So I have a query. You know that building higher density costs more. A 1 story house is cheaper than a 2 story per square foot - this is with style in rural areas is to build broader and more sprawling for larger homes. And a 50 story building is more than a 10 story.
Why do you fear small towns in CA facing an epidemic of essentially brownstones (what you call fourplexes)? The economics don’t support this unless the underlying land is very expensive…
Well, the underlying land is very expensive. But your calculus isn’t quite accurate.
It is cheaper generally to go up because of land costs, but only to a certain extent. At some point the increased engineering required for higher structures increases the cost.
It’s not a fear of epidemic. It’s not all or nothing. But there is real concern about impact to neighborhood s in character, ability to support growth with infrastructure and services, and not displacing existing residents. Here’s an article with some visualizations:
There’s also the idea that many of these efforts don’t address affordability. A sea of luxury condos costing 1.4M would not be considered success by folks like Newsome.
I live in an area that has single family homes and big apartment/condo buildings and most things in between (North Arlington VA, along the Metro line). I think there are reasonable zoning and regulations, but I think most NIMBYism doesn’t qualify, as far as the reasoning I’ve heard from most NIMBYists.
Ok. Arlington is quite a bit different than some small cities around the Bay Area. Arlington is more like a big city than small.
But more specifically, what types of restrictions do you think are acceptable?
I’m far from an expert, but off the top of my head, environmental and safety regulations for certain. Very rarely, perhaps historical regulations (i.e. “this building has special historical significance”), but my standards for this would be high. Regulations maintaining some level of parks and green spaces. Parking requirements, but only in communities with no chance of public transit… and I’m in favor of vastly increasing public transit in both size and quality.
I see plenty of ways that banning multi-family homes hurts the wider community, and no significant ways it helps aside from the personal preference of the existing home-owners (but only some of them – surely some others would prefer to sell their homes to developers… and the chance to build profitable fourplexes and condos would increase property values).
That is inherent. If increasing height (and thus density) increases cost faster than the amount of new usable area rises, obviously at any given value per lot there is an optimal height building.
As a side note, San Francisco has lot prices similar to NYC/Hong Kong and other extreme density cities - in a genuine free market that’s what it would look like. Easily high enough lot prices to justify 50+ stories.
Why is the underlying land so expensive in the “small town” you live in that you don’t want the State to apply it’s policies to?
Is it that you actually don’t live in a small city but really just an area that is arbitrarily divided into it’s own city but it’s really part of a greater metropolitan area? That’s what most people would assume. If this is true, then of course the laws should apply to your area.
If you’re some rural area in the middle of nowhere - honestly I am not sure why the policy shouldn’t apply there as well. Obviously if it’s a middle of nowhere small town, the only reason prices would be high is if, say, the town council refuses to allow development in the outskirts, artificially driving up prices. Well, looks like they are getting bypassed as they should be.
So far what I’ve gathered is the actual problem is this patch to California’s issues is just incomplete. It sounds like the actual problem is that as areas grow, the increased funding from property taxes just isn’t getting funneled into where it needs to go so that transit/healthcare/education/police/fire etc gets appropriately increased funding.
And they need to stop forcing developers to make 33% of the units below market rate. If the government wants to subsidize some housing should tax everyone and pay for the difference, not force individual developers to bear the burden. Developers are the ones acting to *alleviate *the problem of high housing prices…
Also I propose a “density surcharge”. If you think about it, there’s nonlinearities in government services as well. Above a certain level of density, and the price per resident for transit systems/healthcare/education/police and so on actually probably starts to increase. No longer can you just slap down streets and a few traffic lights, you start needing to install subways. You start having increased crime and need more police and better police equipment once there’s large crowds of strangers everywhere and would be criminals feel safely anonymous.
So it makes sense to make property taxes assess according to some formula that factors in land square footage per residential bedroom or something. (so a 50 story apartment building has far more bedrooms per square foot of lot land than a 1 story bungalow on the same size lot next to it)
Because it’s in close enough proximity to be commutable to employers in the Bay Area.
Look at acity like Mill Valley. It’s just shy of 5 square miles, and has a population less than 15K. But it is also commutable to SF, so prices reflect that with modest homes less than 2K sqft asking for over $1.3M. would you consider that just an area that is arbitrarily divided into its own city? I mean, the city incorporated in 1900, so it’s not like it’s the new kid on the block. Does it make sense to force this tiny city to adopt the same zoning laws that SF has just so SF can continue to create jobs but not enough housing for the jobs it creates?
The progressives in the CA legislature will never give up inclusionary housing. The intent of many of these housing related laws is to increase inclusionary housing, not decrease it. There are also widespread proposals for rent control as well. Because of these rules, one of the few types of development that actually pencils out are luxury high rises which do nothing for homelessness or affordable housing.
Your other ideas are…not realistic. Especially given what is on the table at the legislature right now. Nobody is proposing density surcharges, but they are proposing destroying single family zoning across the state.
