10 ms·

Well, good. The state level regulation is made to force these dysfunctional city halls to get their ducks in a row or face builders remedy. 50 years on, it's

Well, good. The state level regulation is made to force these dysfunctional city halls to get their ducks in a row or face builders remedy. 50 years on, it's clear zoning regulations being determined at the municipal level is toxic, because regulation gets captured to enrich existing land owners at the expense of everyone else.

arcticbull 3y ago
I just can’t understand why the “builders remedy” isn’t the default housing policy. [edit] If the government wants to control rents and define what a neighborhood looks like it should buy the land and build itself; then rent it out using policies it likes, or sell it as “affordable housing.” Works great in Singapore. Otherwise private land shouldn’t be subject to this silly overbearing approach to “rent control” and shadows and color schemes and building heights. If a neighbor doesn’t like what you’re doing on your own land they should buy your land or stop whining. Plenty of remote places they can buy a tract and decide what’s what.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  > because regulation gets captured to enrich existing land owners at the expense of everyone else.
- WillPostForFood 3y ago
  If a neighbor doesn’t like what you’re doing on your own land they should buy your land or stop whining. Plenty of remote places they can buy a tract and decide what’s what. Isn't this what you should do? Zoning isn't an act of god, it is the choice of democratic elected majorities. You don't need to live in the mission or pacific heights. You can build a better SF where land is cheap and there is no zoning. San Francisco is 65%-70% renters, they have a large majority to make change if they want.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    My argument is if it’s my property I should be able to do whatever I want with it. Build what I want on it. Rent it at whatever price I want. If the city feels differently they should buy the land and develop it themselves. Not have their cake and eat it too; where I own the land and I can’t do what I want with it. Honestly if SF was declared a UNESCO world heritage site it would probably have fewer restrictions.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      I mean clearly there should be some limits… somewhere between toxic waste dumps and McMansions I guess.
      - bsder 3y ago
        The zoning restrictions should be behavioral not structural--much like Japan. Behavioral restrictions are things like "no more than 80db noise from hours of x to Y" or "no smells which can be detected n kilometers away" with significant fines for violation. In an industrial area, you release the requirements. You can put your residence in an industrial area, but you don't get to complain about noise and stink afterward. In a residential area, you tighten the requirements. You can put your business in a residential area, but you have to comply with better restrictions. A dentist or computer worker can easily meet the restrictions while industrial would be highly unlikely to pass.
      - rcpt 3y ago
        You'd think so but here in Los Angeles we have honest to God oil derricks right in the middle of residential neighborhoods and on public school grounds. If zoning doesn't prevent the heaviest of heavy industry from setting up shop right next to preschool then it's pretty clear that the only reason we have it is to boost the assets of entrenched property owners
    - dockd 3y ago
      Don't these laws get written precisely because someone did whatever they wanted with their land? Could you dump toxic waste there if you want? Could you store tons of ammonium nitrate on it? Could you farm chickens? Hold nightly raves?
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    The thing is that the 200 soon-to-be residents who will move into a new apartment building won't get to vote in favour of its construction until after they've moved in. Furthermore, the municipality's authority to govern is derived from the democratically-elected California state government. So this appears to be a democracy of Californians telling San Francisco that they can't maintain local zoning authority if it's going to keep making it too expensive for other Californians to move there. Now perhaps you could take the position that California voters shouldn't be allowed to tell San Francisco what to do, based on the principle that only the residents of an area should have final authority over how their land is used, regardless of what their surrounding neighbours vote... but I'm sure you'd see the irony.
  - rob74 3y ago
    You can build a better SF where land is cheap. In the middle of the desert?
    - nradov 3y ago
      Well they tried that decades ago with California City out in the Mohave Desert. It didn't work. https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/california-city-planned-community-explained-18476273.php https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/california-city-planne...
      - kjkjadksj 3y ago
        People move somewhere because there are jobs available not plots of land
    - WillPostForFood 3y ago
      California is over 100 million acres, mostly not houses. Fixating on a small peninsula is part of the problem. Building in the middle of the desert worked for Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc.. Los Angeles wasn't a desert, but they made it work in a pretty dry area.
      - hollerith 3y ago
        Las Vegas, Phoenix and LA were able to get big because there weren't already cities the size of Vegas, Phoenix and LA hogging all the water.
        kjkjadksj 3y ago
        There’s enough water in the state of california to see the population go up by 10 fold. We just devote the vast majority to a politically entrenched farmer-millionaire landowner class so we can grow things like cotton and alfalfa for export markets.
        hollerith 3y ago
