California Today: A Spreading ‘Yimby’ Movement
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It is worth remembering that NIMBYism and real estate prices are one of the biggest drivers of inequality in the world.
Housing doesn't have to be expensive. It is, mostly, due to political reasons.
https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2164734...
Edit: These are not super nice houses either. They're just small 1-2k sqft houses built on top of each other. The problem is, when some developer manages to obtain one of said cow pastures from the city/rancher (many are city owned and leased to ranchers) they just pack it with 4k sqft mcmansions with barely enough room for a driveway between them. I don't know anyone who wants a 4k sqft house for $650k
https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/121929267_zpid/globalr...
I'd love to have that option compared to just seeing 650sqft condos for ~$650k in/near my neighborhood in CA. :)
There are "anti-poor-people" laws, restricting the minimum lot size (in some cases, 1 acre in certain areas of Mountain View, for example), and restricting the number of SFU you can build in a single lot to 1.
Or maybe there's zoning in place to (giving it the benefit of the doubt) prevent it from just turning into "two 600K 2k sqft houses".
In CA this comes about in the form of "the additional cost of furnishing this condo/apartment building in a way that will sell for 5K/mo or 1.xM+ versus targeting the middle of the market is small enough that we'd be leaving massive amounts of money on the table."
So there's a very loud debate going on about how much this construction just attracts wealthy or high-income outsiders who otherwise would live elsewhere (and so doesn't have any trickle down benefits on the rest of the housing stock) vs actually helping people who currently live in the area.
I'm not aware of any areas with the political will to really substantially push back against top-of-the-market targeted construction, though.
Building a good house costs a few hundred thousand dollars. Just a lot size in those areas is worth a few million dollars.
Building costs aren't the constraint. Land availability is, mostly due to zoning laws.
"then there's more money to be made by building only for the top of the market"
Housing again follows supply and demand. It doesn't matter the size or luxury of a house, if there's nobody willing to buy it, prices will drop.
But it doesn't necessarily follow it in a straightforward manner in any particular location.
If you knock over a building of 5 crappy old apartments in a dense area to build a bigger building with 10 new, bigger, luxury units, it's easy to imagine scenarios where the net effect is more supply but also an even larger increase in demand:
- If the new units are condos, it's unlikely those displaced renters are going to be served by the new building.
- If the units are much more luxurious they could attract wealthy commuters to move into town, who otherwise may have been outside of the demand sector for the units because of lack of AC, or in-unit washer/dryers, or whatever. (I'll admit to being this sort of housing consumer.)
- Alternately, they could attract absentee tenants who would rather just leave the place vacant and just use it as a second home. Or AirBNB it most of the time. Or (if condos) use it as a assumed-relatively-safe asset or investment.
Things are complicated. And in places like SF, LA, and NYC, people do have enough money and are willing to buy right now. So the question is how do we best help the ones with less money short of "just build enough new luxury condos until all the rich people in the world are satisfied"?
Apparently in NYC the last few years we've just about built all the 50+M condos that the market can bear - that's a long way from helping the people who could only afford 100k.
They exist. You just gotta wander from the coast and check the Central Valley instead.
Someone does, or they wouldn't sell. That's kind of how it works.
Minimum lot sizes, height restrictions, R1/R2 designations et al. were intentionally written into zoning laws so that PoC could not afford to move into primarily white neighborhoods [1].
It might sound like a random tangent, but many of these zoning laws are in the books today, and are the ones used by NIMBYs to restrict new developments in their town.
[1] Extensively covered in the book The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
That's starting to no longer be the case in Nevada if you're in Reno or Vegas, since Californians (myself included) fleeing California's high cost of living are driving up real estate prices (the rest of Nevada is fine for now AFAICT; just the cities that are an issue).
So I guess my question is...is there any evidence that building more housing will alleviate home / rent prices? Fundamentally, the prices are high because people really want to live in these places. If you build more housing, won't that just enable more people to live there, which will re-establish a local equilibrium?
Going back to the traffic analogy - the solution isn't to build more roads; it's to add mass-transit options, increase density, reduce people's desire to drive, etc. Is there analogous stuff that can be done for housing? Maybe building more housing is a part of it, too - I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. But it does seem like there are feedback effects in play that will prevent increased supply alone from solving the problem. Manhattan has twice the population in half the area (so, about 4x as dense) but they don't exactly have affordable rent.
