
California duplex bill, SB 1120, dies: Assembly approval comes too late - jseliger
https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-09-01/california-assembly-sb-1120-duplexes
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jfb
The central dysfunction of California governance is Proposition 13, the worst
law in the state, if not the world.

~~~
ghouse
The (presumably) unintended consequences of Prop 13 are numerous, and with the
passage of time, are increasing. For example, the supply of houses is
suppressed because selling ones house and purchasing a new one comes with an
increased tax bill. Need to move for a job? Want a smaller house after the
kids have moved out? That comes with a tax penalty.

~~~
foobiekr
This particular issue would be solved by extending the tax portability offered
by proposition 60 and 90 to those under 55.

I'm not saying I like prop 13 or props 60 or 90, but the problem you're noting
has already been _partially_ addressed.

~~~
njarboe
You can only keep your previous property tax assessment level if you buy
another property that is worth less than the one you sell and you buy in the
same county (a few counties join together in this rule). If you want to move
from a small house to a more expensive condo, you don't keep your lower tax
assessment. If you want to move from your expensive condo in the city to
similarly priced ranch in the foothills, you don't keep your lower tax
assessment.

Prop 13 causes so many problems, but it has been around for so long and has
been so important to so many peoples plans that I don't see any reasonable
path to repealing it. I think eliminating property tax and state income tax
and replacing it with a land value tax would be something to try.
Unfortunately, there is no where that has such a tax system and trying to
implement it first in such a large and complex economy as California is
probably not a good idea.

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OliverJones
People argue against deregulating housing density often with second-order
issues.

For example: "more housing density will only serve the rich" or variants on
that theme.

"more housing density will change the character of our neighborhood" is
another argument.

"more housing density will overburden our water / sewer / power / streets" is
yet another.

"more housing density will overburden our schools and public safety" is
another.

The first-order argument for higher housing density is this: "There isn't
enough housing for the population. Some people are homeless. Other people are
paying more than we can afford. We need more housing."

The second-order questions are legitimate, but they boil down to tactical
issues of carrying capacity. Using them to counter the first-order argument is
rhetorical trickery as ancient as Aristotle.

If people my age (I have a grandkid) wanted our neighborhoods to stay in some
gauzy Ward- and June- Cleaver state, we shoulda got vasectomies at age 20. We
didn't.

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clairity
that looks like some suspicious politicking given that

> "SB 1120 passed the state Senate in June, 39 to 0"

one interesting wrinkle in the article is that low-income neighborhoods
supposedly opposed the bill in fear of gentrification and being pushed out,
presumably because most of these residents don't own their homes.

that seems relatively straightforward to address with some additional
provisions, unlike the better-off homeowners who want to control other people
and property unreasonably.

up to 4+1 (fourplex plus accessory unit) should be by right on all residential
parcels. homeowners can still decide to build a single-family if they want it,
but not be forced into it. note that roughly 2/3 of california residential is
zoned single-family _only_.

~~~
aluminum96
The bill already had a provision preventing division of a lot that had a
tenant in the last 3 years.

~~~
clairity
i guess that provision must have been small consolation to folks facing the
downside of gentrification in disadvantaged neighborhoods. it doesn't seem to
address the potential abuse of evictions to overcome the implied (but not
explicit) restriction on ushering out the disadvantaged.

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api
Everyone is just going to go virtual/remote and leave. It's clear that the
state is run by a property owners' cartel determined to restrict supply until
they strangle the place.

~~~
lokar
I feel like towns should have a right to control the feel, density and
character.

The real issue is that zoning for jobs and housing are out of balance.
Towns/Counties should be required to balance them. eg, you can't allow that
500,000sqft office building unless you also zone enough housing for the people
who will work there.

If a small town wants to stay single family homes, but also is not zoning new
jobs, they should not have to change to accommodate other towns zoning tons of
office space with no housing.

~~~
thebradbain
That sounds great in theory, but then you remember that the Bay Area is a
metropolitan area of fiefdoms. Why are Daly City, South San Francisco,
Brisbane, San Bruno all separate entities? Why are Palo Alto, Atherton,
Cupertino, Mountain View, Sunnyvale all separate cities? I can't even begin to
list all the Peninsula fiefdoms... and all of Marin County?

And yet they all rely on a few job centers (San Jose, San Francisco, Silicon
Valley megacampuses...)? Should they really be separate cities, and why do
they get a pass on building housing when they're essentially parasitic
communities that could not exist without the larger metropolitan areas yet
don't support them via city tax money (and in some cases, like Atherton, with
a minimum residential lot size of 1+ acre, actively hold back the entire
region in the case of CalTrain electrification because they don't want the
"inconvenience of more frequent trains" disrupting their community)

This isn't just a problem specific to the Bay Area, but all of California. Los
Angeles –– and the fact that even within the city of Los Angeles, the legal
concept of Neighorhood Councils splits the city itself into political fiefdoms
even in the same city council district – and SoCal (especially Orange County)
are arguably worse, coming from someone who has lived in both cities.

EDIT / Anecdote: I grew up in Dallas (and I still consider it my home), and
while that city has its own set of problems, one notable problem it does NOT
have is a lack of supply of housing due to red tape around zoning. Dallas,
unlike Houston (which has no zoning), is a zoned city, but requesting a zoning
exemption takes only a few months rather than a few years, and the overall
result is more homes, denser development, newer buildings, and cheaper housing
stock. My childhood neighborhood has experienced a lot of nearby development,
but would I say the character has notably changed? No.

