
Berkeley’s Attack on Housing - jseliger
http://www.beyondchron.org/berkeleys-attack-housing/
======
jedberg
As a previous student and renter, and a current landlord in Berkeley, I can
tell you exactly why this happens.

Students don't vote in city elections for the most part.

The city council represents the homeowners and long time residents. The
homeowners want their property values to go up, so most of them oppose more
housing. The long time residents inexplicably hate students and "what the
students do to this city" despite the fact that the University was there
before every single person who live there now.

So the city council does everything it can to keep those property values high,
since the students are a captive audience and will rent no matter what, and
for the most part don't care what the cost is because their upper middle class
parents and/or the federal government is picking up the bill until they
graduate.

I personally do my small part by keeping the rent on our place below market,
as close to our actual costs as possible. The appreciation on the property
value is nice, but the steady income is really what Berkeley property is good
for. In 19 years I've had three months of vacancy, and two of those were
because I was renovating and one was because my tenants left in a odd month.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
"What students do to this city"

How short sighted, without the school the whole Silicon Valley thing might
have happened somewhere else and property values wouldn't be nearly as high.

~~~
sanderjd
As a longtime resident of a college town, I have no trouble both appreciating
the value of having a University (which I went to) in town, and finding the
students themselves to often be an irritance. I'm sure I was loud, obnoxious,
and generally disrespectful of other people when I was a student too, but that
doesn't make it "inexplicable" to dislike such behavior now.

I don't think we should punish them through housing policy though :-).

------
TulliusCicero
Being anti-housing in urban areas doesn't just hurt the poor and middle class.
It's also definitively anti-environment.

The people who would've ended up in new housing don't just disappear into the
ether; they end up living in some further out suburb, where they contribute to
encroaching on nature, and where they have longer, more energy-intensive
commutes.

To be an environmentalist and a NIMBY is a contradiction in terms. The bay
area, unfortunately, is chock full of hypocrites of this sort.

~~~
maxsilver
I wish urbanists / "urban planners" would learn that same lesson too.

They seem to think gentrification / "YIMBYism" is "good" because it "invests
in" or "cleans up" the neighborhood, not realizing that all the poorer people
they "cleaned up" don't disappear -- they too end up living in some further
out area, with all the same problems that causes.

Edit: This isn't an anti-construction argument. This is a pro- _appropriate_
-construction argument. Not just any new building works towards a solution.
Not just any units actually help the supply side of this problem.

~~~
closeparen
Where do you think existing residents go when migrants take over the existing
housing stock?

Like many in this debate, you seem to think that preventing housing
construction prevents population change. But it only preserves the _size_ of
the population, not the composition

There is more than enough demand already to unseat every long-time renter by
outbidding them at lease renewal time, and this is happening. No developer
intervention required.

~~~
maxsilver
> Like many in this debate, you seem to think that preventing housing
> construction prevents population change.

Not at all. That's a claim you've invented entirely on your own, not something
I said.

\--

My claim is that YIMBYism is often an attempt to _replicate_ the housing
problems seen in places like Berkley, not an attempt to fix them. YIMBYism is
often an attempt to inflate property just like NIMBYism is.

If 1,000 people are slowly dying of thirst in the desert, and PepsiCo offers
to build a Pepsi distribution plant in your desert, some people will say "no"
and some will say "yes", _and neither will be addressing the water shortage
problem_ because Pepsi isn't water.

That's essentially how housing works today. No one builds housing for
residents, which is the problem. If you oppose the construction of buildings
that are not housing for residents (like say, luxury condos), you get
slandered with a "NIMBY" label, _despite being pro-housing_ , because the
construction makes the existing problem worse (the act of constructing that
luxury condo will inflate all nearby property values too, displacing more
people than the new building itself will hold)

~~~
ScottBurson
I think you've got cause and effect wrong. What mostly inflates property
values is the simple fact that lots of people want to live in an area. Or put
it this way: the reason people want to live in the Bay Area is not _because
of_ the amazing luxury condos.

Sure, it's possible to build too many luxury condos and depress prices in that
market segment, while not building enough of something else, but we certainly
don't have that problem now.

------
inostia
Another example of how "progressives" in Berkeley are all for progressive
policies (and driving a Prius) until they conflict with their NIMBY attitude
towards their home values. Holdovers from the 60's and 70's who have seen
their home values skyrocket and now want to prevent building of newer rental
units (the "Missing Middle", 3-8 unit, smaller apartment buildings).

