Newsom signs legislation to boost California’s housing supply | Hacker News Reader

Newsom signs legislation to boost California’s housing supply

gov.ca.gov

113 pointsm_ke139 comments

This doesn't end single family zoning. It allows cities to end single family zoning in what looks like fairly narrow circumstances. The title should be changed because it's misleading to the point of being incorrect.

> SB 10 by Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) creates a voluntary process for local governments to access a streamlined zoning process for new multi-unit housing near transit or in urban infill areas, with up to 10 units per parcel. The legislation simplifies the CEQA requirements for upzoning, giving local leaders another tool to voluntarily increase density and provide affordable rental opportunities to more Californians.

Your comment is incorrect because you are describing SB 10, not SB 9.

SB 9 indeed allows duplexes on all single-family parcels, as well as lot splits if one of the new homes will be owner-occupied, and neither lot would be less than 40% of the original lot's area.

SB 9 does end single family zoning in that it allows duplexes to be built on all lots currently zoned for single family housing. I agree that the title should reflect that the linked press release covers three bills: SB 8, 9, and 10, which change many things in California housing policy.

> This bill, among other things, would require a proposed housing development containing no more than 2 residential units within a single-family residential zone to be considered ministerially, without discretionary review or hearing, if the proposed housing development meets certain requirements, including, but not limited to, that the proposed housing development would not require demolition or alteration of housing that is subject to a recorded covenant, ordinance, or law that restricts rents to levels affordable to persons and families of moderate, low, or very low income, that the proposed housing development does not allow for the demolition of more than 25% of the existing exterior structural walls, except as provided, and that the development is not located within a historic district, is not included on the State Historic Resources Inventory, or is not within a site that is legally designated or listed as a city or county landmark or historic property or district.

Source: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

> SB 9 does end single family zoning in that it allows duplexes to be built on all lots currently zoned for single family housing

But that's not the same. Ending RH-1 would mean something like "no more RH-1 buildings will be permitted, you must build at least two". Instead, it's "if you have an RH-1 lot, you are allowed to build up to two units".

So I'd say it makes RH-1 also mean RH-2, but doesn't "end" it in the sense most people interpret. (E.g., In San Francisco, you would be unlikely to get planning approval to build a single-family home on an RH-2 zoned lot, because it should have been used for two units).

Can the sub lots be subdivided recursively as long as they’re above the minimum 800 sqft dwelling size?

Probably not. Duplexes are attached and usually have one owner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_(building)

They were popular in many cities in the 70s as starter homes. The idea was that you'd buy the whole thing, then rent out one half to help offset your mortgage.

But SB9 also allows lot-splitting if the plot is large enough, right? Also allows duplexes original lot could be x2 and each of those can have one duplex.

Obviously this lot-splitting may not work in areas like Los Altos where each single family lot by city law is required to be 10k sqft or larger (unsure how local laws will interact with SB9).

But question @koolba asks is still valid - can you recursively split large lots into many smaller lots?

SB 10 is voluntary; but for the cities that do choose to use it (or selectively use it), now neighbors can’t sue to stop anything 10 units or less from going up based on environmental concerns. It’s big for that reason, where localities would often be sued out the wazoo for environmental concerns for daring to rezone a single family lot as multifamily

SB 9 is paradigm shifting: every lot in California that’s single family zoned can a) be split into two lots of equal size AND/OR b) each resulting lot can now have up to 2 units AND c) if the lot is compliant with all other criteria, each lot is still able to have an ADU built in addition to the extra unit, per statewide ADU law passed two years ago.

So you can potentially turn a single lot into 6 units. Or 3 without splitting the lot. All of this is by-right, too. Design approval and local councils can’t stop it, and I believe they must be approved within 90 days, too.

Given that it's generally local governments that are hesitant to upzone, is there any indication of some cities bucking the trend? What barred cities from ending single family zoning prior to these bills?

The idea with SB10 is that, once the next RHNA cycle starts and cities are required to zone for their share of housing (or face punishment), they will use SB10 as an "easy way out" to upzone while skipping a lot of the usual red tape (CEQA, etc).

Under RHNA and the HAA, if cities fail to zone for their share of housing, many projects will be approved automatically and the city loses its discretionary review authority.

Previously, if cities did upzone, a neighbor could still sue their neighbor to stop them from building. In places like SF this means every project is tied down for years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal fees.

Now, you are effectively not allowed to do that. So the permitting process to build a duplex is as straightforward as the permitting process to build a SFH.

Which, to be clear, is still really hard in most places in CA.

Definitely!

Someone else could explain better but I'm also fairly sure many of the new rules here (such as exempting CEQA) also apply to SFH. They just leave the current rules untouched for commercial/large-scale residential.

Ok, we've switched the title. Thanks! Submitted title was "Newsom Signs SB 9 and SB 10, ending single family zoning in California".

