More housing near the Expo Line and other California transit stations | Hacker News Reader

More housing near the Expo Line and other California transit stations

latimes.com

78 pointsblondie9x98 comments

It feels like every time I hear something about Wiener, he's doing stuff that needs to get done. I'm tempted to send him some money even though I'm not in his district.

do it!

the good people need money to keep up!

I just started political donations this year!

Any amount, however small, helps.

More useful would be to call your State Assemblymember and State Senator and reference these bills, ask them to vote yes, then tell your friends and ask them to do the same.

You can find them here: https://sankarravi.github.io/yimbyscorecard/

An interesting feature of this bill, and SB35 before, is that it makes operations of local bus agencies far more relevant. As written, I could build a 55-foot-tall building without parking on my land in Oakland. But if AC Transit moves the bus stop a little bit, cancels my local bus line, or increases the headway above 15 minutes, then I’m right back to 25 feet with two car parking minimum.

Edit: actually 85 feet under this proposed bill.

> Koretz said the bill would lead to an increase in new home building that would snarl traffic and go against what his constituents want in their neighborhoods.

> Better ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be eliminating gasoline-powered cars and even gas stations in the city over time, he said.

Statements like this drive me crazy. While EVs can help in reduction of greenhouse gas, it will not do as much as allowing people to move less on a daily basis.

Regardless of the source, moving less stuff (only yourself vs. yourself and a car) and doing it for a shorter distance will result in the use of less energy which leads to fewer emissions of greenhouse gases.

Yeah I want to throw expletives at him. Luckily just a city councilman. The guy doesn't even acknowledge there's a housing problem in his statements.

Because it's not a problem for his large, wealthy homeowner constituents.

I suspect there is a mutual understanding with his constituents that his job is to prevent big new development projects. It explains to me the half-assed talking point, since almost anything is more palatable than 'the wealth of my constituents depends on restricted housing'.

I hate to always be siding with NIMBYs but it's not always about wealthy people's wealth. Can't it also be about families simply not wanting to be stacked and packed into dense urban sardine can housing? As amazing as it sounds, some people like suburban life and not everyone wants their neighborhood to transform into a big city.

Those should move to the actual suburbs then.

Why? Moving is expensive, stressful, and potentially fraught with risks as any major change in life can be. You do that, all while knowing with certainty that of the 7+ billion on Earth, few would move to accommodate you.

So why? Out of the unrequited goodness of your heart?

Because a higher level of government recognizes that maintaining your neighbors’ lots exactly as they are in perpetuity is destructive to society as a whole.

Right, and it’s an adversarial process between that higher level of government, and local interests. What you’re suggesting is akin to asking people to forgoe the use of an attorney during criminal proceedings. The idea is that competing interests can find compromise where necessary, or at least that the adversarial nature of the process is preferable to alternatives.

Having apartment buildings along transit corridors in your neighborhood is really nothing like being convicted of a crime. The right to due process protects you from imprisonment, not neighborhood change.

Moving to the suburbs is not enough. These fights are often about developers wanting to roll into existing suburban areas and stacking dense housing in them.

There is plenty of space in California for low density suburban style housing. That space should be far away from mass transit.

If you don’t want to live in the big city, go live in the suburbs. If you move somewhere and don’t want it to change, then buy the necessary rights from surrounding property owners.

What NIMBY’s do is to use government coercion to prevent property developers from doing what they want with their property. Now, I’m not one of those “no government men,” and I think government coercion and impairment of property rights is appropriate to protect civil rights or the environment, etc. But homeowner’s aesthetic preferences? Give me a break! It’s an illegitimate use of the government’s monopoly on violence.

Most repliers are missing the point. I'm not arguing for turning the city into suburbs. Nobody is arguing for this, I'm arguing against turning the suburbs into a city, which is what most of these development fights are about.

Say I like suburbs. I move into a suburb. I expect a suburban life when I do that. My neighbors expect a suburban life. Now developers want to roll in and stack apartment buildings all over the place. If we argue against this, we're apparently terrible NIMBYs, opponents of affordable housing and stooges of the wealthy landed elite.

