I suspect they have a plan for an absolutely massive high rise behind my house that they will be submitting at 8am tomorrow morning.
My neighbors are going to be pissed.
A high rise in the middle of a popular suburb is an easy way to do that and does exist in many parts of the world.
There is a massive amount of demand for housing in California that is being choked by restrictive, ruinous zoning. Meeting that demand is going to take some big buildings.
[0]: https://www.planetizen.com/news/2022/12/120313-first-full-bu...
You're right though, I'm sure they'll do as little as they can to get their project approved and stay approved while waiting for cheaper money.
https://www.valuepenguin.com/mortgages/historical-mortgage-r...
For everyone else, we are in desperate demand of 'inner city high rise'
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/7/13/housing-scarci...
In short it will take a decade or two of building to make a difference to those living in tents.
Also living in tents often implies other issues. More housing will not solve anything if your real issue is serious mental illness. There will also be a few people living in tents/on the street because their reason for living in tents is not related to the cost of housing. Building more housing will make a difference to those who's problem is housing is too expensive, but it can't help those who's problems are not high cost of housing.
You can have increased density with mandated affordable housing without needing high rise developments.
And 'affordable dystopian' housing? Only 20% of the units are required to be affordable. Who knows what private developers will come up with to maximize their profits. So, dystopian? Probably. Affordable? Just a little.
Not-so-poor people playing a game well that results in massive benefits? A mere distraction.
>Build enough and all houses are affordable.
There are more vacant units in the US than homeless people. There is some nuance in how the market functions - it happens to be profitable for large private landlords to set prices higher. The market does not exist to optimize the number of people who have housing, it exists to optimize the amount of money that landlords can make.
* Clearcut wilderness to build more suburban homes
* Don't build more homes, just stuff more people into existing homes
* Let the excess population live in cars or on the sidewalk
* Cull the excess population
It's also more efficient greenhouse-gas wise, as suburban sprawl means more driving to transport goods.
Now that Hong Kong is reunified with the mainline (since 1997 IIRC) they have been building out to the mainland. Of course when your city is land constrained there is no choice but to build up.
That's not really the end of the story though, anyway. As long as the price per square foot is still higher, it could make sense to keep building up. At a price of, say, $2k per square foot in Manhattan, if your costs are $500 per square foot for five storeys, vs. $1k for ten, the former earns you $(2000-500)*5 = $7500, while the latter earns $10k per square foot of land, so obviously it's better to build the latter.
Guess who fits that demographic? Young single people and young couples who go out. The average middle age crank needs a house without shared walls and space.
There are individual preferences at play here. No one chooses a high rise, it's just more affordable. The exception is amenities, doormen, other services.
So of course it's one of the first things to go. Everyone always chooses to pinch pennies instead of do the right thing.
The uncertainty around neighbors and the obligation to be tolerant is why single family houses are preferable to some people. Barking dogs when owners are away are another joy of apartment living.
The solution here isn't to pretend that high-density buildings aren't needed, because they absolutely are; rather, it's to apply and enforce reasonable standards around noise insulation in shared-wall units, and to reduce the time and expense of the permitting and planning process in general so that there isn't as much motivation to cut corners to save money on the back end.
I wonder what the repercussions of this type of uncontrolled building will be.
An overreaction to a frustrating situation usually doesn't end well.
There are good reasons to have construction permits, so growth can be planned. There's also endless ways cities abuse the permit process. But the good reasons still exist.
If developers are allowed to build without any limit, who is going to be planning for all the requirements external to the new building? Water supply capacity, sewer capacity, traffic flow into and out of it, new schools required, etc?
Developers are happy to build a building, sell all the units and leave town with the profits. But additional units do generate additional support needs from the city infrastructure, is anyone considering these needs if a developer is allowed to build anything they like no matter how big?
We just went from democracy to oligarchy in this case.
Hint: Developers don't have power over communities, rich homeowners do.
At this point the market has been so perverted by entrenched interests blocking new development that I would be okay with a dictatorship of developers for a solid decade. It might be enough to dig us out of the hole we're in.
This might be one of the craziest parts of it, and it makes me understand how a lot of neighborhoods in California just look sort of...dumpy. The system actively discourages you from improving a property!
My dream is to see the state property tax code flipped to land value tax. No penalties for improving the property, just purely tax the value of the land and penalize people who park their vacant lots for year after year.
https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2021/03/16/who-benefits-f...
I think his profit margin must be okay.