Submitters: please don't rewrite titles to make them more misleading. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

See my note: I think "ending" single family zoning is (slightly) misleading given how some municipalities enforce planning and zoning laws. It sounds more impactful than "optionally permits two buildings per site and splitting lots", but without additional change, people can still build single-family homes.

This is great. I never understood why we allow people who don't own the land dictating the terms of the housing that gets built when we need more of every kind of housing in California. The fetishization of single story mid-century construction is especially confusing. Land is expensive, build up, not out.

Because there are limited resources surrounding those homes. Like streets, schools, sewage, etc. You can’t just magically scale up the housing without also scaling up infrastructure.

My understanding is that they put a cap on property taxes that fund the infrastructure and then turned around and said there is no money for infrastructure.

Isn’t it a chicken and egg problem? The only way to fund the new infrastructure to accommodate growth that will bring in property taxes to fund it in the future is via debt or impact fees. Either can be difficult for local governments to do.

Also voters are often given lots of say, people who don’t want density get entrenched and vote for local leaders who are like minded.

Sort of. Property taxes can only increase at ~2 percent a year due to Prop 13. However, people are still buying and selling houses. The people who have recently purchased a house pay high property taxes, because the property is expensive.

Good thing the government tracks the capacity of those things. There's no need to ask random people with no expertise what they think.

I think you're thinking about the problem in the reverse order, it costs money per foot to lay down a street, sewage lines, internet, electricity, gas ect. If there are more units per square foot it makes more economical sense for everything. It's the reason rural regions still use septic tanks and DSL internet, it's expensive to lay it down. Think of it this way, if it costs 10k/year for a quarter acre lot to have access to a city municipality and to pay for the road maintenance but you double the units of housing on the lot, all of a sudden it costs 5k/year per unit on the quarter acre lot (plus a little bit for a second hookup.) This means not only do you have more units of total housing but a more economical infrastructure.

Money per foot is one thing. But the actual total infrastructure on that street has to be up to snuff before you build, while money can be taxed later.

I think the reasoning behind this is "create a problem, solve a problem". If you never create the problem there's no incentive to solve it. You have other problems instead, like homelessness and crime.

In mathematical terms, you're stuck in a local maxima, and to get to a higher global maxima you need to descend the gradient a little bit and put up with some short-term pain.

It's supposed to work with the promoter applying for a permit, and if it makes sense either it's granted or the infra is built.

Failing infrastructure can have disastrous impacts. It's not somewhere where you can afford to move fast and break stuff. There is no alternative to competent government here, no easy way out.

It's not really possible to move quick and break things, there are only so many home builders, carpenters, electricians, plumbers ect. I agree that failing infrastructure can absolutely have disastrous impacts but city councils in America are not run by the most competent people with decent foresight from what I have seen, they see that a bus route runs 95% capacity every morning at 9am, do nothing, a few months later, it's 105%, people start complaining, then they add another bus during that period and repeat the cycle. The only time I have seen infrastructure be built in advance of new housing is when a construction builds the infrastructure along with a new suburban housing development, which is great for the first 30 years, the taxes on those new houses only needs to be like 3k/year for police/fire/ect because everything is new, except after 30 years then the roads need to be repaved, sewers redone, ect, a 10k+/yr bill starts hitting and the local government is all confused about how to pay for it with the 3k/yr they are collecting, rinse, repeat. Local governments just aren't good at predicting usages until they happen.

The root of the issue is the competency of the local government. That has to be fixed.

Things can get built fairly rapidly in many places if all restrictions are removed. You can definitely move fast and break things.

This is precisely why municipalities are permitted to impose exactions on a project--so that developers can't unfairly offload infrastructure costs on the public. If the additional sewage volume of a project is going to overflow pipes 5 miles away, municipalities can and regularly do exact fees as a condition of approval to cover the costs of upgrades.

Unfortunately, these days exactions are also abusively imposed to offset the supposed costs of "gentrification" and other unquantifiable social phenomena, and sometimes the dollar value of such imaginary costs conspicuously set so high as to make a development financially unviable. This is how cities like SF force developers to include below-market-rate units or to make cash contributions to low-income housing projects, even when a project is not actually displacing any pre-existing tenants.

That cashflow problem can be addressed through bonds.

This is why the next step should be reforming prop 13.

If we charge fair property tax to homeowners, based on the actual present value, municipalities will be able to afford the infrastructure improvements.

It’s not fair for poor people to be driven out of their houses when rich people choose to enter the neighborhood.

That is the very essence of gentrification. If you want to destroy more communities of color in the Bay Area, this is how to do it.

If you want to protect poor homeowners, that's a noble goal, but it should be achieved with a narrowly tailored policy. Thousands of rich homeowners in Palo Alto are paying less than 10k per year on multi-million dollar properties because of Prop 13, and that's both unfair and unsustainable. Not to mention the corporate properties: Disney World, for example, pays an indefensibly low tax rate.

