A Bay Area developer wants to build 4,400 homes where they may be sorely needed
latimes.com
latimes.com
>> Last year, Brisbane hired a consultant who found that the city would net $1 million a year in tax revenue by approving the Baylands. But if the city instead approved a project with lots more commercial space, a larger hotel and no housing, Brisbane would gain $9 million annually — an amount equivalent to more than half the city’s current day-to-day operating budget.
>> “I’d like to think if just the fiscal incentives were reversed, if a city could make as much money off housing as they could retail, we’d be having a very different conversation in California,” Stivers said.
>> “I see a lot of stuff,” Dettmer said. “I see beds in garages. You have to increase the [housing] supply. If you really want to help out people, let them live in dignity. It just seems like a no-brainer.”
>> “I do feel sorry that the younger generation is not going to get to live the life that we did,” she said. “But it’s a different time.”
These were the quotes that stood out to me. It seems like, for various reasons, the only benefit to existing residents and policy makers is "we may be able to help other people". That's not enough of an incentive.
[1] http://brisbaneca.org/sites/default/files/ccBaylandsHearing_...
This study [1] should give you an idea: the median residential property operates at a net loss to the city at a revenue to expenditures ratio of 1:1.15 whereas commercial operates at a huge net gain at 1:0.27.
Most of the existing towns in the SF Bay Area are full of great opportunities for expansion but NIMBYs want their villages to stay the same. That is driven not by planners but reactionaries.
This particular plot of land is a chronically flooded lagoon and swamp which is awkwardly distant from local transit.
It is interesting that instead of being realistic about this land's obviously undesirable nature this article chose instead to print a picture of a nearby plot. The picture shows the former Schlage factory grounds which have undergone extensive remediation and are getting a new high density community built in no small part because of the ongoing efforts of planners to get the highest and best use for that site.
As long as people can't stop lying about what the situation is and what options might be available the chances of a favorable outcome are low.
But Brisbane, California is not a "small town" it's a disgusting example of exurban sprawl.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brisbane,+CA/@37.679201,-1...
Looking at the map (https://goo.gl/maps/7kvttaK8z7F2), it's not even in Brisbane proper, so I think you're wrong about your assessment.
I have been to Brisbane, the number of large McMansions is very tiny.
Point it the existing built environment of Brisbane, CA is not worth preserving. Its car-dependent nature is a menace to the region.
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6916572,-122.4087356,3a,90y,...
I think your assessment is a bit heavy handed considering how bad public transit is in the area in general.
That's not what we call an 'exurb', either.
Brisbane is a small town. It is dense, not sprawling. It has a town square and a handful of shops. It has schools. It is surrounded by empty space on all sides. It is in a canyon of San Bruno Mountain on three sides and surround by bay water and rail yards on the north side. You don't know what you are talking about
The entire peninsula is tiny, it's not fair to compare it to Zurich.
Nothing weird about that situation at all. In fact it's the way much of planet is organized.
These people are assholes.
Nothing of the sort. They're long-term residents looking out for what's best for their community.
And it's exactly the kind of completely gratuitous negativity (project by outsiders, who otherwise couldn't begin to care what goes on in their town), exemplified above, which shores up this instinct that many of them have to protect what they have. Because they know that you're definitely not concerned about what impact projects like these will have on their quality of life and long-term fiscal interests.
No, they're just looking out for themselves. The community is hurt by their greed for massively inflated property values, low taxes, and keeping the younger generation from living the lives they want.
If that makes me negative, fine. But if they are white-washing their behavior by pretending to be concerned for "the community" when really they only care about themselves, yes, that is the very definition of asshole.
Right now, they should drag this out as long and as hard as they can IMO lest they get screwed again. Because if the place didn't smell like a$$ on a daily basis, it would have been discovered and gentrified long ago (I remember checking the place out myself in 2007). It could be a fantastic suburb of SF in a world where win/win usually triumphed over I got mine so @#$% you. But that's not how this area works in my experience.
That one of the major issues I think the Bay Area faces: each township passes the buck to the next: "Why should we build housing, when township X is completely unwilling to do so?" Yes, and they say the same thing about you! With this attitude, nothing will ever get built, anywhere.
The Problem is SF, Oakland and SJ --localities which can/could build if they wanted to but simply don't.
Are advocates of new housing talking about disenfranchising their parents, grandparents, and older aunts and uncles? Are they actually talking about tearing down their old family homes that they grew up in and putting up apartment complexes instead?
If so then... wow that's a level of forward-thinking that's truly rare.
If not ... then these people are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
They want whatever district they move to temporarily for jobs to utterly change its character to suit them, at the expense of those already resident there. And yet anything they find sentimental, and all of their families' land assets, will remain safe in their hometowns far-far from San Fransisco.