I'll turn the argument around. If you want to pack yourselves into cities, go move into cities. Go build more dense apartments in the cities. Why are the aesthetic preferences of suburban dwellers invalid and the aesthetic preferences of city dwellers valid?

If we argue against this, we're apparently terrible NIMBYs, opponents of affordable housing and stooges of the wealthy landed elite.

Yes, exactly. You are putting your aesthetic preferences above the property rights of landowners to do what they want with their own property as well as the ability of other people to find affordable housing. You're also (in most cases) using the power of the state to push up the value of your home and put money in your pocket.

This isn't really up for debate. That is literally what you are doing (in this theoretical scenario).

Now, maybe doing that is good. Maybe that is ok. Maybe those values are fine. But you have to confront the reality here.

Why are the aesthetic preferences of suburban dwellers invalid and the aesthetic preferences of city dwellers valid?

The aesthetic preferences of no one are valid. If someone wants to buy a plot of land in the middle of NYC and build a single family home on it they are free to do so as long as they have the cash.

Property rights have limits. You can't open a stinky pig farm or a loud car repair shop on your property. One of the purposes of local government is for local people to band together to set the ground rules for what's allowed in their local community. Within limits of course--people shouldn't be able to exclude based on race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.

There are lots of communities. If you don't like the rules of one of them, try one of the many others. How is it that residents agreeing they don't want something around is a bad use of the "power of the state," yet coming in and forcing the locals to accept something they don't want around is an acceptable use of the power of the state?

The government isn't forcing locals to accept anything. If no local landowners want to build denser housing no one is forcing them to do it. You've mischaracterized what is going on here.

The default mode of government should be to get out of the way unless there is a super compelling interest to do otherwise. I don't believe that the desire of people to live in unchanging suburbs is all that compelling. We living in a country with a growing and urbanizing population. These changes might make some people sad. Tough.

It looks like we will have to respectfully disagree, but thanks for keeping it civil.

> Within limits of course--people shouldn't be able to exclude based on race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.

California statistics indicates that artificially constraining housing supply has created housing costs that in effect limits access to the rare opportunities found here to blacks and latinos as well as the poor.

It makes it almost impossible to grow up with lower middle class parents or work in a low-pay low-skilled position, and mingling with the tech crowd to work your way up.

* A snapshot of more recent U.S. Census migration numbers shows that nearly three-quarters of those who have left California for other states since 2007 earn less than $50k a year.

* San Francisco's African American population has declined from 13.4% of the population in 1970 to 6.1%

* 41 percent of San Franciscans spend 30 to 50 percent on rent, despite a lot of rent control for longer-tenure residents and a population average income being $104k as well as median $77k

* low skilled entry level jobs are moved elsewhere https://www.google.com.tw/amp/s/www.wired.com/2016/03/those-....

I understand that this might not be the intended consequence for all people fighting for the current zoning rules, but due to its effects on blacks and latinos as well as the poor I find the effects immoral.

Anyone supporting these policies knowing this has the right to do so, but not while at the same time claiming they fight for diversity and the dispossessed.

We aren't talking about a stinky pig farm or a loud car repair shop. We are talking about a building that is slightly taller than the ones already there.

How is stopping someone from making their own house one story taller an acceptable use of the power of the state?

We aren't prioritizing the "aesthetic preference" of the suburbs over the city. We're prioritizing the rights of those who own the real estate in question over those who don't, but live nearby.

The aesthetic of suburbia is exclusion. That's what makes it less valid. It's reaping the benefits of access to the city while minimizing the number of others who can do the same. There's nothing wrong with liking solitude, but there's everything wrong with insisting that we preserve your solitude on the most central/best connected land, no matter the cost to everyone else.

SF's unoccupied blocks are pretty much built out by now. Everywhere with preexisting residents is the same: I came here because I liked the neighborhood as it is, it can never be allowed to change.

Cities aren't plopped down out of the sky fully formed. They're living organisms, built by expanding iteratively and incrementally. The city that's already been built is full. For more people to live in city, we need to make more of it. Aside from a fire or earthquake providing a clean slate, intensifying the suburbs with the best access is essentially the only way that happens.

This would be fine, except that economic growth is increasingly accruing to a handful of cities whose zoning is a big Keep Out sign.