  - linguae 3y ago
    You bring up an interesting point: why don’t developers build walkable communities in the suburbs or exurbs, or even in brand new cities? It would be nice if a developer built a “Nuevo San Francisco” or even a “Nuevo Palo Alto” somewhere in the Central Valley, especially if it could be tied to the upcoming California High Speed Rail line. Yet developers continue to build car-dependent neighborhoods. Now, granted, this won’t solve the problem of housing in San Francisco and other areas with rich job markets but extremely expensive housing. Having to commute three hours away is still a problem. But for those who are willing or able to leave the Bay Area, why aren’t developers generally only building car-dependent suburbs instead of walkable towns and cities?
    - nradov 3y ago
      It seems to be happening. A group of wealthy investors including Laurene Powell Jobs, Marc Andreessen, and Reid Hoffman are building a "utopian city for the tech elite" in Solano County. Until we see more details I don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. But previous attempts to build whole new artificial cities have mostly failed. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/18/1200196497/locals-push-back-against-plans-to-build-a-tech-utopia-in-solano-county-calif https://www.npr.org/2023/09/18/1200196497/locals-push-back-a...
    - CalRobert 3y ago
      It's illegal. Parking minimums in particular made it illegal to build nice places. Though they get exceptions sometimes, see culdesac.com
      - cortesoft 3y ago
        Parking minimums are local rules, not state law, so wouldn’t be a thing if you are building in unincorporated areas. And in fact, California has passed some laws putting restrictions in place on where you can have parking minimums https://www.capradio.org/articles/2022/10/12/california-law-abolishes-parking-minimums-for-new-developments-close-to-public-transit https://www.capradio.org/articles/2022/10/12/california-law-...
    - scythe 3y ago
  - xvedejas 3y ago
    I can't vote for 10 out of 11 of SF city supervisors, but they get to prevent my neighborhood from building more housing. I feel like whatever ideals you have about democracy here, they don't exist in practice in San Francisco for various reasons. I'm extremely glad my elected state government can step in for the greater cohesion of democratic voices across the state and override the hyper-local politics.
- unmole 3y ago
  > Works great in Singapore. Heh. Where young people postpone marriage and continue to stay with their parents because of how long it takes to get a HDB flat?
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    I don’t understand how this is a criticism, really. It was successful, they should do more of it. Do you not think people are living with parents, renting and postponing marriage in big American cities because they can’t afford more than a shoebox? At worst it sounds lateral. But really it sounds like we need some comparative data. How many Singaporeans are in that position as compared to America or god forbid Canada? Remember that 80% of Singaporeans live in HDB flats, and they have the infrastructure and experience to throw up some more towers fast.
    - noobermin 3y ago
      The government has been explicit about their intent here. They are holding off on building more even though hdb rents and hdb flat resale prices are skyrocketting because they don't want to lead to a drop in prices or may be even a cooling in the rate. As in...they want to keep current flat owners happy. The argument re hdb is probably still valid but it had more currency 10 or 20 years ago. Today, sg looks more and more like the rest of the developed world cities that refuse to build enough housing to meet demand. It's probably even more frustrating in that if there is any government that could do it if they wanted to, it would be the sg govt.
      - arcticbull 3y ago
        > The government has been explicit about their intent here So it worked until they decided to stop doing it. And this is an argument against doing it? :)
        unmole 3y ago
        So it worked until it didn't. The government needs to constrain supply to keep the voter base happy at the expense of younger folks. A private builder wouldn't find itself in a similar situation.
- refurb 3y ago
  Works “great” in Singapore? You can’t access public housing unless married or over 35. The rules keep being changed because Singaporeans see housing as a lottery - and it is. Land a new HDB in a prime location and you can sell it at market rates 5 years later. A cool $500,000 in your pocket. Oh, and everything is a 99-year lease, so after paying $1M for a resale HDB you get to give it back to the government and walk away with zero. Don’t get me wrong, it worked great at rapidly housing a large population in a country with limited space. But it’s far from an optimized or sustainable system.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Is the SG government going to renew leases at discount rates? There was a huge scandal in China when some older 30 year leases came up on some apartments and the local government wanted to allow renewals at market rates. Everyone just assumes when the leases expire they will be renewed at less than market pricing (so it’s as good as buying!). The central government had to step in and make the city renew the leases cheaply, since the real estate market takes these leases as a formality (and China has a a lot of 99 year leases that would go bonkers on the secondary market otherwise).
    - refurb 3y ago