The negative side effects of Prop 13 far, far outweigh any benefit to poor people (most of whom are renters priced out due in part to Prop 13!).

Renters are just as impacted by prop 13 as buyers, since landlords pass on the costs.

That’s now how pricing happens at all. Rent is not based on “cost plus” pricing it is based on supply and demand

There’s an obvious and easy first step: End Prop 13 for anything that isn’t an owner occupied home. Business/capital interests won’t allow that though.

Are you in favor of a wealth tax in general or a property tax in particular?

That’s a regressive tax. Most of the fixed income people living in my neighborhood would be driven out of California if we charged them the current market rate for property taxes.

Corporations benefit hugely form prop13 for commercial property [1]. The current dominant left-wing pragmatic approach is to remove prop13 for corps, and leave it in place for residential properties.

[1] Corporate approach to keeping 1970s tax rate on large land lots: a) the property should be owned by a specific corp. b) corp has board of directors controlled by original owner c) deal made to sell the land d) new owner slowly replaces the BoDs as to not trigger a "corporate change". e) new BoD is fully controlled by new owner and corp now sold (with land assets). Due to prop13, that land is still taxed at original ownership rates.

All those things can routinely be built, without magic, as needed.

Rishi Kumar brings up these points in a local article [1]. It's a good question:

"These bills will not require developers to invest in infrastructure improvement, rather only provide bare-minimum parking, avoiding costly entitlements. How will the current infrastructure — water, sewer, gas, roads — support the increased population? Who will make the necessary infrastructure investment?"

[1] https://padailypost.com/2021/03/19/guest-opinion-sb9-sb10-th...

> I never understood why we allow people who don't own the land dictating the terms of the housing that gets built when we need more of every kind of housing in California.

So we could keep out black people: https://www.kqed.org/news/11840548/the-racist-history-of-sin...

Folks have come up with reasons more palatable to folks in the 21st reason. Some of those reasons may be valid, and some of those folks honestly believe those reasons are why we have zoning. I'm not going to call them racist, but that article makes a compelling case single-family zoning was originally due to racism.

The prevalance of these state sanctioned laws and their rebranded remnants reminds what I liked about the first few episodes of Lovecraft Country.

Its basically like the show Supernatural except with the twist that Dean and Sam Winchester had to hunt demons but also had to escape white only neighborhoods and sundown towns every episode, because they were black.

That kind of perpetual threat alongside a different non-race related plot isn't portrayed often.

While I 100% think that SFH has often been used for this reason I think larger reason that "my house will go up in value if I restrict all other building" is more accurate. Keeping out black people was one of the early use cases with it but certainly not the only or the first.

SFH has existed heavily in New England, Canada, Iowa, pretty much every where in North America in spots where there are very few black people. Even heavily black neighborhoods like Baldwin Hills (aka Black Beverly Hills) historically had quite a bit of single family zoning. I think if that thesis was true you'd see large historical discrepancies with SFH in different states but you really don't.

I grew up in a suburban white town next to a city that was 95% white and our town had a lot of NIMBYs who prevented condos from going up. I do no think it was because they were cool with 95 white people moving in but scared of 5 non-white people. I think they just knew that it was bad for property values (for supply/demand reasons) + property taxes (for budgetary reasons) and were selfish.

The only reason I push back on this is because I don't think its helpful. I live in LA and the most common cited arguments against SB9/SB10 was that it would hurt "middle class minorities in south LA" and the representatives of these areas all voted against the bill (presumably because their biggest donors are black+hispanic+white landowners in these areas)

> Keeping out black people was one of the early use cases with it but certainly not the only or the first.

No, it was the first in the US, as described in the article I linked. I agree it's not the only reason, but I think it's important to mention the racist origins every time someone gives another reason for single family zoning.

[Edit: I originally said first in North America. I misremembered what the article said. Changed to US to match it. Wouldn't surprise me if first in North America were also true though.]

It could also just be that people don't like change or don't want additional density around them, regardless of effects on their home value.

> "my house will go up in value if I restrict all other building" is more accurate.

This was also a reason used to keep blacks and minorities out of predominately white neighborhoods. Many people believed that bringing blacks into a neighborhood would devalue their homes. Once a black person moved into your neighborhood - "there goes the neighborhood".

It was a self-fulfilling prophesy because once blacks moved into a neighborhood, all the white families would move out ( white flight ) which caused housing values to collapse since there were so many more sellers than buyers.

On the flip side, it's why gentrification increases home values. As blacks/minorities are kicked out of the neighborhood and it becomes more white, it attracts more whites to move in. More buyers than sellers. Gentrification is the exact opposite of the white flight phenomenon in america.

Goes hand in hand with red-lining.

> So we could keep out black people: https://www.kqed.org/news/11840548/the-racist-history-of-sin...