Have you ever been to Los Angeles (the actual city in question)? It is a city of suburbs. Excepting the metaphorical postage stamp of downtown and some highrise development along a few corridors, Los Angeles is basically 4 million people packed into a little less than 500 square miles of nothing but single-family home "suburban" development. Nobody living in Los Angeles believes that they live in a suburb, they believe that they live in a low-density city.

Hmm, where do cities come from? Did all the big cities stand right where they are now when the humans first came to the planet?

Cities grow when people go there and settle down. When cities grow, the suburbs turn into parts of the cities and new suburbs come into being. That is called progress.

If you really love suburbs, like GP says, move into a new suburb. Do not try to hinder progress.

In the SFBA, the land use issues with suburbs are that most of them are building far more office space than housing and thus the jobs-housing balance is out of whack. A suburb like cupertino, that’s builds office space for 12k workers (the Apple campus), and then received payroll taxes for those 12k workers, needs to accept that they also must build living quarters for and provide social services to those 12k workers, as opposed to the status quo, where they floist the responsibility and costs onto neighboring communities while hoarding the benefits (taxes from large commercial spaces).

> I'll turn the argument around. If you want to pack yourselves into cities, go move into cities.

The similar situation would be: you want to live in a dense urban neighborhood, but instead of moving to the city, you get a law passed that requires any new buildings in your suburban neighborhood to be a mid-rise condo. It's not a question of whose aesthetic preferences are more valid, but whether it's legitimate to invoke aesthetic preferences to limit peoples' property rights.

You misunderstand, nobody is being asked to relocate from their homes. What's being asked is to be allowed to build density.

Some people don't want to live "like sardines" and that's just great. What's not great is those people deciding how everybody else has to live.

It's sort of like those arguments against gay marriage: why should we allow it, I don't want to forced to be in a gay marriage!

That's the stupidest straw man I've heard in a while. The argument was not, "why should we allow it? I don't want to live in that kind of housing!" The argument is that that kind of housing affects the housing around it by increasing noise, traffic, blocking out the sky, etc., and has its own set of problems (increased likelihood of spreading disease when people live more closely together, for example). We can argue the merits of any given argument, but you've just made up an argument to argue against and it's completely false.

It's like being against gay marriage because you'll be forced to see gay people happy.

Read OP again: "Can't it also be about families simply not wanting to be stacked and packed into dense urban sardine can housing?"

Who is doing the "stacking and packing" in that sentence? Who is forcing anyone to live in an apartment building? OP seems to believe that anyone living in an apartment was taken and put there.

Does OP find it so literally impossible to imagine that anyone might not share his over-the-top, grandiose disgust for apartments?

Nope, but if enough people do share it, they should be able to elect a local government that will help to keep them out.

Just like if the people in a neighborhood find pig farms to be stinky, they should be allowed to, through zoning, keep a property owner from building a pig farm next door.

It is not that simple. When a city builds offices without providing housing they are effectively forcing housing as well as infrastructure onto neighboring cities, while keeping the revenue from the office buildings. In my opinion this demonstrates that cities are too fine grained of a decision level for all regulation of housing supply.

Again, substitute gay marriage in here.

Sustaining that charmed suburban life in booming metros requires making everyone else mega-commute or stay underemployed in more stagnant areas. People who have already “made it” are not the only ones whose well-being matters. A mid-rise next door is not going to hurt you anything like a 2-hour commute or turning down a dream job hurts someone else.

> A mid-rise next door is not going to hurt you anything like a 2-hour commute or turning down a dream job hurts someone else.

If it's displacing your access to transit, it may hurt you exactly like a 2 hour commute hurts someone else.

High density creates the critical mass to support better, faster, and more frequent transit.

> High density creates the critical mass to support better, faster, and more frequent transit.

High density that, as some have suggested in this thread, displaces parking access to the transit, prevents people not in the new high-density development who previously used the mass transit from accessing it; it might (or might not) induce, with the long lead time that major capital improvements have, projects which provide new infrastructure and access to replace what is lost, but that's likely a decade or longer delay after the negative impact to, maybe, get back to status quo ante for those adversely affected.

Of course, that optimisticallty, assumes that there isn't an active political move to prevent transit access to those not in high-density developments, an agenda which some in this thread supporting the new bill have endorsed.

