Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs
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“Most people would be very uncomfortable tearing down 315 houses. But they don’t have a similar objection to never building them in the first place, even though I feel they’re morally equivalent. Those people show up anyway. They get born anyway. They get a job in the area anyway. What do they do? They live in an overcrowded situation, they pay too much rent, they have a commute that’s too long. Or maybe they outbid someone else, and someone else is displaced.”
“It’s easy to see the problem when you’re tearing down someone’s home. But when you’re not building, it’s hard to see whose home it is.”
It is very sobering.
It is rational behavior to protect your investments and way of life in this manner. I think it's often short-term rationalization, and acting on bad information, but people are acting in a rational manner given their information and circumstances. Given that, it's probably good to address the base of that rationalization, rather than expect them to behave differently. I.e. give them more information that makes their prior behavior no longer the clearly beneficial choice for them, if such information exists. Play upon their sense of justice and ideals (such as ChuckMcM is). etc.
Nonsense. I don't live in San Fran, I do live in a city whose character has changed. I don't mind that people saw the cool inner city and wanted to share. I do mind that developer put up cheap high-rises with shit sound insulation, and then waged war on music venues, getting most of them shut down. I do mind that rents escalate massively year-on-year so that the hitherto broad range of inhabitants have steadily whittled down to a richer and richer (and frankly less interesting) rump. I do mind that many landlords would apparently rather see an empty shopfront than an interesting store that's no longer viable because apparently the thing to do is year-on-year 30% rent rises.
A.k.a they don't want to share.
That is what is happening with housing. Land might be finite, but housing stock is nowhere near its limits. Developers are more than willing to spend money to build more. It is not being built due to the opposition of those who already have a place to live.
[1]: In the United States.
Currently, areas often use zoning to try and limit growth, but that just means whoever get's to build new property get's to pocket the difference which opens the way to graft etc. IMO, the reasonable solution to that problem is simply to tax people who build new property a share of the existing infrastructure costs. (Note: Bonds seem like a way to side step this, but your still splitting the costs with everyone not just immigrants.)
Of course there is also NIMBY issues where people don't want change. But, that's a separate issue.
Most Bay Area cities also have rather large development fees.
The other side is that they moved into a neighborhood that has a certain number of houses in it, and parks. And they of course want it the same as what they paid for.
Yes, you will find groups of people who don't want new people moving in, or the town they founded spoiled with overbuilding. Bolinas comes to mind. These guys(Basically Hippies) built houses out here when no one realized just how beautiful a small community can be, and just how beautiful it is out there. They designed their little town with only a certain number of water hookups. They were upfront about their desires--they didn't want developement, nor other people. It essentiall stopped all building. As a young man who wanted to build out there, I thought it was unfair; but I can also see the wisdom in what they did. It's just a complex problem.
I am sympathetic to people who need housing. I actully belive in rent control. I just don't have a answer.
On a slightly different note, I belive we need to end homelessness yesterday. Every town should be required to have an area where people can camp. It doesn't need to be fancy. Just a place where a person can pitch a tent, without getting a ticket, or killed. There can be porta potties, and mobile wash stations. Cops can patrol the camp sites if needed. I don't think everyone will want to live in these primitive campsites. If that became a problem, you could require proof of previous residency.
Got off track--sorry.
But what if there had been no houses built here at all?
"Then I guess I'd live somewhere else"
(only half kidding) But that is the right answer right? Once they admit they have the flexibility of living anywhere they want then they should exercise that power if the city council votes in ways they don't like right? I get that it is a very complex patina of things that make up change, and when you have lived somewhere 20 years to have it change inexorably makes you feel powerless, but change is the constant.