If the new housing represents a net increase in people, then the developers are filling unmet demand. It’s not that different from restricting the supply of milk and getting angry that milk producers will make more money when those restrictions are lifted. Yeah, they will, but only because there is more demand for their product than they were previously legally allowed to satisfy.
Developer margins should actually decrease when zoning is more permissive anyway. Right now in SF there is a whole cottage industry of “facilitators” and direct graft/corruption making it hard to build housing unless you know how to work the system.
While it’s absolutely true that developers can cut corners, I personally don’t see them as any more evil than any other business.
Well, you know, it sure would be nice if people could build more of those tightly-clustered Victorians in, say, San Francisco, to continue the classic character of the city and replace ugly box houses... but zoning laws mean they can't.
The modern trend is demolishing beautiful, sustainably-built housing with shoddy, ugly, mass-produced 5-over-1s.
A lot of the housing they are demolishing to build 5-over-1s are kinda shitty 1950s-60s ranches. Not really beautiful at all.
> demolishing beautiful, sustainably-built housing with shoddy, ugly, mass-produced 5-over-1s
YES. BECAUSE THAT'S ALL MODERN ZONING PERMITS. WHICH IS PRECISELY THE [bad word] PROBLEM.
In our haste, particularly on the West Coast, to ensure that we build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody, we've made zoning codes that produce THIS OUTCOME.
There's a reply upthread that says that density advocates want to cram everyone into Soviet-style "dystopian" high rises and, to be honest, your reply here sounds a lot like that.
A WORLD of difference exists between "detached dwelling on a 7,500 square foot lot" and "clone stamp 5-over-1 with empty retail on the bottom." BUT ZONING DOESN'T PERMIT IT. We absolutely should be building rowhouses and stacked flats and plaza housing and all of the other beautiful, people-scale-yet-still-dense, workable housing types that have been tried all over the planet yet America thinks we're too god damn special to have because "American Dream".
If you have rules that say you can only build 5-over-1s, it should come as no shock at all when those are the only things being built, especially in the very tiny slice of areas where it's permitted to build anything dense at all.
You would need to actually look at a place with better zoning to see a functional example, like suburban metropolitan Japan or France or Spain, where neighborhoods are often made of tightly-clustered detached homes (e.g. the old-fashioned Victorian row home equivalent) mixed with corner store retail.
It definitely is. I work in IT but one of my kids is in land use planning and they have regaled me with many stories of how builders come to the city (not in California) with plans. All of them involve a zoning variance and, more often than not, a trip through what is called Design Review. If the zoning change doesn't kill it--usually because they want a departure from what is called "floor area ratio" rules or from the "wedding cake" style zoning that is supposed to keep zones of detached housing "safe" from "impacts"--then design review absolutely does. Which dovetails into...
> made of cheap and ugly ticky-tacky that caters to insular WFH yuppies
...your other point. It's fine to not like the design of a particular building, but to enforce design aesthetic onto someone else is also a failing of zoning. Design review is often used as a cudgel to "catch" what zoning doesn't (so the rules say this kind of building is allowed but neighbors don't want it) and then administrivia it into, if not oblivion, then a very expensive project through things like "more building modulation" and "tamp down building massing" and "mitigate shadow impacts".
I get it, there are real issues. But minimizing real concerns of people that are the stakeholders isn't fair. Construction means years of noise and dust, and traffic issues in many cases and people don't want that. People are wary of the character of their town being ruined - what makes the town a great place to be. I agree that there's usualy a middle ground that could be found. But importantly, to your last point...
> It's fine to not like the design of a particular building, but to enforce design aesthetic onto someone else is also a failing of zoning.
I disagree. Go to somewhere like the UK and you'll see in many places they not only restrict what you can do to existing structures, but they dictate which materials can be used to build new developments. They do this because it allows the area to develop while also hopefully maintaining the character of the place. The thing that makes the place nice today. If someone wanted to put up a house covered in vinyl siding, they wouldn't be allowed to.
I fully support enforcing new developments having to use certain materials and be restricted to certain sizes, styles, and layouts.
In my world, everyone counts including the people who actually live in the community today and will be affected by changes...alongside the people who do not yet live there and thus have no voice.
I am vehemently opposed to ladder-pulling in all its forms.
> But minimizing real concerns of people that are the stakeholders isn't fair.
I do not believe I am minimizing their real concerns, I believe I am putting them on the same footing as other real concerns, concerns which people who want to act insular have no motivation to consider. Concerns like the state bill in question here attempts to balance.