Communities whose voters highly value parking should feel free to acquire sites and provide it at public expense. I’m very glad that Berkeley does downtown, for example.

In our society where we generally use pricing to distribute limited goods, your desire to drive to and park at a train station, at no or low cost, is irrelevant next to the market price of that land when that price is about 6-10 million dollars per acre.

What you're asking for is a massive external regulatory subsidy in order to prevent the market from functioning, just because you like your car.

As a former BART station parking user: it’s not about liking your car, but your time. When you get used to a 10 minute drive, no one wants to switch to a 30 minute walk or 40 minute bus ride.

Point still stands, if you paid for the true cost of parking no one would bat an eye, but the current regime subsidized car use to an insane extent through inefficient land use policies. A true “market rate” bart parking spot would likely be many multiples above the current price when all costs, alternative uses, and competition are factored in.

AFAIK the private lot at West Oakland is still under $15. Well worth it. But yeah, the $3 BART charges is comically low. If it’s full by 7am, it’s too cheap!

You need to widen the universe of competition when you price parking. The universe of competition for an empty parking space is not just "everyone who would want to park here for a day" it is also "all alternative land uses to parking, including housing". A more profitable, and thus more efficient, use of the land would convert likely 99% of all BART parking land to apartments, retail and office space.

Mid-rise subsidized-affordable housing (what will realistically make it through the community's discretion, if anything at all) isn't that efficient.

When you choose to move somewhere, you're not just moving into an isolated square on the map. You're moving into a lifestyle and a neighborhood with attributes you desire. Those desirable attributes can include "no mid-rise apartments next door".

Apartments springing up next door hurt, if one of the primary reasons you move somewhere is that there are no apartments next door.

Lots of things hurt. It's not the government's job to make all of those things illegal.

Where I live, the government's job is to support the will of the people electing them, within constitutional limits.

Until very recently laws against gay marriage were Constitutional. Was the government doing it's job well when it passed these laws?

No, it was not. There are underlying principles of good government that should constrain citizens and politicians further than what is strictly defined in the constitution.

That is the case being made here: NIMBY zoning laws, while constitutional, are not ethically or philosophically sound so we shouldn't have them.

And the will of the people of California appears to include affording its cities, and not to include an unlimited tolerance for single family neighborhoods dumping externalities on everyone else.

The government's job is to balance the will of the people with the rights of minorities.

If 51% of people voted to outlaw single family houses would that be acceptable? Of course not. People should be able to build the type of housing that they want to on their own property.

Sure, and now we’re asking the state to consider whether maintaining what you like about your neighborhood is sufficient justification to write public policy that denies opportunity to others.

I understand what you are saying, you buy into a location because you like that location. People do a lot of research before they move. Then it start changing right before your eyes.

But part of living in a city and society is that things change. One of the things that needs to change is higher density housing, located around travel hubs.

I agree with you. It's an interesting situation: a cultural problem that one side argues can be solved via a technical solution. The problem is that some people want a more just housing policy and some other people want a housing policy that only favors them. But the latter don't want to admit to themselves that this is their position, so they misdirect with technological optimism.

It's tempting to answer in kind: "don't worry about traffic! Let's just build more housing, and self-driving cars will reduce traffic anyway."

If you support these bills, please call your California State Assemblymember and State Senator and ask them to vote yes. This is probably going to lead to a really big fight and these will need lots of support.

You can find them here: https://sankarravi.github.io/yimbyscorecard

I think YIMBY related issues are one of those issues where directly contacting your rep. does the most good. It's a locally decided issue that can reap huge benefits. So go call your rep!

Nice. I didn't like the part where it said "allowing single family homes near transit". Moves like this are about allowing more things, not taking away any options. Anyone with a house near transit is allowed to continue living there. It's just that, when confronted with new economic options, many of their neighbors will sell their houses, which will be torn down and redeveloped. But you can stay in your house as long as you want.

It meant "allowing single family zoning near transit".

Thanks, that's better.

Whats to stop municipalities that don't want to play along from simply cutting public transit? I wouldn't put this past Marin or Atherton.

I'm reminded that Atherton has a Caltrain stop that trains only stop at on weekends.