My experience so far in talking with people is that they somehow want to keep things the way they were when they got there, and can't internalize that this merely put a pin in spectrum of change they experienced, rather than stopped it or changed it. In Sunnyvale, it used to be all orchards so most people are living on what was once productive farmland, and by moving there they helped destroy hundreds of jobs of people who worked at the Del Monte fruit packing plant (now gone). So they were the bad guys, and now we have this new set of people who are asking for a denser, less car centric, sort of existence with a walkable space and good public transit. So who are "we", the current residents, to judge "them" by what they want?
Everyone wants a living and thriving city. And what it takes to be that changes over the years, people lose sight of that though.
When someone goes back in time and convinces the dev not to make the house.
The real problem here is why this concentration of people and opportunity and economic activity is happening in the first place. I bet that if the government had not or would cut off the economic centers in the country from government spending and made a deliberate effort to inject money into slightly less economically active areas that only need an money injection, the housing problem in SF, NYC, Austin, etc. would essentially evaporate overnight.
Ultimately the real problem is a concentration of opportunities in a few economic centers, which is irrational in and of itself and only perversion of a manipulated, mutated, and distorted market due to the spike in oil prices that have dropped off and the Fed pumping money into the highest layers of society, which has led the little rat and roaches to squabble over the crumbs and droppings of the wealthy all around their hives and layers. You want to solve the housing problem far faster than being authoritarian dicks??? Vote for Bernie Sanders, or really anyone who will break up the grotesque concentration of wealth with a few and in a few places.
Second, no one is forcing homeowners to tear down their houses or do things they don't want to do with their private property. The debate is not about eminent domain. There are enough landowners willing to sell their piece of land to develop dense housing, enough developers willing to build it, and enough buyers or renters for the housing. The current nimbyism of trying to force your neighbors to conform to your little vision of what they should do or not do with their piece of land goes against the private property rights you advocate for. Let them build what they want to build on their property.
Where I think you're wrong is with respect to concentration of people/activity/opportunity. It is quite natural for such concentrations to occur and certainly far from irrational.
Does that make any sense? It's the pointless rambling of someone who wants to use the government to force you to stop using the government to force him to do something he doesn't want to do. It boils down to "the government should stop letting poor people vote". Pure nonsense.
> It's really a kind of liberal tyranny...
>I bet that if the government had not or would cut off the economic centers in the country from government spending
>...only perversion of a manipulated, mutated, and distorted market due to the spike in oil prices...
>...authoritarian dicks???
These are not the ramblings of one based in reality or the basis for a reasonable discussion.
Yeah..No. It's just rantings of someone steeped deeply in one extreme of a the political spectrum.
[1] http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window#C...
After all, having your drink taken from you is morally equiavlent to never having it in the first place, right?
My point is that if Person A purchases something, and then Person B says that having that thing taken is equivalent to not having it in the first place, then Person B is ignoring the cost that Person A had to incur in the first place.
You do realize the speaker is advocating for developers, who have the money (typically through financing, which is fairly straightforward to get if you are a competent developer), to be allowed to build the projects they propose. Not for housing to magically appear out of the ether.
After all, what kind of a monster tears down those things?
It's time for change. I'd welcome a housing glut, it'll benefit most, but those who see real estate as investment for retirement.
In the end, I think people will discover that mid density isn't so bad after all. You get convenience, but you lose some of your feeling of living in an enclave.
From communist china to capitalist Korea, when housing is in short supply, buildings go up.
What I mean is in a way it could be argued we need to annex counties or the cities and make them into more integrated governing bodies with improved policies and coordination to serve the needs of this region's population and economy.
It made sense to have separate towns and cities when the economy was less interconnected in the region, but now we need better regional planning for growth, housing, transit, economic development. I think it would be better served by a more regional government.
If there were a super-county made up of the bay area counties that had the power to enact and enforce law, and serve as a venue for regional debate, discourse, and decision-making, I think the long-term economic health of the region would be more secure.
That's great if it results in housing becoming more affordable. People are putting up housing to sell/rent at newer, higher prices. This achieves nothing for anyone except the person turning a profit.
Every high-income tech worker living in an expensive new apartment someone who's not competing for existing housing and driving their prices up.
