
California higher-density housing bill blocked in first committee hearing - thirtyseven
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/17/major-california-housing-bill-dies-in-first-committee-hearing/
======
epistasis
The housing shortage is a completely self-inflicted wound. Like Prop 13, it
benefits current owners at the expense of their children and other newcomers.

And even when housing can be built, it is overly expensive due to insanely
conservative zoning requirements. A great explanation of just how awful it is
in LA is here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_ar...](https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_architect_in_la_specializing_in_multifamily/)

And SF and the Bay Area have been even _worse_ than LA at building housing.

Crazy conservative (in the sense of "no change allowed") people dominate all
the planning meetings, which control what can and can not be built. Meeting
code and zoning is not enough, you have to convince the extreme ends of your
opponents to get _anything_ built.

~~~
siculars
These boards should all take a field trip to places like NYC and Tokyo where
the buildings are tall and the density is high. I have no sympathy for these
self inflicted wounds.

~~~
oppositelock
I'm a home owner and YIMBY here who shows up at city council meetings in
support of more housing. You would be shocked just how horribly selfish
existing home owners are. Very common statements are that "I bought here
because I liked the town and I don't want it to change", or "I have my house
already, I don't want more people here", etc. It's awful.

We're slowly losing everyone in Mountain View except dual tech income people
who won the stock option lottery, houses are out of reach for most everyone.
What does get built via ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) mandates is
generally rental housing, and rents are astronomical.

This kind of short sightedness is disgusting, and people don't seem to realize
that nice, high density areas didn't just spring up in their dense form, they
were allowed to evolve over time.

CA also has a lot of red tape anyone can invoke on any construction project to
drown it in bureaucracy for years. The only people willing to fight against
the bureaucracy are giant developers who develop large lots into cookie cutter
developments. It's a giant mess driven by greed and stupidity.

~~~
majormajor
So on one hand you have people happy with the neighborhood they live in and
not wanting change; on the other hand you have people not happy and wanting
change.

Why is one group more "horribly selfish" than the other? Especially if you
think there's a bubble, you don't want to change the character of the place
for a short-term problem.

Why is "build more in one place" a more natural answer than "let tech
companies geographically diversify themselves in response to pricing
pressure"? Especially given an area that's kind of a natural disaster SPOF.

~~~
oppositelock
You have to react to the state of the world today, not some unknown future
state. The Bay Area is very successful financially with tech, biotech, and
finance jobs. People from all over the country and world are coming here. We
need housing for them.

Basically, we can choose between two sets of problems, the problems of
increased density, or the problems of gentrification. Yes, there is some
amount of subjectivity here, and I clearly prefer the problems of higher
density, but living here, I see a lot of very bad effects of gentrification.
Service industry people have massive commutes from far away, yet we're
dependent on their services, but we don't want to make housing affordable to
make their lives better because we don't want change. We prioritize saving
three big trees [1] over development, for example.

What is really disheartening is people saying, as you do, that we should drive
tech away in some capacity. I've lived in the rust belt, in areas of low
housing cost due to industrial decline, I really would hate to see that here,
it's horrible.

[1] [https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2017/12/22/downtown-
residents-...](https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2017/12/22/downtown-residents-
rally-to-save-neighborhood-redwoods)

~~~
oppositelock
Oh, and one more thing - I'm glad that SB 827 died, despite being pro-housing.
This is fundamentally a local decisions, it's just that the locals are being
unreasonable. Whenever the state imposes a one-size-fits-all policy, you end
up with different problems. San Jose, for example, is building housing like
crazy, and tech companies are already building campuses near the new housing,
as even Google employees can't afford to buy in Mountain View today. Basic 3
bed / 2 bath houses on < 6,000 ft lots go for over $2.5M in Mountain View.
Owner condos are non-existent, rents are on par with Manhattan, but we don't
have public transit to move people out into the boroughs. It's not a good
situation. I'm lucky because I've been here since the 90's, but today, I'd be
forced to leave the bay area given my income level.

