status/1628517859101130753?s=46&t=ZnAYuhkDrh0HSFLIpSs7_Q https://twitter.com/tribtowerviews/status/162851785910113075... The threat of years of lawsuit is enough to kill most projects, as that amount of uncertainty and risk will eliminate all financial backing for any but the very most motivated, such as those living in their own homes with tons of money to burn. Discretionary approval of projects is definitely a corruption machine, as exposed recently in LA, and any politician that endorsed discretionary community review is almost certainly corrupt. However it's also the norm in California. Even with that discretionary review, CEQA is still a powerful tool for stopping projects that improve the environment, due to the long decision timelines.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
It’s not too hard for developers to build 20% low income.
- microtherion 4y ago
  Especially since "low income" is defined relative to area income. One of the first builder's remedy projects is announced in Los Altos Hills, where median family income is $250K a year. "Low income housing" means it has to be affordable to somebody making 80% of that, i.e. $200K a year.

CalRobert 4y ago

The idea that owners of homes should be able to make it (almost) illegal to build more homes in an area with some of the highest housing costs in the country is grossly immoral. It enriches homeowners at the expense of other's misery. Grandkids grow up without knowing their grandparents, careers are stunted, and lives are wasted on horrendous commutes (or, considering the safety of driving, ended entirely). When a building is proposed, the benefactors are diffuse - any of the people looking for a home will benefit from its existence. But the people who oppose it are concentrated - anyone who lives near the new building. For too long our planning system has only considered the latter, and nobody has spoken for the person who will be seeking a home in the future (though groups like SFBARF come to mind).

pirate787 4y ago
The idea that a state government can seize land-use decision-making power from local communities is anti-democratic and grossly immoral.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  If the local communities are completely incapable of even a modicum of good governance, what choice is there?
  - enriquec 4y ago
    "incapable of even a modicum of good governance"? really? You can't point to a single way in which these local communities govern better than the State of California? Thats laughable - at best.
    - gjsman-1000 4y ago
      Perhaps you should re-read the article, where it shows that >90% of the local communities failed to create zoning plans that comply with state law. That's their fault - they had literally years to prepare, for a >30 year old law, and failed. The latest events are the consequences of their own ineptitude. They thought they could just get away with not zoning for new construction of any significance, which is basically a protection racket.

tnel77 4y ago

Let’s hope that we start to see some more dense building occur. I get not wanting a skyscraper next to your ranch-style home, but the housing affordability crisis needs to end. If not for the good of our fellow citizens, at the very least so people can have more money in their pockets to stimulate the economy more so than just by paying their rent.

steveklabnik 4y ago

Discussed three weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34597507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34597507 (And not to toot my own horn but that title does a much better job of explaining what's going on)

enriquec 4y ago
I disagree. This says what is actually being done - while that title uses a biased and meaningless marketing term.
- steveklabnik 4y ago
  If a municipality truly lost zoning authority, anyone could build anything anywhere they wanted. That isn't the case. One very specific way of bypassing usual zoning codes in certain circumstances is a very different thing, and that specific way has a common name that's broader than just California, even.
- alecnotthompson 4y ago
  we gotta nimby on our hands

ak217 4y ago

I doubt this applies to cities that adopted their housing elements by the Jan 31 deadline and submitted them as revisions that are still pending review by the HCD. I'm sure some of those will still eventually be judged out of compliance and builder's remedy may stand, but for now they're just pending review. The cities that are likely to actually be subjected to builder's remedy (which will be challenged in court, which might cause delays for any developers trying to use it, but is still a useful bargaining chip) are those marked as "NEW CYCLE". Those cities did not prepare any housing permitting plan submission to the HCD at all by the deadline.

jeffbee 4y ago
Yes the question is not whether the plans were deemed to be compliant, it is whether the plans were in fact compliant. The only clear-cut cases are where cities failed to even adopt a plan. Less clear are those cities that are vocally subverting state law. Even less clear are those cities with adopted plans that are marginally compliant, like Berkeley, which helps explain why Berkeley has so far not attracted any "builder's remedy" plans.
cryptonector 4y ago
From TFA: | 96 of 101 Bay Area municipalities had their housing elements rejected Then TFA discusses one in particular at some length that did get their HE in by the deadline and had it rejected.
- nikodunk 4y ago
  TFA?
- ak217 4y ago
  Yes but I think that's incorrect. I see no evidence of those recent HEs getting rejected. All the article is going on is a flag in the HCD database, not actual official communications with the cities. The cities I'm familiar with have received no such letters (yet).

foolfoolz 4y ago

i think the 95% is not accurate. if you read the linked report many cities are in various stages of approval, but it appears a few are quite far along