It doesn't "achieve nothing," it's "how markets work."
So you build more buildings, create a housing glut even ... so now even more people move to the area because it's the only place where opportunities exist because it's where the wealthy sprinkle crumbs to their pest scurrying underfoot. All the sudden housing doubles from what it was before the glut and maybe you make 80% more, but all the asset owners are really the only ones who benefit and the wealth concentration cycle simply continues to distort.
What really needs to happen is that the whole area and other urban areas with similar concentrations need to be cut off from things like government funding, any tax advantages, etc. and put those and additional support into areas all around the country. That's really the only way that the cycle is broken, because what you are experiencing is a systemic cycle that no remedial action will have any kid of even mid term impact on without changing the system.
The concentration is not irrational. That's the problem.
The concentration is driven by the fact that you will, not might, get laid off at some point if your job is in the tech sector. So, what happens is that everybody thinks about where their next job is going to be while getting hired for their current job.
If I somehow manage to land, say, a VLSI layout job in Pittsburgh, PA, there is no point in going there as when I get laid off, there is no other VLSI layout job. So, I'll have to go back to Silicon Valley. So, why should I leave Silicon Valley in the first place?
You might think that, okay, Pittsburgh is a problem, but what about Austin? Oddly, same issue. A hardware company wiped out most of its Austin site, set off a big scramble and those people couldn't land jobs because there are no other ones there (people think of Austin as tech--but it's not really hardware tech). I know lots of people who got hired in the "Big Data Analytics" startup fad who are now figuring out that they basically signed onto "Actuarial Science"--but, if they have a family, they really have nowhere else to go. The single ones are either changing fields (becoming a chef seems to be popular--go figure) or going to Silicon Valley.
Whereas, in Silicon Valley, you turn right at the last light instead of left, and you're at your new job.
Sooner or later the global hub of the computer industry has to shift away from San Francisco to somewhere there's actually some goddamn space. That time is now, as evidenced by the ridiculous prices, which are pushing people out. This is a good and natural stage of the process.
The only question is whether we destroy one of the few genuinely pleasant cities in North America trying to hold on for another decade.
Sigh. It seems that every time I say something counter-circlejerklical, I take a karma hit which prevents me from posting for hours. "You're submitting too fast. Please slow down."
So a bit like Hong Kong, Singapore, or Manhattan?
[0] http://7-themes.com/data_images/out/69/7008405-hong-kong-sky...
They've tried. Several times. It never works. As soon as the economy donwnturns, all the non-SV sites get shuttered. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. And now, people have been through enough iterations to know that non-SV satellite sites are full of crap.
The consolidation in the semiconductor industry isn't helping, either.
However, the solution is rather simple: sustained Series A investment in an area. This is the key point that drives Silicon Valley--as bad as the Series A situation is in the Valley, it's orders of magnitude better than anywhere else. So, if you funded 50 Series A's each year at about $5 million each, you wind up with about 5,000 employees and 500 companies for about $2.5 billion invested over 10 years.
Given the lack of Series A in the valley right now, THAT would create a new Silicon Valley.
Of course, at that point, the VC's in Silicon Valley would finally get off their asses and start funding Series A's, so now you are competing with them as they attempt to short circuit your ability to get another Silicon Valley off the ground.
So, is someone going to cough up a check for $2.5 billion to be contrary and make the next Silicon Valley? Or, instead, are they just going to go join the rest in the valley?
I know what I would do if I had that kind of money.
The Bay Area has a major tax disadvantage in prop 13. San Francisco is perhaps the highest taxed city in the USA.
If a geographical area is just slightly more appealing than another area, you would expect people to migrate there. So I'm not really sure why you think the concentration is irrational. It's really the opposite.
Looks like East bay is falling behind schedule.
Here's housing prices since crash peek:http://west.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/hugolefebvre-ch...