And yes, if for some reason millions of people wanted to move to Wisconsin, I'd rather they built on the site of my family home than lived in RVs and mega-commuted. People's well being matters more than the sentimental value of manufactured goods.
I didn't win the genetic lottery to be born in a place with economic opportunity. But I am an American, and since we live in America and not 14th century feudal Europe, I am not obligated to stay put.
The essence of democracy is allowing people to determine their own future, not forcing it upon them due to outside interests.
We aren't 14th century serfs, and closer to home---we aren't waitresses, maintenance workers, or migrant farmers. We are tech workers in a market were demand vastly outstrips demand, so the notion that we are forced to move to San Francisco alone for work lacks perspective.
People want to live in San Fran, not merely because of work, but because of the character of the city, the trendy restaurants, etc. People want San Fran for its luxuries, and its that which I do not believe trumps the ownership stakes of the residents whom already live there.
>The essence of democracy is allowing people to determine their own future
Precisely! We The People determined that it would be our future to have freedom of movement, via the Privileges and Immunities Clause. When we ratified the 14th Amendment, we further reiterated that every American citizen is entitled to equal status under state laws.
That's why prosperous cities resist growth through ham-fisted but plausibly-deniable proxy measures like zoning, rent control, and environmental review. Their goals could be achieved with more elegance and fewer damaging side effects by establishing immigration controls, but they can't, because the American community says that's off-limits.
Subsets of America closing themselves off is a perversion of the right to self-determination, same as it is when people and corporations decide not to pay their federal taxes. It doesn't matter that San Franciscans don't want more neighbors, any more than it matters that the tax evader wants to keep his income. The democratic process ordained that you have to share.
Americans trying to move around America are not outside interests, they are members of the community. Local NIMBY policies transfer wealth to small subsets while harming the community in aggregate, which is right down the middle of behaviors that governments should and usually do shut down.
As people with disposable income, tech workers find a way: redirect some of it to rent. The real victims of opportunity hoarding are the others in the economically stagnant towns we come from would like to follow us but can't. And of course, locals who remain subject to the pressure-cooker housing market, because NIMBY policies are imperfect and ensnare some natives too (those who didn't lock in rent control or mortgages in time).
> Still, some Brisbane residents say they don’t trust regulators will get it right, because what’s known about the toxicity of chemicals can change over time. Even though they won’t live in the Baylands, opponents believe they have a responsibility to shield those who might.
I don't agree with them but that's still a valid concern
The article points out concerns about the size of the expansion relative to the current city, which makes sense, but why is tax income a concern for a city? Surely it doesn't exist to make as much money as possible?
Cities don't have to make money they just have to not lose it.
An excellent encapsulation of what I call the "fuck you, got mine" mode of American politics.
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/02/heres-what-it-would-l...
Now imagine an alternate reality where the BART had circled the bay and then extended northward, southward, and eastward instead of getting @#$%blocked in 1961 by San Mateo county. But since we can't have nice things like that, Brisbane IMO owes SF and the bay area nothing and they should squeeze out the last drop of profit from this situation.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2007/02/05/history-of-bart-to-the...
All this developer has to do is make building that housing a no-brainer for Brisbane, but I suspect in doing so the profitability plummets or somebody would have already done this, no?
Yes. The sprawling office parks and snakey 8 lane roads of northern San Jose are a fucking miserable mess. But the concentration of offices and condos in downtown San Jose is probably the only thing resembling sensible urban planning in the whole South Bay.
sensible urban planning
Try walking downtown on a typical evening. Say, Market to 6th, Santa Clara St. to, say, Reed. Feel the vibe. Research how many businesses (restaurants, bars, clubs, shops) have failed there even during the "recovery".
Then do the same in downtown Santa Clara. Then Willow Glen (Lincoln Ave). Then Mountain View (Castro St.). Then Palo Alto (University Ave). And Menlo Park. Even Redwood City.
Even ignoring that modern downtown San Jose is "planned" and the others "unplanned": if San Jose is "sensible" urban planning, then give me unplanned any day.
I spent 50+ evenings a year downtown for over a 20-year span. Now, I avoid it except for SOMA First Fridays.
As for downtown San Jose, it looks like it's about to get a lot better if Google follows through on building a campus there. Meanwhile in my hometown of Santa Cruz, it's bums, needles, and out of business signs thanks to our local rabidly anti-growth government. I'm pinning my hopes on Amazon eventually expanding its downtown footprint as the only way possible way out of the trap the place constructed for itself.
if Google follows through on building a campus there
Those parcels in San Jose were originally acquired for the ballpark that never happened, either. I suspect they offered them to Google at far below their value, as with the A's.
I didn't say the others are unplanned. They are entirely planned to stay exactly as they are and constrain growth so that their super wealthy residents can live exactly as they have been for the past twenty years without any change.