~~~
davidw
Very relevant: [http://marketurbanism.com/2017/01/27/the-disconnect-
between-...](http://marketurbanism.com/2017/01/27/the-disconnect-between-
liberal-aspirations-and-liberal-housing-policy-is-killing-coastal-u-s-cities/)

~~~
inostia
Thanks for this. Also relevant, recent article about this issue in Oakland:
[http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/May-2017/The-Real-Cause-of-
Ge...](http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/May-2017/The-Real-Cause-of-
Gentrification/)

------
aphextron
Can anyone seriously use the term "Affordable housing" in Berkeley with a
straight face? The median home value has just crossed 1 million dollars, which
buys you a single floor 2 bedroom bungalow. It is very clear that the current
homeowners of Berkeley are just fine with the way things are.

~~~
osdiab
Unfortunately, the young people who are subject to the rental market are also
very politically inactive when it comes to local politics. Berkeley residents
- how about next time you protest, focus not only on national politics but
also on your own city's issues!!

~~~
mjevans
How are you supposed to gain representation within an area that you literally
cannot live within (even though you work / receive education there) due to a
lack of (affordable) housing?

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Take a look at drivers license address requirements [1], and figure out how to
game it. Or some other form of identification. The system generally assumes
that if you can reliably receive mail address to you at a particular
residential address and you tell institutions that you live there, then you
live there - at least until more detailed probing happens.

[1]
[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/dl/residency_requir...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/dl/residency_requirement)

~~~
mjevans
My point was more that in the modern world people's interests likely cover a
span or several spans of regions. Not just one single locality.

Sometimes (near state lines in the US) not even /state/ level laws would
provide adequate representational coverage.

A more accurate way of providing representation might be to identify areas of
major expenditure. Employment, Education, Living, etc. Aside from residency
should be either by some absolute threshold of transaction value or possibly
by percentage of income. A significant economic interest in an area should be
related to representation in that area (as you are being taxed for your
activity there). Corridors that connect those areas should also apply (you do
have to traverse them for your interests); transit and transit related laws
should thus probably be at a major metro or higher level.

------
dredmorbius
I'm coming to suspect a common trait of goods whose primary or significant
function is as an _asset_ that there are built-in incentives to seek the
_value inflation_ of those assets.

This happens across asset classes, but there are at least two significant
distinctions:

* Purely financial assets: money, stocks, bonds, etc.

* Productive assets, most especially _Maslovian_ assets: those which provide necessities of life.

Purely financial assets can absorb inflation without _inherently_ creating
dislocations in the productive economy. This isn't to say that they don't risk
bubbles or other issues, only that there's no _inherent_ need for a person to
have, say, a specific quantity of stock or money (excepting ongoing expenses
for the latter).

Pricing up productive assets is another story -- two roles, _wealth
preservation_ , and _productive use_ , are in conflict.

The problem is, from a rational perspective, _it makes sense for the owners of
such goods to seek value appreciation_. This doesn't translate to an increase
in real economic growth, but it _does_ increase the owner's _claims_ to such
growth.

Through leverage, debt, and lending collateral, there are knock-on effects to
other agents as well: a bank whose core asset (and lending reserve) is the
market value of its real-estate portfolio benefits by increased valuation of
that portfolio.

I'm not entirely sure what if any solutions might exist, though I'm partial to
the concept of a land tax (or more generally: a held-asset tax), which
increases ongoing carrying costs, and encourges more intensive utilisation of
high-value property.

I'm also interested in what areas _don 't_ have this problem, and what
policies or other conditions tend away from it.

------
berkeleyguy
I've lived in downtown berkeley for five years and pay 1100 per month for a
studio apartment.

For those arguing that the city could zone and facilitate building affordable
non subsidized housing, where exactly would it be built?

There isn't an abundance of empty lots AFAIK and it seems enormous highrises
would have to be built in large numbers to make any dent in having prices come
down.

I would love more options but without even mildly specific suggestions
articles like these seem to lack any pragmatism.

~~~
inostia
Why not relaxing rules for property owners to build units in their own
backyards? See [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/us/california-today-
housi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/us/california-today-housing-
crisis.html)

~~~
taysic
"She spent about $100,000 to add a cottage in her backyard in Berkeley in
2011, and has been renting it out for between $1,500 and $2,000 a month. It
paid for itself in under five years, she said."

Why do they need to be relaxed if its already profitable to build one?

