
California's Love of Cars Is Fueling Its Housing Crisis - jseliger
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-06/california-parking-regulations-are-a-big-part-of-its-housing-crisis
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njarboe
I think required parking spaces is a minor factor in why building is so hard
in California. The biggest problem is that if you have plans for a building
that meets all the existing zoning and building regulations for the lot, it
can still take many years (sometime decades) before one will be able to start
construction. One has to deal with lawsuits by people who don't want it built,
planning commissions that have to put their own stamp on the building, and
public meeting after public meeting that resolve nothing.

I have heard of a few different laws floated in Sacramento to help try and
help with this problem, but I think it is more of a cultural value in many
parts of California (like prop 13) where people feel a place should not change
from how they found it when they moved to California. This is probably not
something that can be legislated away.

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mixmastamyk
Reminds me of this story:

[https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/21/san-francisco-man-has-
spe...](https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/21/san-francisco-man-has-
spent-4-years-1-mi)

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jseliger
This is an underrated problem and also contributes to some grimly hilarious
public policies that offer funding to build housing for the homeless on the
one hand, but forbid most housing from actually being built on the other:
[http://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-
economics-f...](http://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-
fills-back-proposition-hhh-facilities-program)

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pascalxus
This is one of many many regulations and requirements that make housing so
damn expensive. When you combine all these overburdening regulations together,
the result is: you can't have cost effective housing anymore. At the very
least they should open up a few square miles of space where they relax some or
all the regulations a bit. This would allow developers to innovate and drive
down the cost of housing.

We haven't seen much meaningful innovation in housing in the last 100 years,
at least none that addresses cost.

Imagine what a great world we could live in, if everyone could build what they
wanted as easily as building a website. There's a lot of issues to tackle, i
know, but it's a good starting point for progress. And considering that most
of our incomes go to housing, it's the most important area for progress.

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tytytytytytytyt
$27,000 / parking spot? I like how the total cost of the building or
percentage of total cost is suspiciously lacking.

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throwawazqq
It's a shame that people want to turn los angeles into nyc or sf. We have that
already. Can't LA remain unique?

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mixmastamyk
Uniquely filled with homeless and skyrocketing rents because there's not
enough housing? Uniquely stuck in traffic because there's not enough metro
lines? Unique that there's few walkable areas like the lovely cities in
Europe?

No LA currently is the worst of both worlds, an unwalkable, undrivable suburb
as far as the eye can see. The best thing that could happen to it is to become
a real city.

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bkmartin
Doesn't the earthquake risk significantly curb LA's ability to build up as
much as NYC? I think there are probably certain density limiting factors like
this. Which just means that they need to adapt to what that means in terms of
sprawl and moving people around.

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ecshafer
Very tall buildings can actually be safer than shorter buildings, because they
are all made of steel, and can have a lot of anti earthquake support built in.

Also as a short proof, Japan and Taiwan are also directly on top of a fault
line. Taipei and Tokyo have some of the tallest buildings in the world. The
tech is there.