That article hardly proves that SFH was primarily a tool for racism. It only says the first Bay Area SFH law, in Berkeley, was championed by a guy who didn't allow property to be sold to blacks. This is not compelling evidence for SFH being a channel for racism in any subsequent cases across different cities.

Due to redlining, black people generally couldn't buy houses. They rented. Having multi-family units means letting renters into your neighborhood, which means letting black people in. In many part of the US, politicians in county elections often run on "eliminating multi-tenant housing to reduce crime", which is a dog-whistle to racists.

I don't think it's necessary to provide references here. The history of housing discrimination is well researched and just a quick google search away for you. I know this is HN and the culture is to require proof, but seriously, some people just need to educate themselves, because otherwise they aren't receptive to listening.

> It only says the first Bay Area SFH law, in Berkeley, was championed by a guy who didn't allow property to be sold to blacks. This is not compelling evidence for SFH being a channel for racism in any subsequent cases across different cities.

You're underselling it. The first US single-family zoning law, not just first in the Bay Area.

Yes, maybe all of the subsequent single-family zoning laws that spread across the US were for totally different reasons than the first one. Personally I find that unlikely.

>I'm not going to call them racist

...because that would be absurd.

If there are possibly valid reasons, shouldn't we instead discuss those?

We don't need to speculate. There is strong support in the historical record that many cities adopted single family zones for explicitly racist reasons.

> If there are possibly valid reasons, shouldn't we instead discuss those?

That's a matter of opinion, but since you asked me: no. Every discussion of single family zoning should start with its racist origins and go on to consider the negative racial and socioeconomic effects it's still having, and to hell with parking and the other selfish, greedy, petty, short-sighted, and/or misguided reasons for denying folks affordable housing.

Oh, I do understand that was/is a motivation, I was being more rhetorical.

I feel that these efforts to increase housing supply --especially in the Bay Area-- can only scratch at the problem, and very slowly. You would have to raze entire neighborhoods, entire towns, and rebuild them with high-density housing, to meet the demand.

So why is there never discussion of reducing demand instead of increasing supply? As in, put a limit on how many employees can be hired in the Bay Area by any company. Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, and all the rest bring in many tens of thousands of employees (and their families) every year. They crowd out the nicer apartments, making them unavailable and unaffordable to low-wage employees. And eventually the tech worker cashes in their fantastic stock growth and over-bids on a house, driving prices up.

The suggestion of capping hiring in the Bay Area seems to be a taboo suggestion, not sure why. Seems to me, when your house is flooding from a broken pipe, first thing you do it cut the main.

Because it’s way easier to just build more housing than enact draconian policies to prevent freedom of employment and freedom of movement. Think about what you are suggesting for a second.

If you can upzone housing, you can downzone offices.

Why isn't anyone building brand new cities shaped the way they want, instead of trying to force people out of where they live? I'd much rather live in a blank slate city designed the way I'd like, than constantly fight people who don't want me around.

That's a great question, have you got any thoughts on why?

The topic has come up once or twice on HN before, so maybe try searching for "new cities" or something like that.

- All existing land is already claimed by someone, or by the government. There are insanely large parcels owned by individuals or small groups.

- Most existing water is claimed by someone hundreds of miles downstream.

- The overall US mindset (there are definitely exceptions!) has changed over the 20th and early 21st century from one of maximizing tangible accomplishment, to maximizing financial gain and minimizing loss. We're playing musical chairs instead of making more chairs.

- Mass media (Disney -- kid shows, superhero movies) creates the impression that the current geographic and cultural structure of society is the only possible structure of society, by making a few views seem ubiquitous, and everything else the domain of pure fantasy.

- Prior attempts eventually got ridiculed, like EPCOT (ironically enough also Disney). People won't leave you alone -- they'll insist that any hope of new ideas is unforgivable hubris, and do whatever they can to make their ridicule a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sure, but nobody at the local level wants to downzone offices. Those are their jobs. And they bring in tax revenue without requiring much expenditure by the local municipality. And their proximity skyrockets the price of all of the nearby real estate. There are perverse financial incentives that cause every city to want to be the city that people from the surrounding area commute to work in, but don’t actually live in. So downzoning offices isn’t going to happen at the local level. And it’s not going to happen at the state level either, because frankly it’s a silly idea to cripple your own economy.

The word "draconian" is entirely subjective, and has no value in your argument.

Your comment that I should think about my suggestion "for a second" is dismissive and assumes I haven't put any thought into it. Again, this has no value in furthering your argument.

I’m dismissive because I find your nativist “sorry, we’re full” (or more appropriately, “fuck you, I got mine”) attitude to be contemptible.

Since you are the one in favor of curtailing the freedoms of businesses and people, the burden of proof should be on you to demonstrate why we cannot simply build our way out of this problem.

Again with the insults and dismissals. "Nativist"? "Fuck you, I got mine"?