There is plenty of evidence for more housing decreasing prices. And there is actually a limit to how much people will demand to live in a place. Thats why people commute far from outside sf into it for the lower housing prices.
Of course increasing public transportation would also help. Albeit sf surrounding suburbs also have rent control policies so building reallly far away just increasing traffic a lot.
That's kind of what I'm saying, though - won't those people just move into SF when the prices drop low enough, and therefore bring the price right back up to where it was? I'm modeling this as if the supply of "people who want to move to San Francisco" is effectively infinite?
Is San Francisco with 3 million people going to have higher, lower, or the same median inflation-adjusted rent compared to now?
Plus even if there is a hypothetical price floor (which doesnt happen) where people will move into sf, at least everyone is closer to sf so less traffic.
For housing, you've only got one body, so I'm not sure the same situation applies.
Although, it would be interesting to see if the availability of affordable housing results in more newborns. I know I felt a lot more comfortable having a kid when I moved somewhere more affordable (though I'm kind of shocked how many people think kids need a giant house - I just wanted a 2 bed apt).
Tell the truth...when you were in Chicago, did you want to live next to the "L"?
with the caveat that the SF-LA HSR project seems to be a boondoggle that will cost the state billions more than it probably should.
Yes. I only wanted to live next to the L train. If I were apartment hunting, and it wasn't a quick walk to an L stop, that apartment went straight to the bottom of the list.
And when I sought roommates, my place being steps to a blue line stop meant I got literally 70 emails within the first few hours of posting the ad.
Growing up in the central valley I took Bart ONE TIME as a kid, and it's still a highlight of my entire damn childhood. I suppose I may like trains more than most, but after that my goal in life was mostly to escape suburbia.
(I say this as someone who personally benefits from rent control. It shouldn't exist.)
You want offices near you but no more housing, so that people work near you and are forced to live closer to you, and have to buy houses near you for ever-increasing prices.
And people who own homes (older than most of the population) are used to driving everywhere, they don't want people constantly walking in front of their houses. They all want their own cul-de-sacs.
So both remain in balance, prices don't increase and you get little or no financial benefits. Also, a house surrounded by high rises in a very busy street has far less relative value than a house in a quiet street where your kids can play around. Cities bring strangers, crime, pollution, noise, etc.
But if you increase job density without increasing housing density, then you reap massive financial benefits from increasing housing prices.
Yes, but that's only for holdouts, which is a game of chicken. And after the developers build around you, you're done, your home value plunges as you're surrounded by traffic and apartments.
"Now, going back to jobs, in practicality, allowing upzones, also tends to bring way more jobs - more coffee shops / corporate towers etc."
The two are unrelated. Cities have a lot of exclusive-use commercial or residential areas. You can increase the same jobs without having more residents, which increases value for the home-owners.
Which is exactly what is happening in the US.
How much would solar panels on the roof offset your AC energy usage?
What a time to be alive.
I knew it was bad, but I was bit taken aback.
However, I did get a little discouraged that there was a lack of people my age trying to get involved, though. People can complain all they want... but until they do, it won't change.
It doesn't necessarily have to mean lower quality of life. But, in LA, that's what has happened most of the time.
New three or four story apartment buildings next door to a SFH means less sunlight and the elimination of privacy throughout the yard.
More people means more traffic jams, more wear and tear on roads, more crime, more unfamiliar strangers driving too fast on their once-quiet streets, more pollution, and higher demand on a very limited police force, parks, recreational facilities, schools/colleges, airports, open spaces, etc.
The LA city government manages infrastructure and resources in a sub-par way. New resources of all types are simply not forthcoming fast enough to meet with increased demand. The city government fails to keep up with existing needs for repair of: water, sidewalk, street infrastructure under current levels of demand.
And it's not only quantity: often the quality of new infrastructure (e.g. Red Line train seats) is allowed to detoriorate to a state where it's rather dirty and unpleasant.
I feel like LA city government has been doing better about sidewalk and street repair the past few years. It could be coincidence and certainly isn't exhaustive.
