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Comment by codemac | Hacker News Reader

Are Napa, Atherton, and Malibu filled with environmentalists?

I'm so confused by your reaction, are there specific housing policies that are focused on the environment that have had bigger effects than things like prop 13? or cities with 30k jobs in a year but 300 units of housing (looking at you, mountain view)?

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I think their point is that environmental concerns are a convenient criticism when you don't want to come out and say "building adequate housing in my neighborhood threatens to slightly slow the growth in value of the investment I have decided to dump my entire net worth into"

Atherton looks so funny from a satellite: https://imgur.com/a/kKpymj9

You can see the NIMBY lines so clearly.

I think speaks more to the average lot size. The surrounding towns are also mostly single family homes as well. They're just subdivided into smaller plots. But lot size restrictions are a factor of zoning laws.

My understanding (via my wife's family, who have been in Menlo Park for ~50 years) is that Atherton doesn't allow lots smaller than 1 acre.

I live at the yellow star at the top of the map. Needless to say, my lot is vastly smaller than an acre :)

Friend sent me an old ad for lots in the east bay. The developer was saying they were only selling 50 foot lots. No 25 foot lots! If you look on the map now all the lots have 50 feet of street frontage. If you look at San Francisco they are mostly 25 feet.

The ads date is 1913.

That makes me rethink how much zoning is about muni's forcing developers to do things. And how much of zoning is actually regulatory capture. Developers have always been pushing as much lux as the market and technology can bear. And home owners that are all in try to protect their investment in class distinction.

The endangered species act probably had 10x the effect on stifling building as Prop 13. Can you imagine a project like Foster City happening in the current environment?

https://www.fostercity.org/community/page/creation-foster-ci...

It takes Palo Alto 30 years to do flood mitigation because of a couple frogs in the creek.

If Mountain View needs housing, make more land. It will never happen because there are always myriad obstacles to building.

https://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2010/09/30/landfill-and-liquefact...

Look how much of the city of SF was built on landfill. When was the last time a major bay area development was done on reclaimed land?

After WWII the Army Core of Engineers had a plan to fill most of the bay.

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