5 ms·

Not sure if you intended the pun, but the biggest structural reason is not engineering but procedural. The permitting, environmental processes in CA are often o

Not sure if you intended the pun, but the biggest structural reason is not engineering but procedural. The permitting, environmental processes in CA are often onerous making new construction much more expensive. That means the rents must be higher to break even, which in turn means new apartments go up where the incomes support those higher rents. Paradoxicall places where incomes are high also tend to have the most onerous permitting.

Braxton1980 1y ago
>The permitting, environmental processes in CA are often onerous making new construction much more expensive Can you give an example of this?
- itake 1y ago
  Building a toilet cost $1.7m in SF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - Braxton1980 1y ago
    That's just one specific toilet with unqiue requirements. How is this evidence?
- inferiorhuman 1y ago
  There's basically no zoning whatsoever in much of Texas. That's how you get industrial explosions like the 2020 industrial explosion right up against a residential neighborhood in Houston. California's largely the other extreme. Even large parts of San Francisco are zoned for single family housing (or maybe duplex if you're lucky). So already things like larger apartment buildings or mixed-use buildings that can be more profitable are out. CEQA allows for a lot of public feedback which is in turn allowed to grind projects to a halt. For example there's undeveloped land in Brisbane, just south of San Francisco. It's near a freeway (CA-101) and commuter rail (Caltrain). The city of Brisbane's been (successfully) trying to block any development that would include residential buildings — they want office jobs not new residents. I don't know enough about other cities to make relative comparisons, but again in SF the department in charge of permitting (DBI) has seen a number of bribery and conflict-of-interest charges recently. Look at any big project in California really. Corruption at the city/county level may differ but the process by which anyone can gum up the works is a state mandated one.
  - placardloop 1y ago
    It’s inaccurate to say that there’s “basically no zoning whatsoever in much of Texas”. In Texas, zoning is up to the individual cities. Houston is notorious for having a lack of zoning laws, but all of the other major cities like Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, San Antonio all have very complex zoning laws.
masklinn 1y ago
NIMBY is by far the main problem CA has. The permitting process includes incredible amounts of public feedback, which makes it difficult to build a chemical plant and a middle school next to one another, but also makes it impossible to rezone or densify neighbourhoods.

Braxton1980 1y ago

>The permitting, environmental processes in CA are often onerous making new construction much more expensive Can you give an example of this?

itake 1y ago
Building a toilet cost $1.7m in SF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Braxton1980 1y ago
  That's just one specific toilet with unqiue requirements. How is this evidence?
inferiorhuman 1y ago
There's basically no zoning whatsoever in much of Texas. That's how you get industrial explosions like the 2020 industrial explosion right up against a residential neighborhood in Houston. California's largely the other extreme. Even large parts of San Francisco are zoned for single family housing (or maybe duplex if you're lucky). So already things like larger apartment buildings or mixed-use buildings that can be more profitable are out. CEQA allows for a lot of public feedback which is in turn allowed to grind projects to a halt. For example there's undeveloped land in Brisbane, just south of San Francisco. It's near a freeway (CA-101) and commuter rail (Caltrain). The city of Brisbane's been (successfully) trying to block any development that would include residential buildings — they want office jobs not new residents. I don't know enough about other cities to make relative comparisons, but again in SF the department in charge of permitting (DBI) has seen a number of bribery and conflict-of-interest charges recently. Look at any big project in California really. Corruption at the city/county level may differ but the process by which anyone can gum up the works is a state mandated one.
- placardloop 1y ago
  It’s inaccurate to say that there’s “basically no zoning whatsoever in much of Texas”. In Texas, zoning is up to the individual cities. Houston is notorious for having a lack of zoning laws, but all of the other major cities like Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, San Antonio all have very complex zoning laws.

masklinn 1y ago

NIMBY is by far the main problem CA has. The permitting process includes incredible amounts of public feedback, which makes it difficult to build a chemical plant and a middle school next to one another, but also makes it impossible to rezone or densify neighbourhoods.