      There are occasions where “en bloc” development happens where current owners get bought out. Or leases are extended for a payment from homeowners. But the government has come out and said “those will be the rare exceptions”. There were some 40 year lease homes that expired recently and the government took them over and tore them down with no compensation to the owners.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  > Works great in Singapore. Try moving to Singapore and see how that works out for you. Until you or your spouse are a citizen (and the other a permanent resident), and then wait some time. I’m not sure how a city in the USA could give away apartments (or sell them at subsidized pricing) without some sort of residency restriction, and even if the federal government was funding it, you couldn’t just let everyone live in the most popular cities, someone will need to live in a flat in Gary Indiana for example. Singapore can do this because they can restrict it to citizens and PRs married to citizens, migrant workers don’t need to be considered.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Everything's easier when you have a class of helots around to push all the costs onto.
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    They could do it easily, the existing section 8 program already has residency restrictions.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      As far as I can tell, section 8 has residency restrictions at the USA level, not local level. I see no residency requirements in WA for example, and they even encourage you to apply to multiple localities because waiting lists are long.
      - lazyasciiart 3y ago
        Each public housing authority is allowed to set a residency "preference" (not a residency requirement) but you're right, many of them don't seem to implement one. I assume that with the ridiculous limits on applying it has only become an issue in the last decade, at most. (E.g King County last opened their wait list for two weeks in 2020). Some places also implement a quasi-residential requirement by making the wait list open only/preferentially to people referred by a local service provider.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  I think we can acknowledge it's gone awry without disclaiming that people are not entirely unjustified in not wanting to live next to, like, an abattoir.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    My ideal zoning system is like Sim City. Residential, Commercial and Industrial.
- rcpt 3y ago
  The builders remedy requires that a large part of the new housing is sold below market rate but the state doesn't pay the developers extra because of this. As a result it's hard to get these to pencil out. I wouldn't be surprised if cities subject to builders remedy end up with less housing vs. those that wrote compliant plans.
7e 3y ago
[flagged]
dinobones 3y ago
This is the main problem I see with American politics. Too afraid to fully make something public, so we end up with a half baked public/private hybrid that is disastrous. I think healthcare should be fully public or fully private. What we have now is a joke and leads to massively bloated healthcare costs. Exact same with education. Thanks to government loans and subsidies tuition costs have exploded. Either make it public or private. The public/private hybrid takes taxpayer money and enriches the private corporations offering near-monopoly services of poor quality.
- refurb 3y ago
  I think healthcare should be fully public or fully private. What we have now is a joke and leads to massively bloated healthcare costs. Why? The only country I can think of that is fully public is Canada. And even then, there is a small amount of private. Every other country has a mix of public and private. Why do you feel that making healthcare public only is the solution? What are you basing that one?
  - solardev 3y ago
    I think this is a disingenuous way of painting the healthcare situation in most developed countries, where the overwhelming population uses the good enough public default. What America has is uniquely nightmarish, and not at all similar to other countries.
    - TMWNN 3y ago
      >I think this is a disingenuous way of painting the healthcare situation in most developed countries, where the overwhelming population uses the good enough public default. Not true! Having the public option be the "overwhelming default" is not the norm among developed countries. Neither is there being a public option at all! Nor is anything else the norm, so great is the variety of approaches. What is true is that the Canadian/British approach of completely or almost completely free at delivery is not the norm. The US's approach post-Obamacare is closest to the DACH countries, with a variety of nonprofit and profit plans. The US differs in a) having Medicare as the normal public option for the elderly (and having it be completely government run[1]), and b) not making getting a plan mandatory, while the DACH norm is for the government to pick one for you and send you the bill if you don't choose one first. [1] Although I suppose Medicare Advantage is similar to the nonprofit plans available through the German GKV
nickpinkston 3y ago
This 100%! I joined the board of YIMBY Action [1] a while back, and our mission is to help open/grow local activist groups to push for the YIMBY movement's pro-housing goals at the local level. We help get people elected, get them support to pass better laws, and sue the cities when they don't comply with the laws to compel them to do so. We've spearheaded the action on "RHNA / Housing Element" [2] which helps push CA cities to do better, or like you said, allow the "Builder's Remedy" to bypass a lot of their stalling tactics. I'd recommend anyone who cares to check out the sites below, come to a meeting, or donate to the cause. We even have a "Sue SF" fund if you want to help sue the bastards that make our rent too damn high and push people into poverty and homelessness. [1] https://yimbyaction.org https://yimbyaction.org [2] https://yimbyaction.org/rhna/ https://yimbyaction.org/rhna/
kjkjadksj 3y ago
Zoning at any level you mean. Look at how the California Coastal Commission has hobbled urban development in this state compared to seaside metropolis in Asia or Latin America or really most anywhere else in the world that sees investment in development.