Yes. It is irrelevant when the city was founded, in my state the larger city would be permitted to annex your town and this makes practical sense. Your towns residents are clearly using San Francisco services on a daily basis and should be paying the taxes to them. You don’t have a small town, you live in San Fransisco in a fake city due to a technicality.
As for the rest of your argument, all I see is “well ok this idea is good but the progressives will never do the obvious next thing to make it work”.
Which they might not. Single payer would drive down healthcare fees to true cost. But instead we have an incomplete solution we seem to be stuck with.
They don’t do nothing. There might be some amount of induced demand, but there are also people who could afford a “luxury”* home if they were being built in large numbers, but are currently living in non-luxury accommodations. The relief of that pressure would cascade, in some amount, all the way down the scale.
And today’s luxury housing won’t necessarily be luxury housing tomorrow.
*Whatever that means. At the end of the NIMBY spectrum where they pretend to be motivated by stopping gentrification, they love to call everything a luxury home, often based on nothing but the developer’s own PR. I don’t know what they want, are developers supposed to say “come get your moderately okay home, it’s just fine but nothing special”?
If someone wants to control their local community building policy in a way that doesn’t infringe property rights, there are private communities that have found ways of doing that. Also, private smart cities are on the rise if that appeals to you. I suggest NIMBYs explore these options.
The NIMBY wants to live where he/she lives, where they use the force of government to prevent others from exercising property rights.
Now in a free market, if Dow Chemical or Trump Condos wants to set up shop next to your bucolic paradise, there are ways that you could address that, but unfortunately the US courts are so ill-equipped to deal with property rights issues. In addition, the body of law related to real deal property rights has been neglected and undeveloped because of the focus on legislation. Very little innovation in law has taken place while capitalism has transformed our way of life. This is because government has monopolized law to such a degree.
In other words, it’s a bedroom community that can rely on the nearby city for those commercial needs, without the residents having to contribute to the required infrastructure for the commercial districts.
How is America going to become great again if we don’t support the job creators?
On a slightly less tongue in cheek note, you asked how one might feel if an 85ft multi unit dwelling was built next to my property.
I’d hate it.
Public policy shouldn’t be reflect what I would like or hate. What makes me happiest shouldn’t be the driving force behind what can and can’t get built across the state. It’s an issue that’s bigger than me, and it’s bigger than you.
Public policy should reflect the will of the people, expressed through their elected officials. It’s perfectly reasonable to attempt to convince them, and others, of the errors of their ways.
I tend to agree with this. I think that by increasing the availability of high-end homes, it creates more space, which takes some of the pressure off of real estate at the high end of the market, which may have some impact on the rungs below. I’m an advocate of building more housing targeted for all socioeconomic strata.
However, I don’t dismiss out of hand what Bone is saying. There are market forces at play that simply building can’t avoid. You can’t stop tens of thousands of young software engineers, IT entrepreneurs, or venture capitalists from moving into and concentrating in a geographically tight space. The difference between the labor market value of these software engineers versus the labor market value of, say, school teachers or restaurant workers is what’s driving this problem, and just building more luxury condos can’t really address it.
Lack of affordable housing, therefore, is a symptom of a broader failure to regulate socioeconomic inequality, which goes back to why we need better federal and state taxation and socioeconomic policies that control the concentration of wealth more broadly. The housing crisis is a situation in which local governments are confronted with an economic crisis that is largely the making of decades of regressive economic policies at the national level.
I don’t agree with the italicized regions. And part of it might be because I’m a software engineer. A software engineer’s rate of pay primarily depends on their perceived talent, quality of their education, experience and skills, and age. It’s something you can earn with hard work to an extent, though not everyone has the right opportunity when young enough and the really bad software engineers without much talent struggle. (though in today’s market they all have jobs still)
This is an example of the market functioning correctly. In today’s world, software engineers are on average producing more value for their corporate masters than a schoolteacher or restaurant worker - most of the wealthiest companies in the world are either pure software or heavily depend on software. Also, while anyone with a college degree and not difficult to obtain certificate can become a schoolteacher, CS and similar programs are more difficult, and CS jobs tend to have the entry level/experience trap.
So the supply is less and the demand is higher. As a result of these high salaries, tons of new people are studying CS and joining the field. Eventually either salaries will come back down due to a flood of supply, or the software field will keep expanding faster than new entrants join until there are tens or hundreds of millions of (robotics) software developers worldwide and most other jobs are automated…
I would say this is an example of “functioning correctly” economic inequality. I would argue that things like inherited wealth are an example of “diseased” economic inequality - vast sums of inherited wealth are essentially putting billions of dollars in the hands of individuals who contributed nothing to deserve it. I think parents should be able to leave money to their children, but maybe 10 million in inflation adjusted dollars per child (enough to live comfortably for a lifetime or obtain any education or healthcare…) should be the rough limit. 10 million, not 50 billion.
Yesterday one of the biggest housing related bills that would have gone towards more housing production, was shelved for this year’s legislative session. SB50 was held in the Senate Appropriations Committee.