I live several doors down from the old KFC. I miss the old Sugoi Sushi that was there - but am fine with the new construction. Am lucky to have rent control. Right now, if I move away, I wouldn't be able to afford moving back.
SF-style widepsread rent control seems like part of the problem to me, in the sense that it hides the true extent of market distortions from many people living in the area (especially the demographics most likely to vote), while incentivizing weird and unethical behavior to circumvent it by developers who could probably be nudged into tenant-friendly density increases under more sane conditions.
You raise a good question. What would rent in SF look like without rent control?
Thinking through the process, I imagine something like:
1. Rent for everyone would have gone up over time
2. Renters would have been slowly forced out as rent increases exceeded their incomes
3. However, it's likely that there would have been a lot more units opening up over time. That likely would have slowed the increase in rent.
I'm certainly not saying that a "no rent control" situation would be ideal, but I'm wondering if it's just made the rent situation in SF much worse than it would have been otherwise.
Quoting Paul Krugman from 15 years ago:
"The analysis of rent control is among the best-understood issues in all of economics, and -- among economists, anyway -- one of the least controversial. In 1992 a poll of the American Economic Association found 93 percent of its members agreeing that ''a ceiling on rents reduces the quality and quantity of housing.'' Almost every freshman-level textbook contains a case study on rent control, using its known adverse side effects to illustrate the principles of supply and demand."
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-...
I see you're from Brooklyn. Have familiarized yourself with the issues surrounding the anti-development sentiment and roadblocks to new development in San Francisco? There's a lot more to it than "[Some] voters don't want to increase the quantity of housing ... near them."
To speak directly to the Krugman quote: San Francisco's rent control is more correctly termed rent stabilization. Rent increases are slaved to the CPI for as long as a unit is occupied. When a unit is vacated, that unit's rent may be set to any rate the landlord desires. More importantly: unless special arrangements are negotiated, [0] rent stabilization does not apply to housing built or first occupied after mid-June 1979.
AIUI, at the time, existing landholders decided that they would make much more money by raising their rents to ludicrous levels than by increasing the density of the housing on their property. They could do this by taking advantage of high demand and limited supply. When most landholders won't allow a developer to build on their property because they make more money by restricting the supply of housing, Krugman's argument goes out the window.
Rent control and rent stabilization has no place in districts with healthy responses to increased demand for housing. It is a tool of last resort. San Francisco worked hard to balance the potential damage done by rent stabilization with the real damage done by astronomical rents. I would say that they largely succeeded. [1]
[0] As far as I know this has happened only once, with with Sangiacomo's Trinity Place on Market street. A special arrangement was reached to destroy existing rent-controlled units at the site, but have a 1:1 replacement in the new construction. All other units in the building are "market rate" units.
[1] But, -in retrospect- they erred too far in the landlord's favor. The "Vacated units reset to market rate" provision in the ordinance gives landlords ample incentive to harass and subtly force out long-term tenants, and -in times of radical rent inflation- behave as slumlords and neglect maintenance and upkeep. (Because, if they have a captive revenue source, why on earth would they spend more than the bare minimum that they can (legally or illegally) get away with to retain it?) [2]
[2] Naturally, if rent control was the situation in SF, there would need to be some flexibility in the law to encourage new development.
That said, if there was no rent control in SF, then slowly, over time, all low income folks would be forced to leave the city. That is likely an undesirable outcome for SF voters.
I feel that a good proxy for a world without rent stabilization is the condo market. Figure out how much the monthly payment for the low-end and the average condo is, and I suspect that that's where a city full of unstablized rental units would be.
musesum mentions:
> Am lucky to have rent control. Right now, if I move away, I wouldn't be able to afford moving back.
Everyone I speak to in my building [0] is very aware of the current ludicrously high rents in the city and how it limits their ability to keep a slumlord in line. I can't imagine the situation is substantially different in any other rent-controlled building in the city.