I have no burden. I already stated: it would be far easier to restrict hiring for the very large, high-salary companies, than scaling out housing to accommodate for the yearly influx of tech works with explosive earnings.

You made an assertion with zero proof. Do you think that dictating what businesses can do in terms of hiring has zero costs? That it won’t have a chilling effect on people establishing businesses in the area?

You seem to be underestimating the difficulty here by quite a bit. Cities can’t achieve a policy proposal like this, especially the large number of small legal jurisdictions that make up the Bay Area, and it would obviously have zero traction at the state level. The premise is ridiculous.

I think it’s frankly as ridiculous as anything believing we can build enough duplexes to bring down the $1.8MM median house price (SF).

Price curves are very nonlinear, especially surrounding the point where supply = demand. Housing prices in the Bay Area have about doubled over the last 10 years, while the population has increased by about 10%.

Anyhow, the point of all of this legislation isn’t that duplexes alone will necessarily provide enough housing. It just gives cities a fair chance to meet their housing targets via duplex building and preserve some local zoning preferences. If they fail, the state will step in to void local zoning laws and approve dense apartment buildings.

How quickly do you think big companies could start hiring contract workers from smaller tech companies that are also in the bay area? Because they already hire a lot of employees as contractors. Limiting only large companies would simply cause that behavior to increase.

The Bay Area is a desirable place. Even if you limit tech workers wealthy people will buy property here.

Desirability isn't a fundamental property of nature. It's the aggregated choices of individuals. And individuals, and aggregations, can make different choices if given reason and opportunity.

Geography usually dictates desirability the most throughout human history. So yes, in a way it is a fundamental property of the natural environment. The only thing the Bay Area could lack in the future is fresh water.

Iconic landscapes, nature, and almost perfect weather make it expensive.

California's housing shortage is due to mass immigration into the state and not natural increase. However immigration is sacred, and any observation that even hints of criticizing it is taboo. Observe.

> California's housing shortage is due to mass immigration into the state and not natural increase.

Is it? Certainly lots of people have moved to California, but lots have also left. Since 2000, California's population has grown by 17%, while the US has grown by 16%, and the world by around 27%.

I only know the numbers for San Francisco, but it’s 37.7% from California, 25.2% from other states, and 35.6% from outside the US (62.3% total from outside the state)[0]. I’m sure the fraction from outside the Bay Area is even higher. Anectodally, I’m the only one on my team at work born within 6000 miles of here, and we can’t say with a straight face that tons of super highly paid immigrants (and even more open job posts) don’t affect housing demand.

I’m from here, and have a lot of friends who left. The primary factor for most of them is wanting to afford a single family home, which is easier elsewhere. Restricting movement would be insane, but two thirds of the population being from migration is a huge factor in pricing my friends out, and it does kinda rub me the wrong way when someone from thousands of miles away complains that there isn’t cheap space for them here, and demands that we change the area to accommodate them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco

You are going to be downvoted because your comment will imply racism, but I think it's worth an honest discussion.

In the Bay Area in the last 20 years, I think I can count the number of non-hispanic gardeners I've seen, on one hand. The number of non-hispanic custodial workers, maybe on 2 hands. Restaurant workers, regardless of the cuisine and regardless of the restaurant price range, are also most often hispanic.

Some people scream that hispanic immigrants are "stealing our jobs." I think, they're doing the job that white America now refuses to do. Without them, business couldn't survive. But as businesses have thrived --especially tech-- they're the first to get fucked by rising prices.

https://www.ppic.org/blog/californias-stalled-population-gro... . A clear majority of California's population growth in the past 1, 2, and 3 decades is natural growth, not migration. What's interesting is that it is a result of international immigration into the state and domestic emigration from the state. Regardless of that, though, an international immigrant or a native californian still consume housing. The housing shortage is not caused by immigration.

Certainly you could make the argument that if not for immigrants to the US settling in California it would result in less population growth here, but I think a housing policy which can't even keep up with very little net migration is broken.

California’s population is about one quarter foreign-born, but it’s been at that ratio for 30+ years. Mass foreign migration isn’t a plausible explanation for the shortage of housing when the foreign-born percentage of the population is relatively stable over long time scales.

California's housing shortage is about 30 years old. The Reagan amnesty is just a bit more than 30 years old. This is why there is still the occasional widow of a plumber or other blue collar type who owns a house in Laguna or Coronado. They bought longer ago than that.

And naturally when we talk about housing shortage we always mean in desirable areas. Even in California you can get land for dirt cheap today if you don't mind being in the middle of nowhere.

But the housing shortage has been worsening over the last 30 years, while the foreign-born share of the population had been steady.

And when you say “desirable areas”, what this means is where jobs are located. Unemployed people living in the middle of nowhere are not good for society.