~~~
jcoffland
> San Jose, for example, is building housing like crazy

And they have ruined what used to be beautiful farm land and orchards to
create ugly urban sprawl punctuated by strip malls and plagued by violent
crime. There's a very good reason San Jose, not San Francisco, was the site of
the first major European settlement on the West Coast. Aside from having
fantastic weather year round, San Jose was once beautiful. Few would argue
that now.

I know people need jobs and housing but unrestrained urban sprawl is a
terrible solution to that problem.

~~~
Fins
San Jose looks anything but urban. It's a big boring suburb, just like
everything else between Gilroy and SF.

~~~
astrange
No way, our suburbs have way better restaurants than any other suburbs. Where
else in the US are you going to find thirty different ramen shops?

~~~
Fins
Only if you count Napa as a suburb, too. Otherwise, SFBA's opinion of its
restaurants is slightly exaggerated.

------
dahdum
California has the highest poverty rate in the US [1] in no small part due to
the housing crisis. It’s a sad fact that this bill dying in committee is the
most progress in years to solve the root problem.

1) [http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-jackson-
californi...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-jackson-california-
poverty-20180114-story.html)

------
JumpCrisscross
California YIMBY organized this bill which, while destined to fail, has
attracted a good deal of serious attention to the cause.

Donate/volunteer: [https://cayimby.org](https://cayimby.org)

(I am not affiliated with California YIMBY.)

~~~
arikr
If anyone from California YIMBY is reading this thread, I really hope you get
a chance to read the following:

\- [https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the-
referendum-21-...](https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the-
referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-
the-storm-2/)

\- "Win Bigly" by Scott Adams

~~~
epistasis
That's a super long essay, and about 500-800 words into it there's still no
thesis or general topic introduced.

It may help to provide a tiny teaser about why it's interesting and relevant
if you'd like more people to read it, as the current introduction doesn't do
it many favors.

------
blondie9x
Disappointing. This was a way to save hours and years in aggregate for people
around the state.

The goal is simple. To live closer to the areas you depend on and not have to
lose everything doing so. A disappointment that it was not fully understood.
So many hours commuting and pollution moving from A to B when we can use
transit and live near it effectively if we can simply build.

------
djrogers
There were some good ideas in this one, but the requirement to force high
density housing near bus stops has some serious problems in small and medium
sized towns.

For one, bus stops are generally already near existing development, so unless
property values plummet, that land won’t be turned into condos.

The second problem is that bus stops can move. Yes - one of he big advantages
of busses over rail is that the location of the stops is infinitely flexible.
Forward thinking cities build bus pull-outs on major streets in new
neighborhoods all the time, so they can be used in the future. Requiring a
specific type of zoning at all of hear bus stops will effectively freeze this
type of flexibility.

OTOH, building a new train station? Yeah - put up some condos!

~~~
astrange
The bill was based on transit stops as they are in 2018 - it doesn't follow
you around if you make new ones. The idea there was to stop suburbs from just
shutting down their bus lines.

I think it is difficult to get a bus line moved in California though, because
of CEQA - didn't it take a decade to start a new one in SF just recently? This
is why everyone does UberPool.

~~~
djrogers
You’re talking about SF and I’m talking about small and mid sized towns. Big
difference. If a small town wants to move a bus stop 1 block, it doesn’t take
10 years...

------
klochner
Most infuriating about the SF housing debate is the the utter lack of economic
knowledge that aligns groups like sierra club and low-income advocacy groups
with rent-seeking or racist NIMBY homeowners.

~~~
rajacombinator
You’d probably find those groups are all run by the same people.

------
notatoad
As much good stuff as the bill had in it, I think I'm glad it failed. The idea
of upzoning near transit is a good one, but tying it directly to transit
growth is counterproductive. There was already talk of neighborhoods in LA
lobbying to reduce bus service on their streets so they wouldn't qualify as a
"high quality" bus line and be subject to the new zoning.