My one worry about this is that it will intensify opposition to new transit projects and transit improvements. Otherwise, great job Senator Wiener. Please call your Assembly member and State Senator and support. Find them here:

https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org/

In that case the opponents have to be explicit in why they fight against any kind of dense transit-near development, which would be an improvement over the current situation where in my opinion many opponents are not honest about why they oppose it.

What’s in the actual bill?

SB 827 upzones for apartments half a mile around every major transit stop https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

SB 828 would double the amount of zoning capacity that each city is required to provide in the Housing Element report (currently each city must provide zoning capacity for only 100% of estimated RHNA population growth; this would increase it to 200%) and carry over approval deficits (currently if a city does not approve any housing, the deficit is forgiven every 8 years and the city can reuse the unbuilt parcels in the next Housing Element report). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

SB 829 would allow farmers to build farmworker housing https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

All of these bills have just been announced by Senator Wiener (https://medium.com/@Scott_Wiener/california-needs-a-housing-...) and may be watered down, heavily amended, or dropped over the next year.

LA slowly transforms into an actual city.

About time. Good move.

This is well-intentioned, but I predict will very often result in development of superificially attractive high-density housing with inadequate parking near transit lines with inadequate capacity and existing connected services.

Development limits and parking requirements are often abused, to be sure, but they do have real purposes, and the mere presence of a transit station doesn't eliminate the development externalities they legitimately exist to address.

This bill is saying that cities can’t take state money to build transit and then sabotage it with sparse housing and cars. Cars in the vicinity of transit unquestionably reduce the utility of transit projects.

This is also a big middle finger to Berkeley which for decades has refused to put residential zoning around its incredibly expensive subway stations. Berkeley’s BART parking lots are zoned “unclassified” and can’t be developed without a giant NIMBY hissy fit. This bill short-circuits the hissy fit and allows BART to build 85-foot apartment buildings without parking at Ashby and N. Berkeley stations. This will provide way, way more riders for BART than a handful of parking spaces provide.

> This bill is saying that cities can’t take state money to build transit and then sabotage it with sparse housing and cars.

And, that's a fine general idea; the specific implementation is a bit different than that.

> Cars in the vicinity of transit unquestionably reduce the utility of transit projects.

So does an overbalance of residential property without adequate alternative transportation compared to the employment, retail, etc., services accessible by transit.

> This is also a big middle finger to Berkeley

Yeah, look, I think on balance this is likely to be a net benefit, if something of a blunt instrument, in the Bay Area and L.A. Basin, but it's not limited to those places, and it's triggering transit conditions have no consideration of the connected services and only limited consideration of capacity.

> > This bill is saying that cities can’t take state money to build transit and then sabotage it with sparse housing and cars. > And, that's a fine general idea; the specific implementation is a bit different than that.

How is this bill different from that?

> So does an overbalance of residential property without adequate alternative transportation compared to the employment, retail, etc., services accessible by transit.

What you are afraid of seem to describe exactly our current situation, where large office parks or shopping centers are build with little integration with housing.

To the contrary of what you are saying this regulation would make it harder for cities to approve offices that can not be connected to new transit near housing due to zoning. I doubt that most people given the choice would choose to drive in traffic instead of taking transit to work if the housing situation allowed them to do so.

> Yeah, look, I think on balance this is likely to be a net benefit, if something of a blunt instrument, in the Bay Area and L.A. Basin, but it's not limited to those places, and it's triggering transit conditions have no consideration of the connected services and only limited consideration of capacity.

If there is no demand developers will not build, so I do not see how this can become a large problem.

822 parking spaces at N. Berkeley. Are they really going to build “way more” housing units?

Not that many people live in reasonable walking distance of the suburban commuter stations; building on the parking won’t really change that. I would love it, though, if we could radically upzone the whole area for a mile around.

Walking for half an hour to work is great. Walking for half an hour just to get to your train is no way to live.

It's an 8-acre site. At that height I'm sure they could figure out how to get 100 dwellings per acre, and that works out to something near 2000 occupants. A parking space at a BART station produces fewer than two rides per day, while a housing unit within half a mile of BART produces more than four rides per day.