Also, be aware that SF's rent-control is more correctly termed rent-stabilization. Vacated units can have their rent set to any rate. Stabilization only kicks in once that unit is occupied.
> ...while incentivizing weird and unethical behavior to circumvent it by developers who could probably be nudged...
I honestly don't know what you're talking about here. Were you aware that rent control in SF doesn't apply to new construction [1]; only to housing built or occupied before June 13, 1979? [2]
If you were aware of that, would you be so kind as to tell me what you are referring to? :)
[0] Including the old lady who is afflicted with alzheimer's.
[1] Unless -as happened with Sangiacomo's Trinity Place on Market street- a special arrangement is reached to destroy existing rent-controlled units, but have a 1:1 replacement in the new construction.
Frankly, it seems that that most folks who speak in public forums (landlords and developers included) don't understand this. It drives me batshit. (No offence intended. :) )
> Glad to know there's a perk to this oven/icebox victorian.
From what I've seen and heard about those things, I bet it's just about the only perk, eh? :(
True. AIUI, it has been incredibly difficult to get anything new built in the city for a wide variety of reasons for a very long time.
However, I bring up the limits of rent stabilization because I often see people saying:
"More people would build in San Francisco if it wasn't for that damned Rent Control in the city."
or
"Rent Control is why noone builds in San Francisco."
It turns out that -not infrequently-, many of these folks don't understand that rent stabilization doesn't cover new construction. [0]
I hope that once one discovers that rent stabilization doesn't prevent a developer from building a new building full of 1000sf (or smaller!) units that -currently- rent for ~3k/month, and can be adjusted to "market rate" at any time the lease between the landlord and tenant permits, one starts digging around to discover more about the especially fucked up process of getting new construction approved in this town.
[0] Except when specially negotiated, as mentioned in my previous comment.
Homeowner associations organize the vote during off-election years, as per http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/02/so-you-want-to-fix-the-hous...
Removing rent-control would accelerate the displacement. A friend saw his rent nearly triple in 1999. So, he moved back to a more affordable Paris. He was developing a super cool visual-music platform. A neighbor is developing really cool music apps for the iPad. I am doing iOS based art tools. GAFFTA is in the neighborhood. There are advantages to encouraging a cultural mix.
You are (party to) using the state to withhold justly earned economic value from your landlord.
And anyone who benefits from the zoning laws in their district benefits from influential parties using the power of the state to -in many cases- artificially restrict the supply of one type of building or another. [0] Frankly, we can play the "No, you're using the power of the state to..." game all night long. :/
> "justly earned economic value"
My previous landlords did nothing to improve the value of their property. Indeed, my most recent landlord not-infrequently neglects even the bare minimum legally required maintenance and upkeep. They earned nothing. Force of law created a situation where progressively increasing housing pressure inflated the "market value" of their "asset".
[0] Note: I am not railing against zoning laws in general. Segregating heavy industry from residential zones is an obvious good.
I don't wish to defend zoning laws, nor humour a "tu quoque" contest. Not necessary for my point.
"My previous landlords did nothing to improve the value of their property."
That's also beside the point. They made an investment in buying and improving the land. They are not permitted to realize the market value that their investment (foresight / risk-taking) had earned.
Awful sly of you to indirectly make the claim that I was calling you a hypocrite. I'm not. I'm declaring that everyone who lives in a governed district is a beneficiary of the state's ability to restrict supply of one thing or another. This includes landlords who might have the "value" of their "investment" inflated due to restricted supply.
> They made an investment in buying [the land]...
Yes. Agreed.
> ...and improving the land.
No. No, they did not.
They paid someone else to get access to the revenue stream that comes from the people living in the building that was constructed roughly one hundred years before they made the purchase. Additionally, the building was constructed more than fifty years before $CURRENT_LANDLORD-2 made his purchase. Neither of them fronted the money and took on the risk to build the only improvement on the land.