There needs to be a way to build transit-friendly neighborhoods without
turning people against transit.

~~~
redditmigrant
"There needs to be a way".

Like what? Given the dire housing situation in California, making perfect the
enemy of good will end up badly in the long run.

~~~
notatoad
setting up public transit as a villian isn't a "making perfect the enemy of
good" situation. the bill as written wasn't good. it was actively bad. Pitting
residents against public transit is counterproductive.

my first thought is that instead of tying the upzoning to transit lines or
transit stations, it should be tied to transportation corridors. if a route
carries a certain amount of people, whether by car or bus or train or jetpack,
nearby buildings should be ineligible for certain height restrictions and
parking minimums.

~~~
redditmigrant
Why wouldn't the residents then become even more anti housing because more
people will lead to corridoring? This is how all these anti housing debates
go, a well intentioned person with just a no and no thought on any actual
solutions.

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quotemstr
If the state of California in incapable of imposing adult supervision on bay
area towns and their NIMBYs, maybe it's time for the federal government to
give it a shot. I'm sure the commerce clause can be construed to authorize a
federal intervention.

SV is too economically important to the national and world economies to allow
hysterical, superstitious, and irrational local interests to overheat its
housing market.

------
makecheck
It may be that the only way to fight “not in my backyard” is to require, by
law, “everyone’s backyard”. In other words, make every single neighborhood
give _something_ up so that no one can say they’re being singled out.

One method might be to require a tax increase in every neighborhood that is
nullified if that neighborhood does certain things (like allowing dense
condos). The important thing would be to make it absolutely clear that a whole
city/region is in the same boat, that certain actions _will_ be taken on _all_
areas and no one will be allowed to squirm out of them.

------
debt
Damn this is being heavily down-voted yet has wide-reaching implications on
tech.

------
slantaclaus
“Not in my backyard”

My best insight on what is driving the opposition is contained in a book by
Zillow researchers called “Zillow Talk”. Basically, housing shortages drive up
home values.

------
redditmigrant
Yet another failure by an American state to do anything about an absolutely
huge problem. As I see it, wages haven't risen materially for decades and
governments are failing to do anything substantial about the big things people
spend their money on - housing, education, healthcare. At this rate , grass
roots revolution will be the only remaining avenue for change.

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DoofusOfDeath
I'm surprised that this is characterized only as a supply problem instead of a
demand problem.

~~~
astrange
There aren't /that/ many tech people moving to Silicon Valley, though there
certainly are a lot. What are you going to do about children who grew up in
California and can't live in the same city as their parents? There isn't even
enough supply for them.

~~~
quotemstr
One of the worst aspects of prop 13 is that the property tax cap is
hereditary. It's outrageous and creates a real risk of an honest-to-god blood-
based class divide in the region.

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supernova87a
As much as I hate voter propositions... It's time for a voter proposition on
this one, if we can't fix the rest of the system.

~~~
kelnos
I really wouldn't expect a voter proposition to do all that much better. There
are a lot -- probably a majority -- of CA residents that benefit from the
current policies and don't want change.

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Afforess
Individual property ownership should be outlawed. The perverse incentives
outweigh the benefits. Private real estate is an exclusive monopoly protected
by the government.

Housing appreciation is particularly appalling. Rarely is it due to any
particular improvements an owner makes, rather its due to city or local
changes which reward homeowners for no action of their own. Your schools
received higher test scores, collect 35k, and pass Go. A factory ignored EPA
regulations, lose 15k. There is no sense or reward for good decisions - just
the whims of fate. In fast growing cities like SF, it's worse, home value
grows off speculative home value, which grows off even more speculative home
values. The monopoly self-reinforces.

There is no reason for such an artificial monopoly to exist. The native
Americans got this right. Communists got this right. The Chinese 90-year lease
model looks much better.

~~~
namlem
Or just institute a land value tax.