arcticbull 3y ago

I just can’t understand why the “builders remedy” isn’t the default housing policy. [edit] If the government wants to control rents and define what a neighborhood looks like it should buy the land and build itself; then rent it out using policies it likes, or sell it as “affordable housing.” Works great in Singapore. Otherwise private land shouldn’t be subject to this silly overbearing approach to “rent control” and shadows and color schemes and building heights. If a neighbor doesn’t like what you’re doing on your own land they should buy your land or stop whining. Plenty of remote places they can buy a tract and decide what’s what.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
> because regulation gets captured to enrich existing land owners at the expense of everyone else.
WillPostForFood 3y ago
If a neighbor doesn’t like what you’re doing on your own land they should buy your land or stop whining. Plenty of remote places they can buy a tract and decide what’s what. Isn't this what you should do? Zoning isn't an act of god, it is the choice of democratic elected majorities. You don't need to live in the mission or pacific heights. You can build a better SF where land is cheap and there is no zoning. San Francisco is 65%-70% renters, they have a large majority to make change if they want.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  My argument is if it’s my property I should be able to do whatever I want with it. Build what I want on it. Rent it at whatever price I want. If the city feels differently they should buy the land and develop it themselves. Not have their cake and eat it too; where I own the land and I can’t do what I want with it. Honestly if SF was declared a UNESCO world heritage site it would probably have fewer restrictions.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I mean clearly there should be some limits… somewhere between toxic waste dumps and McMansions I guess.
    - bsder 3y ago
      The zoning restrictions should be behavioral not structural--much like Japan. Behavioral restrictions are things like "no more than 80db noise from hours of x to Y" or "no smells which can be detected n kilometers away" with significant fines for violation. In an industrial area, you release the requirements. You can put your residence in an industrial area, but you don't get to complain about noise and stink afterward. In a residential area, you tighten the requirements. You can put your business in a residential area, but you have to comply with better restrictions. A dentist or computer worker can easily meet the restrictions while industrial would be highly unlikely to pass.
    - rcpt 3y ago
      You'd think so but here in Los Angeles we have honest to God oil derricks right in the middle of residential neighborhoods and on public school grounds. If zoning doesn't prevent the heaviest of heavy industry from setting up shop right next to preschool then it's pretty clear that the only reason we have it is to boost the assets of entrenched property owners
  - dockd 3y ago
    Don't these laws get written precisely because someone did whatever they wanted with their land? Could you dump toxic waste there if you want? Could you store tons of ammonium nitrate on it? Could you farm chickens? Hold nightly raves?
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  The thing is that the 200 soon-to-be residents who will move into a new apartment building won't get to vote in favour of its construction until after they've moved in. Furthermore, the municipality's authority to govern is derived from the democratically-elected California state government. So this appears to be a democracy of Californians telling San Francisco that they can't maintain local zoning authority if it's going to keep making it too expensive for other Californians to move there. Now perhaps you could take the position that California voters shouldn't be allowed to tell San Francisco what to do, based on the principle that only the residents of an area should have final authority over how their land is used, regardless of what their surrounding neighbours vote... but I'm sure you'd see the irony.
- rob74 3y ago
  You can build a better SF where land is cheap. In the middle of the desert?
  - nradov 3y ago
    Well they tried that decades ago with California City out in the Mohave Desert. It didn't work. https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/california-city-planned-community-explained-18476273.php https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/california-city-planne...