Ehh? I'd say density is correlated with a higher quality of life. More restaurants, bars, culture (museums, art openings, music), more opportunities to expand your network of friends, etc.
but, for others, the drawbacks of high density, often outweigh the advantages. these are the people who go to local neighborhood council meetings and scream.
also note that, in Los Angeles, the city council and the mayor can, and very often do, approve changes to zoning in accordance with the wishes of real estate developers (who usually donate to their political campaigns).
it's not like LA's NIMBY homeowners are a tyrannical group with infinite power. they're very often overridden by the politicians.
much of the drive behind LA's NIMBY movement is the absence of true city plans for homeowners to rely upon. the name of the game is spot zoning variances: a developer proposes a project which requires a zoning change and then pays off the local politicians with campaign contributions.
homeowners, caught by surprise, react vociferously ... and then lose.
that's LA's version of a "planning process".
http://www.laweekly.com/news/city-halls-density-hawks-are-ch...
I grew up in a scenic neighborhood in Berlin, with lots of bars and restaurants and dance clubs in former factory yards, and it was pretty annoying at times. Drunken people get loud, and you don't want them to have a midnight singing contest right outside your bedroom window. Occasionally someone would drive around the block blasting music at full volume. And so on.
I think most people would much prefer to live in a quiet neighborhood, with all the action happening within walking distance just outside of it.
Governments aren’t like households. They get to print their own money, so budgeting freak outs that apply to one don’t really apply to the other.
Also, removing the income limit would be a massive tax hike (12.4 percentage points, split between employee and employer). The taxes already went up this year for sufficiently-high income individuals in that the income limit was raised from $118,500 to $127,200 (a 7.3% increase).
Baby boomers are no more or less selfish than every generation that came before them and every generation that will come after them. They are just the ones in control at the moment so everything gets blamed on them.
Without arguing about terms like "selfishness", the motivation can be laid on the economic conditions those generations faced. Depression-era Americans grew up in a time of great economic hardship, and so pushed for legal and social safety nets (Social Security, labor unions, etc.). Their children grew up in a time of economic ease, and so had no understanding of or motivation to preserve those things, and saw them as impediments to their further enrichment (if we get rid of the union, my business is more profitable; if we slash entitlement programs, my taxes are lower, etc.).
A good parallel is the anti-vaccine movement in the US. The threat of serious vaccine-preventable diseases is fading from living memory, as most parents of young children today have never lived in a situation where such diseases were a realistic consideration. Thus they see no benefit from vaccines, and over-value the rare side effects (and believe, out of fear, charlatans who fabricate claims that vaccines cause problems those parents are familiar with).
I also think you are attributing these actions to the wrong generations. FDR was born in the 1880s, he wasn't part of the depression/WWII generation. However both Reagan and George HW Bush were. We didn't get the first baby boomer president until Clinton in 1993. Countries are usually controlled by people in their 40s-60s. You can't blame the baby boomers for things that starting happening when they were in their 20s and 30s.
2) In California, any significant changes to property taxes will likely require a majority vote via a ballot initiative.
For those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
the push needs to be find candidates for office who believe the problem is a real as you do and then work to see them obtain office. you are going to get past the liberal establishment which has maintained this status quo for years if not decades by getting in the NYTimes. You need to get into city hall. you are going to go up against a wall of feel good phrases and heaps of guilt for all the issues you will cause; likely environmental; and its best to show how letting more people in a smaller area is better than having them commute.
what is the coverage of this event in California? Does anyone actually know about it or is it smothered in back pages?
It is all over the San Francisco and Oakland reddits.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/barf-density-loving-sonja-trauss-r...
But that will never happen because if birth rates decrease who will support the ponzi scheme pensions? In all seriousness the resources required for the average American lifestyle and population density is sustainable. The growth rates of some developing nations are pretty terrifying though.
source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
Canada is already at NPG. Italy is at 1.39.
Now on to the third world. Even Bangladesh is at 2.18, which is 1/3 of what it was in 1960. Pakistan is at 3.62, but was at 6.02 in 1990. China is at 1.56.
Most of the high birth rates are in Africa, which is approx 1/7th of the world's population. Ethiopia's is 4.40 but was 7.25 in 1990. These places also have high (infant and adult) mortality rates, which is a big reason people still have a lot of children.
Now globally... We are at 2.45, down from a peak of 5.06 in 1964, and 3.35 in 1990. And we're dropping at an average of about 0.0238 every year since 2000, which puts us at ZPG globally in 19 years.
The reason for this is simple: Human rights, a move away from subsistence farming, women's rights, access to birth control. Pushing for these things is working, and there's no reason to think that we have to implement any other plan, especially not something that leans authoritarian in any way. We just need to keep doing what we're doing, and doing it better.
Our problem then becoming a looming population crash, not overpopulation.