I wonder what about building such a unit requires too much red tape. Too bad
they don't go into it in the article.

~~~
closeparen
There is a specific movement to increase the minimum lot size you need to
build one, which would remove the possibility of more than 100 such units.

------
fiter
I hope "Ecocity Berkeley"[0] (written 1987!) can become a reality. It's
exactly the idea that many have commented about: increase density, increase
parks, and reduce sprawl.

This is a vision to strive for instead of just preserving whatever state we're
currently in.

[0]
[https://books.google.com/books/about/Ecocity_Berkeley.html?i...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Ecocity_Berkeley.html?id=QYE-Q8MAF3MC)

------
berkeleyguy
Actual UC Berkeley dorm prices.

[http://www.housing.berkeley.edu/rates](http://www.housing.berkeley.edu/rates)

I'm not sure if these are at/over capacity, but how do non students feel about
these prices?

~~~
fiter
Note that this includes 10 meals per week. Maybe that's worth $200/mo.

~~~
berkeleyguy
It definitely is if you were to use it. In either case, as a public
institution there may be a cap on the cost of these spots, and should be
required reading for any critique/support of the Berkeley student impact on
housing prices in Berkeley.

Typically these articles paint a picture of students rolling in as if they
were forced into a 3000/mo condo.

~~~
taysic
$1500/mo for a single room where you share a bathroom seems like a lot to me.
Not $3000 but still a _lot_ for a college student imo. $1000/mo to share a
room of 4? Wow!

~~~
somecontext
According to
[http://www.housing.berkeley.edu/policies](http://www.housing.berkeley.edu/policies)
and other related pages online it appears that a student only receives this
room from approximately August 15 to May 14, with a mandatory move-out for
three weeks during Christmas break. That is only ~250 days of housing.

Thus, the price of a quad room is even more, at ~$1,580/month, disregarding
the inconvenience of the move-out. The single room with shared bathroom works
out to ~$2,200/month. In-suite is more, at ~$2,400/month.

------
csharpminor
I think it's worth actually reading the piece of legislation for the housing
fee:
[http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Clerk/City_Council/2017/06_June...](http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Clerk/City_Council/2017/06_June/Documents/2017-06-13_Item_53_Supplemental_Report.aspx)

From what I've gathered, the additional fee is designed to incentivize
developers to include at least 20% affordable housing units in new projects.
If you're building less than 20% affordable housing, you pay a sliding-scale
fee. That money goes to supporting staff in the city that monitor and enforce
affordable housing regulations.

I can definitely see the opposing policy argument here: just remove incentives
on developers and let the market figure it out. However, I don't think Item
#53 is some kind of scheme to keep housing unaffordable on the part of home
owners.

I wasn't able to find the de-zoning item in the agenda, if anyone knows which
one it is I'd definitely give it a read. Full agenda here:
[http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Clerk/City_Council/2017/06_June...](http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Clerk/City_Council/2017/06_June/City_Council__06-13-2017_-__Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx)

------
natrius
You're going to read a page full of comments that agree with this, which is
great. But you need to change it. You need to join an organization that will
show you how to fight for policies that make our cities open to all. Find your
local pro-housing organization and join it. Let people live where they want.

------
Upvoter33
There is an answer here: move slowly. Add a little bit of dense housing and
show home owners that the price of their housing isn't affected. Continue to
do so over many years to allow people who spent a lot of $$$ to get into the
housing market to get out w/o losing a lot of investment. Rapid change is the
big enemy and what people fear here -- and why liberals end up voting against
very progressive policies...

------
api
I've always seen this kind of unhinged NIMBYism as a backdoor passive
aggressive way to implement housing discrimination, though more based on class
than race. It's a way of making sure the "wrong people" (poor people, usually
minorities) can't live there.

I almost have more respect for all the neo-fascists who are just openly racist
and elitist. At least they're being honest about how they feel.

~~~
lstyls
Class is often backdoor racism too. Structural racism is a huge driver of
class division in the US.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Is there a good place to read more about that?

I haven't seen a good study on teasing apart cultural, class, and racial
discrimination in terms of contribution to outcomes.

~~~
lstyls
Ta-Nehisi Coates covered it in both depth and breadth in this article:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-
cas...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-
reparations/361631/).

Class divisions due to race were cemented by slavery, jim crow, redlining, and
the criminal justice system. Nimbyism parallels redlining in certain ways now
that I think about it.