> why is there never discussion of reducing demand instead of increasing supply

There is discussion of reducing demand, primarily by attacking the tech industry. Example: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/02/palo-alto...

Obviously, implementing such a policy at such a regional scale has major side effects, both on the tech industry and on America. The jobs and people have to go somewhere, and we are already exporting our housing crisis to other tech cities (Austin, Seattle, Portland) at an alarming pace. Eventually this will become a national problem.

> The jobs and people have to go somewhere, and we are already exporting our housing crisis to other tech cities

I hear you, but we are out of space in the Bay Area. Still lots of land in other parts of the country. And quite simply, there's too much money in the Bay Area --with that inequity leading to homelessness in the lowest wage earners-- and too little money circulating in other parts of America (with therefore no low-wage employment opportunities in all the necessary support roles).

> we are out of space in the Bay Area

This could not be further from the truth. Consider: the Terraces at Lafayette, a proposed new apartment building that would replace an empty field. The City of Lafayette delayed the project for almost a decade entirely on spurious grounds. We are not out of space, it just feels like it because we refuse to allow our space to be used efficiently.

Eh, your example is on the other side of the hills, where yeah there's space -- and also horrendous traffic bottlenecks to get to/from the bay-surrounding cities. Which are out of space.

They're not out of space. There's a lot of yard and a lot of altitude to fill. There's empty fields all over the south bay. Luckily, some near my previous place in Sunnyvale recently-ish got turned into town houses. My current house is adjacent to two empty acres.

I'm not sure how to say this, but have you ever been to the sunset? There is nothing but space in large swaths of the city.

I might be wrong, but it seems the details betray the headline.

All I see is throwing more money at homeless people and voluntary upzoning program that city councils probably aren’t going to voluntarily use (hence why this problem exists in the first place).

> It includes provisions to prevent the displacement of existing renters and protect historic districts

Like all bizarro housing legislation passed in California, these bills sound like they'll make it even harder for developers to build. Not easier.

I'm genuinely confused how even more red tape is going to somehow make it easier to build.

It’s like developers said “we can’t build because there’s too much regulation” and the CA government responded by saying “here’s 3 more pieces of regulation!”

> It includes provisions to prevent the displacement of existing renters and protect historic districts

This is specifically in reference to the owner-occupancy provision. If you choose to split your lot into two parcels, the owner must attest that they intend to reside at the property for at least 3 years. This concession was made to satisfy a demand from the California Association of Realtors and get the bill passed.

Note that this is different from the duplex provision: each parcel can have a duplex, regardless of whether you split the lot or not. The duplex provision does not have any owner-occupancy requirement.

> So it's voluntary?

SB10 creates a voluntary process for 10-unit apartment buildings near transit. SB9 is involuntary, and allows duplexes and lot splits in single family zones.

They're starting to get more voluntary because of SB35. They can voluntarily decide where to build now, or helplessly watch a judge rubber-stamp whatever the developer wants to build once the city is designated as behind their RHNA requirements.

SB35 ends the days where "local control" included an option to not build anything.

SB 9 is paradigm shifting: every lot in California that’s single family zoned can a) be split into two lots AND/OR b) each resulting lot can now have up to 2 units AND c) if the lot is compliant with all other criteria, each lot is still able to have an ADU built in addition to the extra unit, per statewide ADU law passed two years ago

So you can potentially turn a single lot into 6 units. Or 3 without splitting the lot.

All of this is by-right, too. Design approval and local councils can’t stop it, and I believe they must be approved within 90 days, too.

This isn't quite right, unfortunately: you can only have 4 units per parcel, not 6. That's because SB9 includes ADUs in the definition of "unit," so it cannot be used to create a duplex on a lot that already has ADUs.

Thus, SB9 increases the limit from 3 units to 4 units, not 6.

AB68 applies to multi-family lots as well, and you're allowed up to 2 of them, detached from the main multi-family building:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml... (section 4).

Do the lot split first, then the duplex construction, then construct 2 ADUs. 8 units where a SFH was before.

You’re right, I must have read an earlier version of the bill

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

“Notwithstanding Section 65852.2 or 65852.22, a local agency shall not be required to permit an accessory dwelling unit or a junior accessory dwelling unit on parcels that use both the authority contained within this section and the authority contained in Section 66411.7”

However, it does not appear that the law prevents an ADU from being built without any additional rezoning, just that local cities may choose to approve/disallow it as they see fit

Actual Title: Governor Newsom Signs Historic Legislation to Boost California’s Housing Supply and Fight the Housing Crisis

Unfortunately it's an arms race between counties and the state. Bad faith actors in a variety of counties enact utility (sewer connections, septic, water, etc) moratoriums to halt development. Rather than budget and plan for increased capacity, they'd rather end growth.

0: https://argentco.com/post/californias-marin-municipal-water-...