Look at the map. Six city blocks at North Berkeley and 2-3 at Ashby. You could easily put 2000+ new units there if you get past the NIMBYs. Most other stations in the East Bay already have all adjacent lots spoken for with (relatively) high density development (Lafayette and Orinda being the notable, also NIMBY driven exceptions).

Inadequate parking is a much better problem to have than inadequate housing. I mean, not even close to the same level of problem!

But that's assuming that there will even be inadequate parking. With car sharing services, and enough transit, it's not a problem. I just got back from Vancouver, a city with high density, not a huge number of cars, but extremely easy mobility for both those in cars and those on transit. Parking is less of an issue because not everybody has to drive.

Cars don't scale well. They are massive, take huge amounts of space when moving or when when not moving. That's not to say that we shouldn't have cars, we absolutely need them. But we also absolutely need transit.

One of the first steps towards that possibility is allowing housing that allows a car-less life. Parking spots add expense to every unit built. Those who don't have cars have been subsidizing those with cars for a long time. That's OK, but maybe, JUST MAYBE, we should try some housing where we let people live without a car.

I agree, and would go a step further: inadequate parking is a feature, not a bug, because it creates incentives that benefit all of the people living in the area regardless of socioeconomic status.

Overall, this seems like a good policy to me.

However, I'm not sure I like the means used to achieve it. Do we really want to set a precedent where the state government comes in and overrides local regulations about things like zoning which are usually purely the responsibility of the local governments?

I'm not necessarily saying I don't like this either... just thinking through the implications of living in a federal system. You want people to have maximum voice in the things that affect the places where they live, but you also don't want those people to abuse the privilege with NIMBY policies.

The state and cities do not share the same relationship that the states and the nation enjoy. The federal system is a creation of the states, and has enumerated powers. The states also create cities. So all the power lies with the state.

I find moving authority from the cities to the state more acceptable in this case because it merely mandates allowing economic activity to occur. None of these policies prevent citizens from voting with their wallets, developers will still only build things they can make a profit on.

Housing externalities of cities decisions to for instance build offices while not adding sufficient housing is not limited to that city, essentially pushing those externalities onto surrounding cities and having them pay the housing as well as infrastructure cost. As proven by our current long-lasting housing crisis this is not a good medium to long-term solution.

Because cities are too fine grained for containing most externalities office/housing/infrastructure decisions it is appropriate to move some housing regulation up to the state level as it is one step up from cities, and therefore the best place to coordinate between cities.

> "Do we really want to set a precedent where the state government comes in and overrides local regulations about things like zoning which are usually purely the responsibility of the local governments?"

Yes, yes we do. Local control of land use is the reason we are in this mess. Local control of land use is the reason why our neighborhoods are still de facto segregated by race even though de jure segregation ended 50 years ago. Local control constricts the policy influencers to a circle that is too small, because it exlcudes from the discourse people who: 1) work in the locale in question, but cannot afford to live there, 2) people who commute through the locale in question, 3) people who live in a community that is not in the locale, but is impacted by the locale's land use decisions (ex: brisbane building 8m square feet of office and expecting SF to build housing for the workers).

"Yes, yes we do. Local control of land use is the reason we are in this mess."

No, no we don't. I don't usually side with conservatives, but this is comically bad policy. It's a state power-grab for supply side controls -- planned economy thinking -- justified by Adam Smith rhetoric, because some folks in San Francisco have decided that they know what's wrong with the local planning of every other city in the state.

It's especially irritating, because the transit corridors that this legislation targets -- BART, Caltrain, etc. -- suck, and the sheer vacuum of their suckage probably has more to do with local housing density than any particular zoning rule. I cracked up at your Brisbane example...people choose not to live in Brisbane because it's inconvenient to everywhere, not because Brisbane has zoning restrictions. You could let developers build skyscrapers right next to the single Caltrain station (you know...the one next to the city dump?), and they still won't do it, because the demand doesn't exist. People aren't clamoring to live in Brisbane, and office parks are probably the only thing that sells.

Make it quick and painless to commute to Brisbane (or any other city) by something other than car, and you won't have to tell the local lawmakers how to set their rules. The flow of money will do it for you. This is just silly grandstanding, not practical legislation.