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      People move somewhere because there are jobs available not plots of land
  - WillPostForFood 3y ago
    California is over 100 million acres, mostly not houses. Fixating on a small peninsula is part of the problem. Building in the middle of the desert worked for Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc.. Los Angeles wasn't a desert, but they made it work in a pretty dry area.
    - hollerith 3y ago
      Las Vegas, Phoenix and LA were able to get big because there weren't already cities the size of Vegas, Phoenix and LA hogging all the water.
      - kjkjadksj 3y ago
        There’s enough water in the state of california to see the population go up by 10 fold. We just devote the vast majority to a politically entrenched farmer-millionaire landowner class so we can grow things like cotton and alfalfa for export markets.
        hollerith 3y ago
- linguae 3y ago
  You bring up an interesting point: why don’t developers build walkable communities in the suburbs or exurbs, or even in brand new cities? It would be nice if a developer built a “Nuevo San Francisco” or even a “Nuevo Palo Alto” somewhere in the Central Valley, especially if it could be tied to the upcoming California High Speed Rail line. Yet developers continue to build car-dependent neighborhoods. Now, granted, this won’t solve the problem of housing in San Francisco and other areas with rich job markets but extremely expensive housing. Having to commute three hours away is still a problem. But for those who are willing or able to leave the Bay Area, why aren’t developers generally only building car-dependent suburbs instead of walkable towns and cities?
  - nradov 3y ago
    It seems to be happening. A group of wealthy investors including Laurene Powell Jobs, Marc Andreessen, and Reid Hoffman are building a "utopian city for the tech elite" in Solano County. Until we see more details I don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. But previous attempts to build whole new artificial cities have mostly failed. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/18/1200196497/locals-push-back-against-plans-to-build-a-tech-utopia-in-solano-county-calif https://www.npr.org/2023/09/18/1200196497/locals-push-back-a...
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    It's illegal. Parking minimums in particular made it illegal to build nice places. Though they get exceptions sometimes, see culdesac.com
    - cortesoft 3y ago
      Parking minimums are local rules, not state law, so wouldn’t be a thing if you are building in unincorporated areas. And in fact, California has passed some laws putting restrictions in place on where you can have parking minimums https://www.capradio.org/articles/2022/10/12/california-law-abolishes-parking-minimums-for-new-developments-close-to-public-transit https://www.capradio.org/articles/2022/10/12/california-law-...
  - scythe 3y ago
- xvedejas 3y ago
  I can't vote for 10 out of 11 of SF city supervisors, but they get to prevent my neighborhood from building more housing. I feel like whatever ideals you have about democracy here, they don't exist in practice in San Francisco for various reasons. I'm extremely glad my elected state government can step in for the greater cohesion of democratic voices across the state and override the hyper-local politics.
unmole 3y ago
> Works great in Singapore. Heh. Where young people postpone marriage and continue to stay with their parents because of how long it takes to get a HDB flat?
- arcticbull 3y ago
  I don’t understand how this is a criticism, really. It was successful, they should do more of it. Do you not think people are living with parents, renting and postponing marriage in big American cities because they can’t afford more than a shoebox? At worst it sounds lateral. But really it sounds like we need some comparative data. How many Singaporeans are in that position as compared to America or god forbid Canada? Remember that 80% of Singaporeans live in HDB flats, and they have the infrastructure and experience to throw up some more towers fast.
  - noobermin 3y ago
    The government has been explicit about their intent here. They are holding off on building more even though hdb rents and hdb flat resale prices are skyrocketting because they don't want to lead to a drop in prices or may be even a cooling in the rate. As in...they want to keep current flat owners happy. The argument re hdb is probably still valid but it had more currency 10 or 20 years ago. Today, sg looks more and more like the rest of the developed world cities that refuse to build enough housing to meet demand. It's probably even more frustrating in that if there is any government that could do it if they wanted to, it would be the sg govt.