~~~
birdyrooster
San Jose is truly one of the least scaled out major cities in California with
capacity for multiples of its current residency. Ignore those insular cities
up the peninsula and lets build up San Jose and get benefits of scale from
being colocated.

~~~
api
The benefits of scale come with the cost of unaffordability and inability for
the middle class to build wealth. I have also come to see it as overrated in
general. Concentrations bring benefits but also groupthink and tunnel vision,
which is part of why SV works on the same things all the time and Hollywood
can only make one movie.

~~~
thebradbain
"Scale comes with the cost of unaffordability" is an opinion, and one that's
contrary to the widely shared opinions of experts in the domain, at that.

~~~
api
What places have massive scale and are affordable?

Please don't suggest tiny residences. This is fine when you're single, but
throw in some kids or other extended family and it becomes highly stressful.

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DenisM
California reminds me of the pre-revolutionary France #. Huge country easily
dwarfing its neighbors in size and population, yet hopelessly entangled in a
gridlock of various special interests to the point of strangulation. Each one
pursues its own best interest, collectively dooming their host to suffocation,
and none willing to budge.

And it's not just the real estate, and not just California. Healthcare system
comes to mind as another clusterfuck - no individual actor seems malevolent or
dangerous enough, yet the total is much worse than the sum of the individual
participants.

# I highly recommend The Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan.

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legitster
For me, California is a good case study for how no single political party has
a monopoly on good policy. Despite being the biggest and richest state, and
there being nearly no major oppositions being raised by an opposing party, the
state is struggling with basic governance.

~~~
jjoonathan
Wasn't Prop 13 the baby of everyone's favorite dreamy Democratic California
governor, Ronald Reagan? And weren't the Enron rolling blackouts specifically
due to giving Enron too much "protection" from the government?

That's not to say California isn't also overflowing with bad liberal ideas --
Prop 47 and corporate gender quotas spring to mind -- but the madness seems to
be a result of back-and-forth escalation rather than monopoly.

If back-and-forth escalation is truly to blame, it doesn't bode well for the
USA as a whole, because we certainly seem to be headed down that road.

~~~
jeffbee
Prop. 13 was written by a lobbyist for the Los Angeles Apartment Owners'
Association and passed during the administration of Jerry Brown, who had been
elected 4 years before it passed, and was governor for 4 years after.

~~~
bosswipe
It was the product of the same late 70s "taxpayers revolt" that produced
Reagan.

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jeffbee
Do you mean that gave us Reagan as President? Reagan was elected Governor of
California in 1966.

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bosswipe
Yes. I don't think this is controversial. I quickly found several Reagan-
friendly sources that make the same claim:

[https://www.cato.org/blog/know-libertarian-history-great-
tax...](https://www.cato.org/blog/know-libertarian-history-great-tax-
revolt-1970s)

[https://www.hoover.org/research/tax-revolt-
turns-20](https://www.hoover.org/research/tax-revolt-turns-20)

[https://www.hjta.org/california-commentary/after-all-
these-y...](https://www.hjta.org/california-commentary/after-all-these-years-
liberals-are-still-wrong-about-proposition-13/)

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dmode
Let’s face it, California is run by a bunch of faux progressive NIMBYs and
their chosen politician. I live in a suburb close to Oakland and my tree lined
streets are filled with BLM posters, but our state legislative rep voted
against this bill. Nextdoor is full of posts opposing this bill with Trumpian
scare mongering “those people will come to your neighborhood if you end single
family zoning”. Good news is that things are changing slowly. Lots of young
people are getting involved and pushing back. But it will take a while to take
NIMBY out of suburbs

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benmw333
And yet they pass SB 145. Absolute whack jobs running CA.

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anaisbetts
To save you the Google, SB 145 makes the laws around discretion in consensual
yet illegal underage sex not explicitly reference "vaginal intercourse", so
that they are equivalent for both straight and queer people.

This law is unequivocally good. You could certainly make an argument about the
tenets before it, where people within 10 years of age do not have to register
as sex offenders, but there is absolutely zero reason to special-case
heterosexuals.

~~~
SamReidHughes
It's not unequivocally good; the law could have equalized by removing
discretion in all cases.

~~~
anaisbetts
It's like you read the first part of what I wrote then wandered off