> ... It's a state power-grab for supply side controls -- planned economy thinking -- justified by Adam Smith rhetoric, because some folks in San Francisco have decided that they know what's wrong with the local planning of every other city in the state.

How is this planned economy thinking? It seems to loosen regulation in local markets to allow developers to more readily meet demand.

Quite to the contrary the current city zoning rules seem like planned economy thinking, because it makes a zoning plan that is rarely changed over even a decade-long timeline to match housing supply with the current demand.

> people choose not to live in Brisbane because it's inconvenient to everywhere, not because Brisbane has zoning restrictions.

Your argument seem to assume that the state will force developers to build where there is no demand. This law says nothing about that and the state has no such power, and this law to the contrary seek to ease regulation where there is demand for developers to build.

Contrary to what you say Brisbane is served by public transit by both Muni and Caltrain. There is also a developer that wants to build a lot of new housing in Brisbane, so the market clearly think there is demand for new housing in Brisbane. The largest obstacle for the market to meet this demand is local zoning and the planning process in Brisbane.

"How is this planned economy thinking? It seems to loosen regulation in local markets to allow developers to more readily meet demand."

It's state government trying to override local economic (zoning) decisions. It's the very definition of a centrally planned economy.

"Contrary to what you say Brisbane is served by public transit by both Muni and Caltrain."

There's one Caltrain stop. It's a 30-minute walk from the residential part of Brisbane, across the freeway and around the dump. MUNI bus service to the area is irregular and unreliable. The only practical commute option is car.

> It's state government trying to override local economic (zoning) decisions. It's the very definition of a centrally planned economy.

You are mischaracterizing the law and what zoning is. Zoning does not produce any housing and is instead an artificial constraint on housing supply. The planning after this law is still done at the city level, but the city is constrained in what planning it can do.

> There's one Caltrain stop. It's a 30-minute walk from the residential part of Brisbane, across the freeway and around the dump. MUNI bus service to the area is irregular and unreliable. The only practical commute option is car.

The developer is proposing to build upon the landfill just next to the caltrain stop, so for the new development this won't be a concern.

> You could let developers build skyscrapers right next to the single Caltrain station (you know...the one next to the city dump?), and they still won't do it, because the demand doesn't exist.

There is literally a developer (http://www.universalparagoncorp.com/) waiting to build a project there. They submitted a proposal with 4400 residential units, and the NIMBYs are trying to shut it down.

> Make it quick and painless to commute to Brisbane (or any other city) by something other than car, and you won't have to tell the local lawmakers how to set their rules.

It's already quick and painless to commute to the proposed development by Caltrain. The local lawmakers are structurally incentivized to keep development out, which is the whole reason for this legislative proposal.

I have no idea what the reasons are for opposing the Brisbane development, and I highly doubt you (or the state legislature) does either. It sounds like there are reasonable arguments that the city will lose on tax income [1], which is bad, and seems like something the state could actually fix, instead of attempting to engage in central planning.

If there are legitimate local concerns over a development, the state shouldn't be allowed to override them just because Scott Weiner thinks there should be more development (and no, invoking "NIMBYism" isn't a counterargument).

[1] "Under California’s tax system, Brisbane also earns more money if it rejects the current plan in favor of potential alternatives with more hotel rooms and space for businesses — but no homes."

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-small-city-control...

> I highly doubt you (or the state legislature) does either

I do, because I've been following the issue, the Brisbane city council meetings, and the reasons that the Brisbane city council has been citing. It's not a secret.

> the city will lose on tax income [1], which is bad

The city is not entitled to hypothetical future tax income.

> If there are legitimate local concerns over a development, the state shouldn't be allowed to override them

Wishing for more tax revenue and property value appreciation is not a legitimate local concern. The city is not entitled to arbitrarily decide who can lawfully move in or build on privately owned land within its limits.

For anyone familiar with the Bay Area real estate market, this is obviously wrong.

Looking at recent sales, homes in Brisbane are selling at ~$600/sqft, which is easily enough to support the construction of dense housing. For comparison, that's about the same as Toronto, higher than Seattle and many other major cities.

All of Brisbane is near 101, which makes it better than a lot of places in the Peninsula for commuting.