What's more, $CURRENT_LANDLORD's negligence is lowering the value of the property they purchased. Vermin infestation throughout the building and trash accumulation in public areas [0] are now not-uncommon sights. Essential building services are unreliable and not-infrequently unavailable due to failure to perform regular preventative maintenance.
Are you using some definition of "$CURRENT_LANDLORD is improving the land." that remains true when the actions that the landowner takes both damage the pre-existing building on the property and lower its value, actual or otherwise?
> Not necessary for my point.
It really seems like your point is not valid, for the situation that a renter not-infrequently finds himself in in San Francisco. [1] Because the demand for rental housing is so high, landlords can often get away with failing to perform even the legally required maintenance and upkeep and still have people breaking down their doors to rent their vacant apartments.
I don't see how one can -with a straight face- make the claim that a property owner is adding value to a property when they aren't even performing the maintenance required to adequately counteract the natural forces of entropy.
Do you now understand what I mean when I say "$CURRENT_LANDLORD has done nothing to improve the value of their property."?
[0] Due to not-infrequent failure of building management to swap out the full garbage, recycling, and composting bins with empty ones.
[1] Your argument may be (and probably is) totally valid in other situations. San Francisco's housing market (rental or otherwise) is a special bucket of suck.
The property's mere continued existence is adding that value.
"Do you now understand what I mean when I say "$CURRENT_LANDLORD has done nothing to improve the value of their property."?"
Sure (in a hands-getting-dirty sense), and it is unfortunate. On the other hand, the landlord is a commercial beast. Come to think of it, if stuck with suppressed income, it's hard to see much incentive (never mind available $) to improve the property on an ongoing basis. This too can be yet another unintended consequence of rent control.
> The property's mere continued existence is adding that value.
And did you keep a straight face while you were typing those words?
Let's say that I own a car.
I purchased this car as a new car some time ago. I regularly fail to perform maintenance of any kind. I frequently operate the car when it is critically low on lubricants and coolants. I regularly strike deep potholes and large rocks during my travels.
I frequently eat inside the vehicle. It is littered with food wrappers and decomposing partially-eaten meals from months and years gone by. I also frequently transport unwell animals inside my car. These animals often vomit, urinate, and defecate inside the car. I have never cleaned the interior of the vehicle.
Because of my failure to maintain the vehicle, its engine and suspension are a wreck. They are dangerously unsafe. Because of my failure to clean the interior of the vehicle, it is -at best- a horrifying, ungodly, malodorous mess, and -more likely- a serious health hazard.
My wilful negligence has significantly decreased the value of the car.
Why does your assessment of the situation change when the durable good changes from an automobile to a multi-family dwelling? Is it because the on-paper value of the building has dramatically increased over the past couple of decades?
If it is, then you must understand that the credit for that on-paper increase in value is to be completely given to the local government, because of its zoning laws which have resulted in a dramatic undersupply of housing in the area.
The landlord in this situation is -like our negligent car owner- failing to maintain (let alone improve) his durable good. In a sane market, this would cause the on-paper value of his durable good to decrease.
I say again. $CURRENT_LANDLORD has done nothing to improve the value of his property. To this I add: The City is the one who drives the value of his property up and hides the deleterious effects of his negligence.
Now do you understand how you misunderstand the rather special situation in this city?
No. The value assessments are made by potential customers and suppliers in the area. Sure governmental actions have been one part of the causal chain, but only one of many. The fact that the building stands ready, not decrepit enough to bring down the general attractiveness of the area, is partial credit to the landlord and her choice of tenant.
"because of its zoning laws which have resulted in a dramatic undersupply of housing in the area."
Might the rent-control laws have had something to do with it too? (After all, zoning laws aren't easily effectively changed on an area that's already filled in.)
In San Francisco, government action has been the sole source of increase in the on-paper value of rental properties for at least the past five years. Every other action taken by any landlord has -in comparison- so little effect as to be unnoticeable. Because of this, many landlords make the entirely rational business decision to do absolutely nothing to increase or maintain the value of their property. It's not like they need to compete for tenants.
