
California’s next bold step on climate should be building near transit - jseliger
http://cityobservatory.org/californias-next-bold-step-on-climate-should-be-building-near-transit/
======
jpao79
A better rule than SB827 would be a rule for every office worker employed in
the city, there must be an equivalent housing unit provided by that same city
such that the jobs per resident ratio is maintained.

If Menlo Park wants to allow Facebook to build an office complex to support
2,000 more Facebook employees than it needs to create 2,000 more residential
options for those employees. Otherwise Redwood City and East Palo Alto have to
shoulder the burden of housing, education and other services for those new
residents without the benefit of the tax basis.

Or if San Francisco wants to build 5 more Salesforce Towers, San Francisco
should be required to present a plan to build 5 neighboring residential towers
to support those office towers. Or pass on the opportunity and encourage
Salesforce to take a look at Oakland/San Jose/Sacramento/Fresno.

Let's put it this way, if Wiener really had concerned about housing, then the
really good solution would be to let Brisbane build the Salesforce/Uber office
towers in Brisbane and then for Wiener find a transit rich location within San
Francisco for the housing development to support those office towers. From an
outsider perspective, it just seems like SF is perfectly happy to scoop up the
office/commercial rent tax revenue and let Brisbane do the heavy lifting of
housing those office workers [1].

[1] [https://sf.curbed.com/2018/1/16/16897174/brisbane-city-
counc...](https://sf.curbed.com/2018/1/16/16897174/brisbane-city-council-
silicon-valley-land)

~~~
Karishma1234
Central planning is almost assured to fail miserably tiling the power more
into the hands of rich people while screwing up small people. There is nothing
wrong in some cities specialising in industrial buildings while other cities
focus on residential projects. Cities should have all this freedom.

The best solution is to relax zoning laws so that the average rents go down
till they reach a point where they meet the average.

The real problem with California is that the politicians have put ridiculous
elitist objectives such as climate change over sensible and practical
objectives such as roof over the head of working middle class people. Somehow
some godforsaken fish needs conservation but the minorities in most cities are
forced to live in petty ghettos with conditions worse than animals.

P.S. Note that the real victims of these policies have been minorities. I
rarely see blacks of hispanics living in better areas of any bay area town. In
fact you can guess a neighbourhood is hispanic by just looking at the school
ratings. They live in ghettos and their schools tend to be the worst as a
result they are perpetually trapped in poverty.

~~~
spookthesunset
There is no trade off between climate change and housing. Those are entirely
separate things.

SFO is way too hung up on its past and the citizens living within need to get
over themselves and allow “evil” developers to tear down all the old crap and
build up. They live in a city. Shit changes.

It is astonishing how many two or three level buildings exist even within the
most dense part of the city. Even more amazing is how even 5 minutes away from
market street exists two story houses with garages in front.

Seriously. It isn’t historic. It’s just old crap. Tear it down. Build up.

Only gonna work if government can tell all the existing residents to fuck off
and allow more development.

~~~
i_am_nomad
Governments should work for the people, and specifically, for the people they
govern. Telling “existing residents to fuck off” falls somewhat short of that.

~~~
Karishma1234
That begs the question of which people ? Only the homeowners ?

------
joshe
More housing would also massively improve the cost of living in California.
Estimates put housing expanse at nearly 50% of monthly income in San
Francisco. The usual is 30%.

High housing cost is also the cause of all the other high costs. It's a
regressive expense, so all workers need much higher incomes to live here. It
makes restaurants, grocery, and car mechanics more expensive.

CA taxes aren't even that high, the total tax by percent of state income is
only 11%, rank 6 in the nation. "Low" tax states like Arizona and Nevada are
8.8% and 8.1% respectively.

 _Dropping our housing cost to the national average would save you twice as
much as eliminating all California income and sales taxes._

[https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/State-
Local_Tax_...](https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/State-
Local_Tax_Burden_FY2012.pdf)

~~~
jakelarkin
Nevada figure probably includes taxes paid by casinos. Income taxes are closer
to 5%.

~~~
njarboe
Nevada state income tax is 0%. One of the few without one along with Alaska,
Florida, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.

------
toast0
Building housing near transit isn't nearly as important as building offices
near transit, if you want to make transit (more) viable.

I can easily drive to caltrain and walk to work from the station, if my office
is walkable from the station, and my house is drivable from a station with
sufficient parking. It's much harder to walk to caltrain and then drive from
the station to the office.

~~~
Johnny555
But if everyone drives to the station, you need to build parking for them all.

Garage parking efficiencies run around 350 - 500 square feet per car. So if
you are your spouse drive to the train separately, you're taking 700 - 1000
square feet of space. It seems better to build 1000 square foot apartments on
that space instead of wasting it on parking.

I say, get rid of segregated zoning and build more mixed use
residential+retail+commercial developments and put everything closer to
transit.

~~~
flukus
> But if everyone drives to the station, you need to build parking for them
> all.

If no one takes the train you need to build parking for them all, this is
significantly cheaper and easier outside the city center.

~~~
Johnny555
But one thing that's cheaper than building parking lots and garages for
thousands of cars is to use zoning to encourage developers to build dense
offices and housing close to transit so you don't need to build parking at
all.

------
rb808
I remember hearing how in Japan the railway company builds a new line to
somewhere then owns and develops the land itself, is that really true? Is a
neat idea.