Also, developers in the region are eagerly building condos and townhouses on any land they can get approval for, including areas with serious issues - eg. fifty feet from the Caltrain line but far from the nearest station. If you take a look at new construction listings you will see tons of these, and they sell great because many buyers prefer them over an eighty year old bungalow with tiny bedrooms, termites, and mold.

> I cracked up at your Brisbane example...people choose not to live in Brisbane because it's inconvenient to everywhere, not because Brisbane has zoning restrictions.

That's not true at all. Brisbane is sitting on a huge plot of undeveloped land right next to caltrain (the baylands). The developer came to them with a plan to build a lot of housing on it, and the city told them they would only accept offices on the site, that they didn't want any residential development. The developer (aka, the best party to judge flows of money and profitability) wants housing, the nimby residents say no. Pricies for crappy single family homes in brisbane are in the millions, that is clearly a sign that people want to live there.

http://beta.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-small-city-contro...

> The developer (aka, the best party to judge flows of money and profitability) wants housing, the nimby residents say no.

The developer is the best party to judge the flow of money into their pockets from initial sale of the property, but not the long-term flow of costs and benefits of development, which they give fuck-all about since it doesn't effect them. Cities are concerned with balancing tax revenue vs. ongoing service costs (and, yes, with political concerns of voters like NIMBYism, but those thingd aren't entirely unrelated to each other.)

Swinging back on this, because I find this stuff interesting.

I don't necessarily disagree with anything you say here. But I'm still not sure it gets at the crux of my question.

If local control of land use systematically creates problems for people that don't have the privilege of living in the jurisdiction in question, maybe it's time to put control of land use or certain aspects of land use in the hands of regional counsels of government (much like Metropolitan Planning Organizations plan for transportation needs at a metro-area level, rather than a city level). I think that lets you start solving not only the problem in question in the article, but all sorts of other problems that you address. (Maybe this could work at the State level too, but I think that's too broad. People in San Jose certainly have some interest in San Francisco land use... but do people in Sacramento? Not much.)

But that's very different from leaving land use in the hands of city governments, then overriding them on individual issues when you don't like what they're doing. Right?

I think part of my thinking on this is shaped from living in NC, and watching the insanity that was HB2 (which you likely heard of, if you're up on the news). Basically, Charlotte raises minimum wage and adds some protections for LGBT folks, state legislatures doesn't like it, and so passes a law preventing local governments from being able to set the minimum wage in their area, or grant rights/protections beyond what's granted by the state. The fallout was absolute insanity for, like, a year.

All of that to say - if you want State government overriding local government rights, you have to be prepared for the day when the State legislature is doing something you don't like, and the local government is doing something you do. Right?

In the end, like I said before, I think this policy is good, but I think there's better ways to go about it. Regional counsels of government having more authority over land use seems like a great start to me. Actually, I'd be interested to know if somebody's proposed that.

I agree with your idea that, in an ideal world, we should promote more land use and transit decision making to metro level governments. The problem is that politics is the art of the possible, and this is the set of stakeholders we can currently wrangle to push forth a pro-housing agenda.

> if you want State government overriding local government rights, you have to be prepared for the day when the State legislature is doing something you don't like, and the local government is doing something you do. Right?

I do some volunteering/organizing in local politics, and there are a few "problem domains" within local government. Pretty much everything in local government boils down to "land use", "police" and "education". Additionally, smaller governments are _always_ more beholden to parochial interests than state governments are. Its kind of a "sample size" issue with local governments. As an example, lets say that 1 in 1000 people cares a lot about 1 specific issue and get involved, and that there is a universe of 10 issues in which government is looking to work on. In a city of 20k people, you would expect that each of these 10 issues would have thought leadership promulgated by only 2 people, thus the debates, policy crafting etc will be highly impacted by these 2 peoples narrow views. in a state government of 2m people, there will be more like 200 people interested in thought leadership and policy crafting on a single issue, thus the ultimate policies crafted will be less beholden to the specific biases of individuals.

Everyone is affected by the prohibitively high cost of moving to cities with good jobs and environmentally sustainable built environments. Small groups shouldn’t get to make their own laws to the detriment of society at large, any more than corporations or organized crime families should.

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