HDThoreaun 4y ago
Courts may disagree, but the head of the bureaucracy that runs this program said all cities that "are in various stages of approval"(a.k.a. not approved) as of Feb. 1 are out of approval and builders remedy is available.

newaccount2021 4y ago

[dead]

adamsmith143 4y ago

Fascinated to see the effect on the supply of housing and affordability in the Bay Area. Know lots of people who outright reject the idea of moving there because of housing costs despite the potential career boon.

teaearlgraycold 4y ago
Rent has gone down in recent years at least
dangwhy 4y ago
> because of housing costs despite the potential career boon. Tech jobs adjust for col though ? Its maybe 3k more/month at high estimate. I know bay area jobs in tech ajdust for 35k more for sure.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  35k per year doesn't cover the difference when I can live in a "lcol" city and buy a house for 400k that's probable 2M+ in the Bay. Mostly talking about people interested in raising a family in a home and not renters.
  - dangwhy 4y ago
    > 400k that's probable 2M+ This seems like an extreme example. I have friends raising 2 kids in Pleasanton, CA working for bigtech. They bought their houses at ~ 1M before the housing craziness started. They made a similar move from suburbs of chicago with 3k extra monthly mortgage for the new house in CA, with a salary bump of over 100k.
    - adamsmith143 4y ago
      >They bought their houses at ~ 1M before the housing craziness started. "Only 1M" And I mean sure I could have bought a big house in Palo Alto for 50k or whatever in 1950 but that's not really relevant anymore. Maybe dual tech worker couples can make it work but but there isn't a large pay increase for most other fields in the Bay.

debacle 4y ago

Municipalities should be allowed to lock down their zoning if they want to. That's democracy. This idea that we have to elevate all power to the state or federal government is antidemocratic. It doesn't matter if it's zoning, education, building codes, etc. Historically, the state/federal government has acted as a facilitator of local control, but more and more it seems as though one of the goals is to take local control away. I am not for this. Not because I'm against housing, but because I'm against taking away local control.

klodolph 4y ago
Historically, local governments have made a large number of horrible / immoral decisions, and sometimes the state or federal powers step in to override them. This is a constitutional democracy.
- debacle 4y ago
  95% of municipalities are in the wrong here? Doubtful.
  - klodolph 4y ago
    What is the reasoning here? Why do you say that it is doubtful?
  - teaearlgraycold 4y ago
    Check the rent prices in 95% of the Bay Area vs. median income.
mjburgess 4y ago
Everyone, a priori, thinks "local control" means local power. But unfortunately it doesn't. It means the worst sort of leisurely fools who happen to be your neighbors monopolizing local power, at everyone's expense. This is the problem with "democracy" as such. In the american mythology it's about self-governance, but the more "direct, local" one makes it, the more absurd such a proposition becomes. As an empirical matter, people cannot govern themselves. People are too poor in time, energy, concern, care, etc. to do so; and those who arent are the least fit to do it. Democracy was never, nor should be, about "self-governance". It's about accountability. It's simply a mechanism to prevent tyranny. The right "level" of democracy is one which maximises one's daily experienced freedom. And "local democracy" so often is a daily oppression on those who experience it. America is overwhelmed by local corruption, housing-associations, and the like. It's one of the major reasons I would never live there.

LatteLazy 4y ago

People really will do anything to avoid building infrastructure and public transport...

seany 4y ago

This title just seems totally wrong? Not having zoning would be like Houston, where you can have big industry next to a day care (fwiw no zoning is my preference). This is much closer to "areas for SFHs have very relaxed rules if you follow these set of conditions".

sangnoir 4y ago
The non-conforming cities lost zoning authorities to the state: not that they no longer have zoning at all.
soared 4y ago
Yeah title is missing “over residential buildings”

1minusp 4y ago

Personal data point: I've had to move out of the bay area over a year ago after I failed to purchase a place due to the cost and competition for housing (tried hard, made multiple competitive offers, narrowly missed etc). Still hurts, its such a gorgeous part of the world to be. I doubt i'll ever be able to move back, most of the places we bid on are up several 100Ks over just a year.