~~~
culturestate
That's mostly true - JR develops the land _above and around the stations,_ but
not huge tracts like you'd think of an American subdivision. The MTR in Hong
Kong has a similar grant of rights, but invests mainly in shopping malls
rather than residential or office developments.

~~~
r00fus
Almost every single shopping mall in HK seems to have residential on top of
it. It leads to massively good flow and all the good things that come of that
- the customers come to you (assuming you don't completely suck).

------
xvilka
Why not just build a new lines of subway and other means of public
transportation in those newly populated areas? Like every big city in Asia
does?

------
kristianp
See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit-
oriented_development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit-
oriented_development)

------
capkutay
that was already struck down by california voters who value sparse, low
populous neighborhoods more than the environment.

[https://sf.curbed.com/2018/4/18/17250876/california-
senate-b...](https://sf.curbed.com/2018/4/18/17250876/california-senate-
bill-827-housing-transit-vote-wiener)

~~~
api
It was struck down by reps, not voters directly. Make a note of yes and no
votes and now you know who to vote for or against next election.

~~~
DrScump
Not even. It was killed in _committee_ , as only two of _nine_ Democrats
supported it. Half the Republicans on the committee voted Aye; only one voted
against.

------
stretchwithme
I think doubling down on mass transit is a mistake with automated vehicles on
the horizon. It doesn't make sense to incur massive debt when the customers
are going to drive away.

We should instead think about a system of tolls that has demand-based prices
and that takes into account vehicle size. Tiny one person vehicles are going
to be way cheaper than mass transit and there'll be no waiting, missed
connections or end of service. They'll be as cheap as mopeds to operate.

Point to point will work if we have a sensible pricing system. Instead of
waiting in traffic, we'll wait at home until there is space for us. If we can
buy a subscription and get paid to wait or go earlier, we can put an end to
most traffic jams and keep people from driving into those that do occur.

You might normally leave the office at 6:30 and drive 10 miles to your house.
But if there's an accident and the "spot" price of your trip goes up, you'd be
able to sell your trip for that day. You could make money by waiting. Or maybe
you just take a bus.

And by reducing the number of people that jam the roads at peak time, we can
spread out the load and spend less money building for peak traffic. This is
how many markets work, like the hotel market. They don't build a hotel room
that sits idle 90% of the time so that nobody ever has to pay a high price for
a room. They charge more at peak times and that makes some people change their
plans to avoid the peak price.

~~~
pietroglyph
I think that the approach you outline doesn't effectively consider the waste
and emissions of everyone having their own car (even single person), nor the
increased inequality of paying more for peak times (you can only commute at
reasonable hours if you're rich enough to pay for it.)

~~~
stretchwithme
If it costs more for someone to start work at a specific time, employees will
demand more to work for you.

In fact, if you were to require employers to pay for that peak travel, it
wouldn't really make a difference. Most employers understand that such costs
affect wages and how much money they'll save due to having a road system that
breaks twice a day.

And most employees will think they are getting something for free. It's
win/win. Or neutral/fooled into thinking you won. And these same employees
don't realize that their commute is currently costing them a lot more in
opportunity costs than whatever the toll might be.

------
almost_usual
I’m interested in the time frame some YIMBY supporters expect radical new
housing laws to be passed in California? It’s obvious locals don’t want things
to change, especially for tech workers.

~~~
mesozoic
Why would they. They're sitting on million dollar shanty houses because of
tech workers. Start actually using the technology, empower remote work and
they'll come begging to build more housing and get workers forced back into
paying for their overpriced garbage homes.

------
petermcneeley
Encourage remote work. Dont we all just work in front of computers?

~~~
squiggleblaz
No. I'm a programmer - I need more peers around constantly to bounce ideas of
them, to learn from them, to mentor them etc etc. The source code is much
bigger than I can fit in my head alone. I need to work as part of a team.

~~~
flukus
I do this remotely everyday. Email, IM, and voice chat can do this, many of
the people I interact the most with are on other continents. Unfortunately I
do this from my office to remote offices because we can't work from home, but
that's a stupid corporate limitation, not a technological one.

~~~
d0lph
Seriously, people act like verbal communication is the only way office workers
can communicate.

------
diogenescynic
This would be great. We also need to take away local housing regulations and
give control back to the state because all that has led to is NIMBYism and
blocking new construction.

------
mesozoic
What a revolutionary idea? Common sense how dare ye!

------
ojbyrne
SB827 is dead, this article seems kind of pointless. At this point it’s
neither “next” nor “bold.”

------
Karishma1234
Yaawn...

The last thing California needs to do is to battle climate change. When poor
residents of your state are unable to find decent housing despite having
reasonable income, when your farmers are paying highest energy prices in USA,
when you state has major inequality problem the focus should be on increasing
housing, simplifying zoning laws so the poor working middle class Californians
could afford a roof on their head first.

This climate change rhetoric is being peddled by fat-cat rich people who have
got rich on tech or hollywood and have absolutely not compassion for ordinary
working class people.

~~~
pietroglyph
You're constructing a false dichotomy; battling climate change isn't mutually
exclusive with reducing housing inequality. In fact, this article specifically
highlights how the two go hand-in-hand.