Municipalities that do this will be punished for it in the upcoming RHNA cycle. Laws like SB10 give them the tools to increase housing supply, but if they do not, they will become subject to ministerial (automatic) approval of certain projects under SB35.

This is a pretty mild set of reforms. An analysis of SB9 in particular, written by the Terner Center at UC Berkeley, is available here: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/research-and-policy/duplex...

Out of 7.5 million single family parcels, 6.1 million are SB9-eligible, and 521k would be market-feasible for construction. This would result in 714k new units of housing.

Clearly SB9 will moderately increase density in some neighborhoods, but it will only lead to construction on ~3% of all single-family plots statewide.

>but it will only lead to construction on ~3% of all single-family plots statewide.

Over what time frame? Do you have a source?

The source is the Terner Center link above. The time frame is 10 years, if I recall correctly.

It’s not a coincidence he waited till the day after the recall to sign this.

Probably strategic, everything in politics is so its barely worth mentioning.

But I find the opposition party in California to be extremely petty. I mean, it is refreshing that politics in CA can revert to its natural state of merely being petty and childish, compared to how the national level has gotten. But at the same time its kind of weird and unnecessary given everything else going on. Of course, I kind of get the perspective that someone else can address everything else going on better, but I mean come on there is no power in the opposition party. If a sympathetic judge can't be found to affect a specific cause then there is no need for any energy on the matter because it is a waste of energy.

Anyway, it is kind of cute though. "Ah he ate at a restaurant other people are also at legally under his own mandate, doing the thing we would all be doing everywhere if we lived in an actual republican state but lets pretend its controversial here, and then waited a single day to sign a lawwww wwaaaaaaah!"

Conceptually, a de facto single party system can almost operate like a party-less system. If you squint just right, that's increasingly how California looks. California's modified open primary system, which permits two candidates from the same party to compete in the general election, has been enormously influential in this regard. While Republicans lament the open primary has resulted in squeezing them out (despite being the ones wanting the system in the first place), the other side of that coin is Democratic candidates competing against each other for the center, at least in state-wide elections. Without the open primaries the party machine would have much more power, and the voters less power, as is often the case elsewhere where a single party dominates a city or state; but with it, you can get something approximating George Washington's dream.

I always roll my eyes when I hear Republicans complain about state politics in California, as if a huge number of Democrats don't have the same gripes. With an open primary system the (D) or (R) needn't matter; just pick the one everybody else is using and then take your case to the public. It sucks for Republican candidates with their heart set on national office, but you can't have everything. Though, maybe Joe Manchin could teach them a trick or two. In any event, I have little sympathy for someone hung up on tribal identity.

Thats practically true, California should appoint a Standing Committee

I've always found it amusing that the core Democratic party apparatus in San Francisco is literally the Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC). Both the name and initials seem like such easy fodder for red baiting. But I suppose there's not much value in pointing that out when so many outsiders believe the city is an actual communist enclave.

That is amusing

A bit insulting to communists/marxists/state-capitalists since CCP tax rates are lower than combined Federal+CA taxes. they're seizing less of the means of production.

He was never going to veto it, and it would have become law after 30 days without his signature anyway.

This is not as large of a change as it seems: single-family zoning was already (quietly) dead in California. Under SB13, almost all single family parcels can already have both an ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) a Junior ADU, for a total of three units per parcel.

SB9 increases that number from 3 to 4: you can now split the lot, and each half can have a duplex. This does give owners more options though: they can sell the other half of the lot, rather than having to rent out ADUs.

This will do nothing. CA has a low median property tax rate[1] of 0.74%, which allows rich elites and foreign speculators to buy empty lots of land and let them sit unused for decades while waiting for them to go up in value. This low property tax rate allows rich rent-seekers to buy up properties and then rent them out to people who can't get the big loans the landed aristocracy can. So we now have a record number of young people living with their parents, especially in expensive places like CA. Newsom is rich, as are his donors, as is Nancy Pelosi, and they have no interest in raising the property taxes of the mansions they live in and their investment properties they don't live in.

[1] http://www.tax-rates.org/taxtables/property-tax-by-state

> as is Nancy Pelosi

I find it odd that people who are working until they are past 80 are accused of doing so just to enrich themselves. Pelosi has what 8 years left alive on average, and is spending all her time still working and influencing politics so that she goes to the grave with ~2% more money? Does that sound right to you?

Yet Pelosi isn’t training any replacements to take over for her. Pelosi could still be working to enrich herself and for the power trip and fame. It’s not like people only have one simple motivation when they are in Congress.

Pelosi is a neoliberal ghoul as much as anyone on the right side of Congress. She has no interest but in herself. She will continue to act in her best interests as she always has. (This isn’t much different of almost anyone in Congress - but worth mentioning anyway)

How much of her $100M+ fortune has she donated to charity? Almost none that I can see. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have committed to giving nearly all their billions to charity but Paul and Nancy Pelosi are using their $100M+ to establish multi-generational trust fund wealth for their children and family.