HashThis 4y ago

NIMBYs are crying in their backyards

Nifty3929 4y ago

One under-appreciated topic is the extent to which we dis-incent people to sell their homes as they age. Through prop 13 (in California), and a stepped-up cost basis at death (in the US) - we give people very strong financial incentives to continue ownership. As a result you have (forgive me) old people who either remain in their homes or rent them out instead of selling them, long after they otherwise would. I think this is still not as big a factor as the simple lack of building - but it sure doesn't help.

rcpt 4y ago
It's the heart of the problem. Prop 13 means there's zero financial downside to appreciating home values which leads to NIMBYs on steroids.
jj20cf 4y ago
This will be exacerbated by the low mortgage rates which most homeowners are locked in for the next 20+ years. There should be a way to negotiate with the lender holding my mortgage to let me move it to another house for some increase in basis points which would result in a win-win for both sides.
- cloverich 4y ago
  I think there is a way to do this? I'm not sure what it is called or how common it is, but we've been house hunting and one of the local Agent's brought it up.
- Nifty3929 4y ago
  This is a great point! However I'm not sure about your proposed solution. You'd have to give up a fair bit of the difference in interest rate to incent the banks to agree to this. There would likely be a selection bias that most of the people who would take advantage of it were going to sell anyway, and now the bank is stuck carrying a sub-market-rate loan they otherwise would have gotten out of.
Invictus0 4y ago
Forgive you what? For saying "old people"?

notfunnyrando 4y ago

authority is a scheme to distribute power (in a 'social' sense, not physical a one) without giving it away

trynewideas 4y ago

> Now the wealthiest community in the United States has the unique distinction of also being the first community in the Bay Area to have a Builder’s Remedy project proposed. A young homeowner and computer engineer, frustrated that the town has been slow to permit the reconstruction of his water-damaged home, has announced plans to use the zoning holiday to build a 15-unit apartment complex and five townhomes on his property. Per the rules, four of those homes will house Los Altos Hills’ first low-income families. ... > Local media speculates that this project may be out of spite by the young engineer regarding the NIMBY government of his town. Maybe, but it’s good nevertheless. Undoubtedly, this project will be sued by neighbors, but the courts have mostly ruled in favor of the Builder’s Remedy and other state housing laws so far. More details about that part here: https://www.siliconvalley.com/2023/02/13/homeowner-invokes-builders-remedy-in-brazen-plan-to-build-20-unit-housing-complex-in-los-altos-hills/ https://www.siliconvalley.com/2023/02/13/homeowner-invokes-b... Zbrozek previously made the news with Los Altos Hills Community Fiber, after fighting a $210,000 Comcast quote for fiber internet service: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/comcast-wanted-210000-for-internet-so-this-man-helped-expand-a-co-op-fiber-isp/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/comcast-wanted-2...

kspacewalk2 4y ago
This guy is my new hero.

nemo44x 4y ago

option 4y ago

so all the water, grid and transport issues we have just magically disappeared with this legislation?

steveklabnik 4y ago
I'm not aware of anyone claiming that.
rcpt 4y ago
If you honestly believe that aqueducts and roads are outside the scope of human technology then you might be in the wrong line of work
- option 4y ago
  I honestly believe anyone has a right to live anywhere if they can. But no one is entitled to live anywhere they want.

runsWphotons 4y ago

the bay area will start building just in time for everyone to move out

Yahivin 4y ago

Why not let developers build all the luxury housing they want? Affordable housing is often luxury housing built 30 years ago. It's very difficult to solve affordability today but much easier to solve it in the future. Let time do the work.

iamwpj 4y ago
Yes, two generations of working homelessness and we'll be all sorted! After all, it's the best we can do! /s
- Yahivin 4y ago
  What's the alternative? Ban the only kind of housing that developers, residents, and municipalities are excited to build and then blame capitalism?
  - addisonl 4y ago
    You know things can land somewhere in the middle right? No need to be so intentionally black and white.
  - mkaic 4y ago
    No! The alternative is explicitly to unban the kind of housing that there's demand for. Single-family zoning prevents capitalism from doing its job properly by limiting developers' ability to respond to demand for high-density and low-income housing. Getting rid of most single-family zoning wouldn't make it illegal to build single-family homes, but as the article says regarding Santa Monica, developers are eager to build high-rises and denser housing.
lukas099 4y ago
That part seems more like feelgoods than sound economics, but sometimes you need feelgoods to make something politically viable.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago

sollewitt 4y ago

You can't have property simultaneously be affordable and a tax advantaged investment vehicle.

km3r 4y ago
Maybe treating an essential good as an investment was the wrong way to go about it.

rsync 4y ago

From the article: "The housing element is important. The Builder’s Remedy is nice, but we want compliant housing elements to house population growth, combat segregation, reduce home prices and combat sprawl." I was surprised to see "sprawl" called out in the op because that is directly opposed to the flattening of building restrictions and the deregulation that is being pursued by both the state and housing activists. I thought that sprawl and homogenization of built environments and the flattening of transitions between built spaces was a necessary evil that has been conceded in order to pursue housing deregulation. So ... I'm surprised to see it mentioned - especially as a pejorative - and it seems incoherent in this context.