> The fact that the building stands ready, not decrepit enough to bring down the general attractiveness of the area, is partial credit to the landlord and her choice of tenant.
You don't seem to understand two things:
1) The rental market in San Francisco. In the past five years, SF's population has increased by ~50,000 people, but only ~7,500 new housing units have been built. [0]
2) The fact that any landlord can recover 100% of the damage done to their property from a tenant.
> Might the rent-control laws have had something to do with it too?
In San Francisco? No. New construction is not covered by rent stabilization regulation. [1] In regards to temporary demolition of rent controlled housing to make way for denser housing, the Trinity Place project has set a really good precedent. [2]
> (After all, zoning laws aren't easily effectively changed on an area that's already filled in.)
The major zoning issue in SF that blocks new construction is building height limits. So much of SF is not permitted to have buildings higher than three or five stories. Note: This is not because of seismic concerns, this is because of "neighborhood character" concerns. [3] We're not talking about constructing heavy industry in a residential zone. We're talking about building taller residential buildings in a residential zone of a thoroughly urban environment.
[0] http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/02/04/sfs_population_is_g...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10371695
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161813 (See footnote zero attached to that comment.)
[3] Neighborhood character concerns are very valid. However, at some point you have to ask yourself, "Which does more violence to the character of my neighborhood? Requiring someone to pay at least $36,000/year to rent a slowly decaying "one-bedroom" apartment, or installing several carefully planned and architected ten-story apartment buildings?".
The state is what allows a landlord to be a landlord in the first place, by making a society stable enough that property ownership is a matter of laws and contracts as opposed to guns and groups with guns.
Therefore you owe your life to the State and they can demand anything at all from you and you shouldn't complain. Right?
That is a fundamentally dishonest argument.
There are honest discussions of exactly where the boundaries on government power should lie, but this isn't one of them.
So yes we need more housing, but that is merely the first step.
Those who oppose such infrastructure improvements typically oppose them because they want to stop growth entirely.
Hear, hear!
I would heartily welcome infrastructure improvement programs that brought the state of the SFBA's public transit within shooting distance of the quality of public transit in and around NYC.
I would happily have my personal not-really-that-much-higher-than-Alabama tax burden increased to help pay for such a program.
Their DSP proposal is so clouded by the political language that it is difficult to determine their true intentions.
Also, I'm quite troubled by their suggestion that tearing down homes is morally equivalent to not building them in the first place. Tearing down homes immediately destroys value; hundreds of thousands of dollars are put into a home with the expectation that at least part of it can be recovered after a sale. A government that destroys homes without taking into account this investment destroys the value that the developers put into it. On the other hand, having the homes not be built in the first place does no such thing.
You don't need eminent domain, and SFBARF is not advocating for it. The project they are suing the City of Lafayette for was entirely private: willing landowner, willing developer, and most likely a lot of potential buyers or renters in a tense market. But no, the City of Lafayette decided to approve on condition of a drastically reduced number of housing.
She is advocating that landowners and developers be allowed to build to meet market demand, without obstruction from nimby neighbors.
Decreasing the zoning on land so less housing can be built immediately destroys value. That land can now house 10% of the people it previously was able to house.
The picture BARF paints of what happened is not entirely accurate. The city did not deny the developer from developing the land. After years of public planning meetings the owner of the land decided to work with the city after overwhelming public opposition against the development.
What do you think would have happened if instead of relenting, the developer had gone forward with the 315 unit version? Do you think it would have been approved?
And what's with the lack of affordable housing in Yellowstone National Park? There's loads of room for condos!
I'd like to live on a private island in the Whitsundays, but there aren't enough to go around. It has never occurred to me to whine about this fact.
It's not all sadness though. I believe a representative from the local Maserati dealership will be there this week to tell us about a special lease deal available to well-qualified lessees.