Where are you seeing these empty unused lots of land?

downtown LA has as many unused/vacated units as the number of homeless.

That is the normal frictional vacancy rate, and is mostly temporary. It's also not a problem of buying and holding empty land; by definition, vacancies are on built-up lots, and they generally spike when construction is finished (takes time to rent/sell all the apartments in a new building).

https://la.curbed.com/2020/3/5/21079171/los-angeles-vacancy-...

It took me a minute to parse what this means, not being from California. Single Family Zoning means that certain land may only be used for Single Family Homes - Ie No Condos, No apartments, no duplexes allowed.

Removing Single Family Zoning means that developers can no longer be REQUIRED to build single family units in an area. Single Family Homes may still be built, but may not be required.

If I am not reading this correctly, let me know.

Indeed, I think a much better description of SB9's effect would be "legalizing duplexes and lot splits everywhere." About 97% of single-family parcels are expected to remain single-family under this law, in practice.

Really that high? Full redevelopment takes time and money. But ADUs seem like a relatively cheap/easy way for home owners to get into rentals and earn some cash.

Yes, that's according to this analysis from the Terner Center: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07....

That’s right. And other comments describe the details of when/how existing plots may be split or redeveloped.

Next: try to convince everyone in America to stop treating houses as an appreciating asset.

Tear down houses, recycle what material is recyclable, and build new ones.

And build smaller.

To do this, we have to break the cycle of housing price inflation: as housing stops appreciating (because we start building enough supply), people will have progressively smaller investment in their homes, and won't be as dependent on home appreciation for their financial welfare.

This is the beginning of the end for single-family houses (it's a good thing).

Regardless of how you feel about single family vs. duplex - this will create too much selection pressure towards duplexes. Only the ultra-rich will be in single-family houses.

On that note - I'm curious, would it be legal/constitutional to have national zoning laws? Are there currently national zoning laws?

The Terner Center estimates that SB9 will affect only 3% of all single-family parcels in California: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/research-and-policy/duplex...

m_ke: the original (annoying) title is "Governor Newsom Signs Historic Legislation to Boost California’s Housing Supply and Fight the Housing Crisis".

Changing it to add "ending single family zoning in California" is editorializing and not quite accurate.

To fit in 80 characters, while removing the weasel word of historic, I would have gone with "Governor Newsom Signs Legislation to Boost California's Housing Supply".

Tear down the houses and build sky scrapers?

You'd think that's what SB9 did, based on the number of critics who accused it of "manhattanizing single family neighborhoods."

Is there definable criteria for measuring the success of this policy direction? What are the metrics?

Is there an example of this policy direction working elsewhere?

Is the goal solely improving housing affordability in locations with high-demand?

Is exacerbating the wealth gap of concern? Density is almost always developed as rental units; growing the permanent rental class means eliminating access to the only vehicle for building wealth for middle and low income Americans.

> growing the permanent rental class means eliminating access to the only vehicle for building wealth

This is a policy choice, and I would argue it's a bad choice. If we strive to make housing cheaper across the board, households will have more money available to save and invest by other means.

In particular, the incentives created by housing as an appreciating investment are awful. Owners who have all their money locked up in home equity are incentivized to oppose new development, creating an artificial housing shortage.

As a counterexample, consider Germany: virtually all households rent, housing stock is plentiful and affordable, and the middle class is still able to save and build wealth.

I wish our wealth building was in the form of production machines that families maintain through investment.

What do you mean by “ production machines”?

Presumably investing by buying stock in companies that are economically productive, as opposed to engaging in purely speculative investment like owning land.

Probably cottage industry. A machine shop or clothing line in every garage.

Isn't Germany experiencing a housing shortage — and soaring rents — in their major cities?

That aside, I'm not convinced that encouraging home ownership is bad policy. Home ownership is a direct personal investment in your community, a means of securing one's most base human needs. If people are not building equity in their own homes, someone else is — why is that a superior outcome?

Building wealth via housing isn't about savings, it's about leverage.

> Density is almost always developed as rental units

I'm all but certain that's not true. Virtually all non-single-family new construction is aimed at condo sales. Rentals are what you do with depreciating units, not stuff you just built.

Anecdotally that’s not true here in DC metro. Local to me, most apartment blocks are luxury rentals ($3000/month for a 2-bed). Then there are large townhomes mixed in the same development for sale in the $800k+ range. And not a lot of condo units being built.

If housing becomes affordable in California, I'd call it a big win.

I'd look to Tokyo for an example of where it has worked.

I'm pretty excited about limiting side and rear setbacks to 4 feet.

"to expedite construction of an estimated 6,500 shovel-ready affordable multi-family units in projects...."

Welcome to 'life in the projects'. It's not a ticket to prosperity.

So single family homes will be more expensive.

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