slaymaker1907 4y ago
Sprawl is somewhat the result of over-zoning for SFH. That severely limits the height and density of the city while sprawl is concerned with the total area of the city (compare an area like Manhattan with Atlanta).
orangeoxidation 4y ago
> I was surprised to see "sprawl" called out in the op because that is directly opposed to the flattening of building restrictions and the deregulation that is being pursued by both the state and housing activists Strange. I understand sprawl (especially suburban sprawl) to be the direct result of housing regulations. The "natural" ("unregulated") trend seems for cities to become denser and for buildings to become higher (e.g. single family homes getting replaced by multi apartment buildings). Density being the opposite of sprawl. More housing in an already populated area leads to denser populations leads to less sprawl.
- rsync 4y ago
  "The "natural" ("unregulated") trend seems for cities to become denser and for buildings to become higher (e.g. single family homes getting replaced by multi apartment buildings)." I agree with that. Further, I would like to see cities like San Francisco and Oakland and San Jose become denser/taller in just the ways you are describing. However, the article speaks of the entire Bay Area which runs the gamut from Point Reyes Station to Atherton to Strawberry to Dublin - and everything in between. I don't live in a residential area and I have no financial exposure to residential housing in the Bay Area - so this is purely academic for me - but I really don't see why our inability to make San Francisco denser means people in Atherton (for instance) can't decline apartment high rises. That outcome is, in fact, sprawl. Further, the impacts of that sprawl go beyond the aesthetic: it starves infrastructure advances that depend on a critical mass of density. Every unit of housing that gets distributed outside of the city center is a missing unit of density that would have gotten us closer to another subway, another terminal connection, another tunnel, another rebuilt blighted area, etc.

O__________O 4y ago

Maybe I am missing something, but seems unlikely this will impact housing availability, developers will simply build luxury housing to extract the maximum the market will offer. Government will not build any affordable housing at scale, since it will only increase demand for government services while at the same time reducing average tax revenue per taxpayer. If there’s a solution to the problem, I am not aware of it.

dan-robertson 4y ago
Aren’t the projects only exempt from zoning if they are 20% below-market-rate or 100% middle income?
camel_Snake 4y ago
100 luxury homes are still 100 more homes in the supply pool. The people that move in are presumably vacating their previous, more affordable homes.
km3r 4y ago
> the maximum the market will offer This is a function of supply (and demand), increase the supply the market will offer less.

moneywoes 4y ago

When will we see the effects?

esotericimpl 4y ago

[dead]

nerddadnear40 4y ago

"Los Altos Hills, California is one of the wealthiest communities in the world, home to Silicon Valley’s upper echelons of technology billionaires and millionaires such as the founder of Google and its current CEO. The non-diverse town boasts a median household income north of $400,000. Its zoning prohibits multifamily housing, whether apartments, townhomes or condos, along with commercial stores and shops in the entirety of its city limits." This kind of hypocrisy where CEOs look down from the stratosphere on the common rabble yet have their corporations espouse a kind of elitist morality about diversity, equity, and inclusion is dumbfounding and disgusting. https://about.google/belonging/ https://about.google/belonging/

bcrosby95 4y ago
> This kind of hypocrisy where CEOs look down from the stratosphere on the common rabble yet have their corporations espouse a kind of elitist morality about diversity, equity, and inclusion is dumbfounding and disgusting. You're really missing the forest for the trees. Which is OK, because a lot of people are. On every side of this issue. It's not hypocrisy, its just business. They don't give a shit because they see where society is going, and they want to make sure they remain as profitable as possible. This is also why all the fighting and gnashing of teeth is pointless. CEOs aren't pushing the agenda. They're just following profits, like they always have. If you don't like that, well, welcome to the club, lots of us have been here for a very long time.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > It's not hypocrisy, its just business. The problem with prepackaged political beliefs is that it leads to dissonance where ones view on society is at odds with "the free hand of the market", but capitalism does no wrong, so it has to be a conspiracy of CEOs and their personal politics.
vdnkh 4y ago
Conservative HN never misses an opportunity to punch air about "wokeness"

jrobbins 4y ago

Even if California adds housing, how can it possibly add enough water, roads, schools, parks, etc? It's just trading one crisis for another. The coastal regions are already over-crowded at current prices. The overall cost is just too high. It's wasteful compared to building in other regions. And, it's unnecessary because so much of modern work can be done remotely. Instead of allowing 80% of housing at market rate to subsidize 20% low-income housing in an unsustainable growth pattern, California should mandate that large employers offer at least 20% of their office employees the opportunity to work remotely. Creating an escape valve for local demand would slow the growth of housing costs without adding new infrastructure requirements.

dumbfoundded 4y ago
Many other places have solved this problem. San Francisco has relatively low population density compared even when only looking at US cities. NYC is very livable. It's in CA best long term interest to support as many people as possible. Remote work isn't going to solve the problem that someone who works at Walgreens cannot afford to live within 20 mi of the city.