    - arcticbull 3y ago
      > The government has been explicit about their intent here So it worked until they decided to stop doing it. And this is an argument against doing it? :)
      - unmole 3y ago
        So it worked until it didn't. The government needs to constrain supply to keep the voter base happy at the expense of younger folks. A private builder wouldn't find itself in a similar situation.
refurb 3y ago
Works “great” in Singapore? You can’t access public housing unless married or over 35. The rules keep being changed because Singaporeans see housing as a lottery - and it is. Land a new HDB in a prime location and you can sell it at market rates 5 years later. A cool $500,000 in your pocket. Oh, and everything is a 99-year lease, so after paying $1M for a resale HDB you get to give it back to the government and walk away with zero. Don’t get me wrong, it worked great at rapidly housing a large population in a country with limited space. But it’s far from an optimized or sustainable system.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Is the SG government going to renew leases at discount rates? There was a huge scandal in China when some older 30 year leases came up on some apartments and the local government wanted to allow renewals at market rates. Everyone just assumes when the leases expire they will be renewed at less than market pricing (so it’s as good as buying!). The central government had to step in and make the city renew the leases cheaply, since the real estate market takes these leases as a formality (and China has a a lot of 99 year leases that would go bonkers on the secondary market otherwise).
  - refurb 3y ago
    There are occasions where “en bloc” development happens where current owners get bought out. Or leases are extended for a payment from homeowners. But the government has come out and said “those will be the rare exceptions”. There were some 40 year lease homes that expired recently and the government took them over and tore them down with no compensation to the owners.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> Works great in Singapore. Try moving to Singapore and see how that works out for you. Until you or your spouse are a citizen (and the other a permanent resident), and then wait some time. I’m not sure how a city in the USA could give away apartments (or sell them at subsidized pricing) without some sort of residency restriction, and even if the federal government was funding it, you couldn’t just let everyone live in the most popular cities, someone will need to live in a flat in Gary Indiana for example. Singapore can do this because they can restrict it to citizens and PRs married to citizens, migrant workers don’t need to be considered.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  Everything's easier when you have a class of helots around to push all the costs onto.
- lazyasciiart 3y ago
  They could do it easily, the existing section 8 program already has residency restrictions.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    As far as I can tell, section 8 has residency restrictions at the USA level, not local level. I see no residency requirements in WA for example, and they even encourage you to apply to multiple localities because waiting lists are long.
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      Each public housing authority is allowed to set a residency "preference" (not a residency requirement) but you're right, many of them don't seem to implement one. I assume that with the ridiculous limits on applying it has only become an issue in the last decade, at most. (E.g King County last opened their wait list for two weeks in 2020). Some places also implement a quasi-residential requirement by making the wait list open only/preferentially to people referred by a local service provider.
emodendroket 3y ago
I think we can acknowledge it's gone awry without disclaiming that people are not entirely unjustified in not wanting to live next to, like, an abattoir.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  My ideal zoning system is like Sim City. Residential, Commercial and Industrial.
rcpt 3y ago
The builders remedy requires that a large part of the new housing is sold below market rate but the state doesn't pay the developers extra because of this. As a result it's hard to get these to pencil out. I wouldn't be surprised if cities subject to builders remedy end up with less housing vs. those that wrote compliant plans.