> then give me unplanned any day.
Well as said. They are planned to be that way. But sure, I guess if you can afford the $6,000 rents to live there you can have them. But that's not a good vision for the Bay Area, nor a place I particularly want to live even if I could afford it.
> downtown San Jose
I don't disagree with what you say about San Jose. I used to live downtown. Still compared to those other places you mention San Jose actually allows development. And there's a lot more starting to go on there now. Palo Alto is great if you're rich. All the boutiques. And $6000 per month apartments. It has a blue bottle. (But other than that pretty shit options.) Mountain View is an ugly dump of stores that only seem to still exist because they're owned by someone who isn't paying current market rate taxes. And a bunch of ugly out of place buildings at the other edge. But it does have good sushi. Redwood City you mentioned is the place I think is doing a good job from the little I've seen these days, could become a model for the rest of the South Bay. I hope they keep it up.
One relatively simple solution is to pass laws that mandate building homes along stores and hotels. Want to build a large hotel and some stores? Need to also build 4,400 affordable houses. And, since we are fixing the world, add to that mandatory investment in clean energy for seawater desalination, because water and energy for those homes will have to come from somewhere.
And I didn't even suggest higher density habitations.
Meanwhile, real estate in SF is dropping in price. The bubble seems to be popping there.
Stanford has only 2,180 faculty members.
I recommend comparing and contrasting with this plan for Coyote Valley, to see what real urbanism looks like. http://www.greenbelt.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Coyote-V...
A.) Approve high density housing and then see the value of their current house drop (and rental income drop if they are landlords) and their schools, grocery stores, parks, open space, parking, favorite restaurants, fitness centers and traffic become all be super crowded
B.) Approve high density office and then see the value of their current house skyrocket, see additional community benefits from developer concessions and no impact to their current community amenities.
What happens if the developer proposed a third option of profit sharing so the current residents each benefit as individuals:
C.) Build high density housing and high density office and give a significant share of the profits to the existing residents. For 4400 units, the profits could easily be in the $500M to $1B range. With only ~2350 (4700/2) households, profit sharing of $50 to $100K per household would be $120M to $235M. That could be a nice down payment for a house in the Central Valley if they want to have that small town feel. Profit sharing on the annual office rent could also provide some UBI income for the residents and keep apartment rents stable.
The state of California needs some sort of Beds for Butts in Office Chairs legislation. Want to build office space and expand your tax base? Pony up the space to house those employees.
Basically the issue is that the developers are changing the rules of the game AFTER the existing NIMBYs bought into the community.
Because of tax limits established in 1978 by Proposition 13, local governments generally receive more revenue from sales and hotel room taxes than property taxes. Proposition 13 limited property tax rates to 1% of a home’s taxable value and restricted how quickly that taxable value could increase after a purchase.
Last year, Brisbane hired a consultant who found that the city would net $1 million a year in tax revenue by approving the Baylands. But if the city instead approved a project with lots more commercial space, a larger hotel and no housing, Brisbane would gain $9 million annually — an amount equivalent to more than half the city’s current day-to-day operating budget.
I have suggested before that tax incentives are part of why we have this issue. This isn't exactly the way I figured it was screwing things up, but it is evidence that tax structures are part of the problem.
Prop 13 ruins everything.
However, there doesn't really seem to be a way to actually repeal any of these laws.
If we'd begun a phase out in 2000, during the height of the tech boom, then by now Prop 13 would be gone and the housing situation would be much different.
Would there be many? Certainly, there were some cases pre-prop 13, but prop 13 wasn't narrowly focussed on protecting homeowners. Those were exploited as pretext, they weren't the motivation.
And you could make it protect homeowners while fixing the local government incentives by providing a refundable state income tax credit for 100% of the property tax due to assessed value increases beyond the existing Prop 13 limits. You could do this without or without, modifying the 1% fixed rate.
If you don't want that big of a subsidy, you could just allow homeowners to defer without penalty the excess amount until transfer of the property. Still stops people from being priced out of their homes.
Prop13 is a monster that will continue to exacerbate inequality. Families that owned homes in affluent areas pre-1970 will continue to pay artificially suppressed property tax rates in perpetuity, so long as they only transfer the house within their immediate family. In that way, Prop13 is a perverse incentive to suppress real estate transactions, which exacerbates the real estate issues we already have.
While prop 13 limits increases, for new units, they would be assessed at current value.
I can understand where the people are coming from in wanting to maintain what they've invested into. I'd hate to see a sudden boom in population and sudden traffic spikes due to the knee jerk reaction of building 100's of more houses in an area that wasn't even planned to support more than what is existing.
People do need housing but people also need to be realistic about where they live and how they plan to keep on living there.
They aren't building new houses between old houses...
Easy solution.