
Proposed CA law tells cities: Build more, or we’ll do it for you - jseliger
http://sf.curbed.com/2016/12/9/13902592/housing-california-development-scott-wiener?utm_campaign=sf.curbed&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
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bjterry
Someone on HN posted a link to this article that compared Japanese zoning laws
to American zoning laws.[0] There was also some interesting discussion.[1] The
reason I thought of this is because in Japan the broad outlines of zoning laws
are made at the national level, and cities can only make exceptions to them,
unlike in America where cities make their zoning laws out of whole cloth. A
bill like this is a small movement closer to the Japanese system.

0: [http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-
zoning.html](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html)

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845)

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toodlebunions
Sounds like a recipe for even more sprawl. The bay area may need more housing
but build up, not out.

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jacobolus
What’s needed is large amounts of new housing in Palo Alto, Mountain View,
Santa Clara, Cupertino, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, etc. etc. The most reasonable
places to put it are near public transit and near office parks. These cities
don’t really have a whole lot of “out” left to build on.

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jedberg
NIMBY is a huge problem. I live in Cupertino, and we just defeated a couple of
bills that would have allowed a nine story high rise of apartments right next
to the freeway.

In this particular case most people opposed it because they didn't want a nine
story building. I didn't actually mind, even though I would literally live in
it's shadow.

But I voted against it too because the they were apartments, not condos, which
means that they will send their kids to the schools but not pay for them.
Actually worse, their rent would have been higher because of the schools, but
the schools would never see any of that money since apartments don't pay
parcel taxes, which is where a good chunk of the school funding comes from.

But my main point is that almost all of my neighbors opposed it because "they
don't want high density housing to ruin the neighborhood".

I hate to break it to these people, but they said the same thing in the 1960s
when _their_ houses were being built.

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shostack
So whomever actually owns the apartments that get rented pays no parcel tax?

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jedberg
They pay a single parcel tax instead of one per home like the rest if us.

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roflchoppa
What I like about the cali coast is that while there is a lot of space, most
of it is not developed. Besides a road, and the occasional vantage points. I
don't think "mandatory developement" plans like this which just sprawl and
sprawl is that good of an idea, it really takes out from the landscape.

More information regarding Scott,
[https://www.crowdpac.com/candidates/559c008cac423b7c02c95011...](https://www.crowdpac.com/candidates/559c008cac423b7c02c95011/scott-
wiener)

Damn land developers.

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pascalxus
CA desperately needs more housing, especially places like the Bay Area. If
this proposition passes, it might be a real good thing.

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burfog
CA has too much housing already. Consider water availability and traffic jams.
In LA and sometimes in San Jose, consider smog.

Why does everybody have to live there anyway? The country would be way better
off if 25 million people left there for Tennessee, West Virginia, Mississippi,
Kentucky, Michigan, Maine, Indiana, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

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gremlinsinc
yeah no kidding, blue hipsters need to spread their progressivism to the rest
of the country(as I noticed most of those states lean Republican), if we're
ever to have a more progressive country.