7e 3y ago

[flagged]

dinobones 3y ago

This is the main problem I see with American politics. Too afraid to fully make something public, so we end up with a half baked public/private hybrid that is disastrous. I think healthcare should be fully public or fully private. What we have now is a joke and leads to massively bloated healthcare costs. Exact same with education. Thanks to government loans and subsidies tuition costs have exploded. Either make it public or private. The public/private hybrid takes taxpayer money and enriches the private corporations offering near-monopoly services of poor quality.

refurb 3y ago
I think healthcare should be fully public or fully private. What we have now is a joke and leads to massively bloated healthcare costs. Why? The only country I can think of that is fully public is Canada. And even then, there is a small amount of private. Every other country has a mix of public and private. Why do you feel that making healthcare public only is the solution? What are you basing that one?
- solardev 3y ago
  I think this is a disingenuous way of painting the healthcare situation in most developed countries, where the overwhelming population uses the good enough public default. What America has is uniquely nightmarish, and not at all similar to other countries.
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    >I think this is a disingenuous way of painting the healthcare situation in most developed countries, where the overwhelming population uses the good enough public default. Not true! Having the public option be the "overwhelming default" is not the norm among developed countries. Neither is there being a public option at all! Nor is anything else the norm, so great is the variety of approaches. What is true is that the Canadian/British approach of completely or almost completely free at delivery is not the norm. The US's approach post-Obamacare is closest to the DACH countries, with a variety of nonprofit and profit plans. The US differs in a) having Medicare as the normal public option for the elderly (and having it be completely government run[1]), and b) not making getting a plan mandatory, while the DACH norm is for the government to pick one for you and send you the bill if you don't choose one first. [1] Although I suppose Medicare Advantage is similar to the nonprofit plans available through the German GKV

nickpinkston 3y ago

This 100%! I joined the board of YIMBY Action [1] a while back, and our mission is to help open/grow local activist groups to push for the YIMBY movement's pro-housing goals at the local level. We help get people elected, get them support to pass better laws, and sue the cities when they don't comply with the laws to compel them to do so. We've spearheaded the action on "RHNA / Housing Element" [2] which helps push CA cities to do better, or like you said, allow the "Builder's Remedy" to bypass a lot of their stalling tactics. I'd recommend anyone who cares to check out the sites below, come to a meeting, or donate to the cause. We even have a "Sue SF" fund if you want to help sue the bastards that make our rent too damn high and push people into poverty and homelessness. [1] https://yimbyaction.org https://yimbyaction.org [2] https://yimbyaction.org/rhna/ https://yimbyaction.org/rhna/

kjkjadksj 3y ago

Zoning at any level you mean. Look at how the California Coastal Commission has hobbled urban development in this state compared to seaside metropolis in Asia or Latin America or really most anywhere else in the world that sees investment in development.