
Scott Wiener proposes 3 new housing bills for CA - sid-kap
https://medium.com/@Scott_Wiener/california-needs-a-housing-first-agenda-my-2018-housing-package-1b6fe95e41da
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foolfoolz

        SB 827 creates density and height zoning minimums near transit.
      Under SB 827, parcels within a half-mile of high-connectivity transit
      hub — like BART, Muni, Caltrain, and LA Metro stations — will
      be required to have no density maximums (such as single family
      home mandates), no parking minimums, and a minimum height limit
      of between 45 and 85 feet, depending on various factors, such
      as whether the parcel is on a larger corridor and whether it is
      immediately adjacent to the station. A local ordinance can increase
      that height but not go below it. SB 827 allows for many more
      smaller apartment buildings, described as the “missing middle”
      between high-rise steel construction and single family homes.
    

I think this is overstepping a lot and I hope it fails. Muni is very much
within san francisco where there is high density housing, but does this mean
all stops? There's a million muni stops and some of them are in areas that
don't need such high density. BART can travel very far outside the city to
less dense areas. Some caltrain stations are very suburban. This says all
parcels within half mile of those station need to be higher density, that is a
LOT of homes. You are telling those people who live there that they can never
rebuild? If they want to rebuild their house they need to make it into an
apartment complex? Is their parcel even big enough for that?

There's hundreds and hundreds of 5,000sqft lots within a half mile of
caltrain. Your house burns down in a fire, you cant build it back? A 45 foot
house would be at least 3 stories. It's one thing to say we need more dense
homes in this area. But if the area was designed and laid our for single
family homes with small single family lots, how is putting a 3 story house on
those small lots going to help? It's also saying there's no minimum parking
requirements. Not that you could really get any underground parking on some of
these lots but street parking is going to be trashed as well? It's the
suburbs! You do need a car out there! Caltrain/Bart is not the only form of
transportation you use!

This seems really shortsighted and ignores the problem that each city and
community is a little different. Some cities along the Bart/Caltrain lines
could handle this. Others could not. A top down approach saying everything is
the same and must follow these rules is not going to work

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Kalium
> You are telling those people who live there that they can never rebuild? If
> they want to rebuild their house they need to make it into an apartment
> complex?

Is it possible you have misparsed "minimum height limit" as a set of minimum
requirements on height? I believe it refers to a minimum on height limits,
saying that lots cannot be zoned to be one-story-only. Your hypothetical
family will be able to rebuild under this.

> This seems really shortsighted and ignores the problem that each city and
> community is a little different. Some cities along the Bart/Caltrain lines
> could handle this. Others could not. A top down approach saying everything
> is the same and must follow these rules is not going to work

You're absolutely right right! This is, in a great many ways, very far from an
ideal approach. It refuses to offer the kind of flexibility that individual
cities and communities could use to best benefit their residents.

The problem is that these cities and communities have taken that liberty and
spent decades abusing it. They have, by and large, used their rights to decide
that the appropriate amount of development for them is little to none. This
legislation has the feel of a response to those abuses.

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tlb
What precisely does "X% of people in an metropolitan statistical area cannot
afford local rent?" mean?

Aren't all those people paying rent now? If not, in what sense are they "in"
an area? If so, in what sense can they not "afford" it?

A large category of people not paying rent is homeowners. Retired homeowners
might have small incomes that suggest they can't afford rent, but because they
own their home they are fine. Are they part of X%?

What is "local rent"? Perhaps they mean an average of the area. If so, it's
not surprising that a good fraction can't afford the average rent, so they
live in below-average apartments. Any healthy housing market would have this.

What is "afford"? Is there some percentage of income they're assumed to be
able to pay as rent? If some people decide to spend a higher percentage of
their income on rent because they care about their neighborhood more than
eating out or buying gadgets, do they belong in a statistic that seems
designed to show how unaffordable housing is?

I imagine one could write definitions of the above terms to get X anywhere
from 0% to 100%.

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skybrian
How does this compare with the dynamic height restrictions advocated by the
Strong Towns blog?

For more about the problem:
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/23/portland-
hous...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/23/portland-housing-
prices)

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sidlls
This is all tinkering around the edges. It may help some, but in general it's
still not sufficient to address the problems with housing in this state, and
especially in the hardest hit regions (e.g. Bay Area).

I really think that a policy of much denser housing in urban areas must be
enacted, including liberal application of eminent domain to reduce the
existing stock of low-density homes. Requiring minimum heights within a tiny
area around transit hubs helps but just doesn't even come close to addressing
the problem.

Applying additional taxes on individual owner dwellings (including single-
family homes, condos and townhouses) that aren't primary residences would be a
huge step also. It should be very expensive for someone to own these
properties and not occupy them.

At the same time, significant tax discounts tied to passing on the savings to
renters for multi-family, high-density dwellings ought to be considered.

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sid-kap
"transit hubs" may have been the wrong term to use... I think he's proposing
these new rules anywhere within 1/4-1/2 mile of any transit stop with 15 min
frequency or better. So it's probably a larger area than you think.

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nickgrosvenor
Supply & Demand is the problem, solve it and you have a viable solution.