Cities change or they die. The world is full of inconveniences and problems related to change but it is not fair to use the regulatory power of the state to insist that a hamlet remain as-is in perpetuity. There are strategies to mitigate those inconveniences instead of "nope, not here."
> I fully support enforcing new developments having to use certain materials and be restricted to certain sizes, styles, and layouts.
In a perfect world, I would be fine with this, but we do not live in a perfect world and these restrictions are more often used as a fig leaf to keep people out than they are to maintain a character. Hell, the phrase "neighborhood character" is very often used as a code phrase for keeping out "those people", whomever is the villain of the day (often renters or people who want to buy but who can't or don't want to buy a massive structure).
These sorts of rules can be useful--look at Leavenworth in Washington State, for example--but, in a lot of places in the United States and especially on the West Coast, they are impossible-to-meet predicates for exclusion.
And that's not fair.
It's difficult to understand how this makes sense. There are ~900K people who live in San Francisco. There are (roughly) 333 million people in the US who don't live in San Francisco. So you're saying those 333 million people should all have equal voice in deciding what happens in SF? Why?
They are not _entitled_ to forever freeze a city just because they live there. I bet they would not like their town if it still looked the same as it was in 1890.
However it really should be a city level decision - the whole point of having lots of cities is they can vary in their character and quality. Moving these decisions to a state level doesn’t allow for the advocacy of a neighborhood to matter as much. That’s not good.
The world shouldn’t revolve around some NIMBY, but a community of NIMBYs should be respected for their desires as the community. Ceding community control to the government and developers isn’t the right way to go.
The voters of California have clearly decided that they aren't.
At the state level, elections are much better, and state level elections are usually far more informed. There have been moments of pure greed by the electorate, like with Prop 13, that have severely harmed the state, but that's a common trap with all electorates.
Overall I think California voters are newer on par with places like Minnesota thag have generally very good governance.
That is a very uncharitable description. Prop13 was driven by people sick of getting thrown out of their long-time homes by huge tax increases. There is no "greed" in the desire to keep living in the home you bought.
I mean, no they aren't? These people are directly screwing over people like me. I'm gonna disagree with them loudly and publicly until the problem is solved.
If you are being harmed, of course you have a right to speak up against the ones committing said harm!
I think he is angry at the wrong thing. Maybe being angry that the cities are necessary to live in to get ahead? Maybe he should be hopeful that telecommuting will relieve housing pressures over time? Maybe there’s a saddle point that can be reached by not assuming the other side is malicious towards you personally?
The state of California has said enough is enough and has rendered the local regulation null and void.
And no one has said anything about soviet style apartment buildings. That is very unlikely.
I see a lot of people say this is direct harm. I don’t think people understand what that term means. “I’m upset by the outcome of your advocacy” doesn’t mean direct harm. Advocacy isn’t directed towards you, no one has come to you and harmed you. Direct harm would be them coming and removing you from your home and keeping you under housed directly. Their advocacy indirectly leads to higher housing prices, and even then there’s a lot of other confounding factors. “I’m really upset with the situation and those guys are advocating for a partial factor that gives rise” is about as indirect as you get.
Neither extreme makes sense, we should probably recognize both camps have valid points and a middle path is likely the right one, and no one will be fully satisfied.
This is very well expressed, thanks.
Fundamentally you have people who live somewhere and like it how it is, and all the people who don't live there and want to radically change it to be something else. Clearly these desires are in conflict. Each side has the right to speak up for what they'd like to see, sure.
But where does it come the idea that the people who don't live there should have a greater say in how the place develops than those who actually make their life there?
I can only live in one place, all other towns of the world are places I don't live in. By that logic, I should be able to influence all the N-1 places on earth I don't live it, but have no say in how development occurs in the 1 place I do live in. Does that make sense?
I don't live in Boston. Should I have greater vote on how Boston needs to change than people who actually live there? (To pick a random city I don't live in.)
I firmly believe that it is good. Neighborhoods shouldn't have the right to work together to exclude other people from moving to that neighborhood.
I agree, and I apply the same logic when somebody complains about gentrification.
The anti-NIMBY movement didn't come about because people want to override existing communities. It came about because people need a place to live, and NIMBYs were actively campaigning against it for decades with no consideration for the needs of others.
Now, I think it's reached the stage where at least among young people making their lives miserable is honestly seen as a positive.
We have an entire generation of extremely over privileged, overly entitled, and narcissistic people setting housing policy that seemingly have no idea about all the labor that makes all their lives possible. We are reaching "let them eat cake" levels of self-deception from homeowners.
You know what’s really a problem? How dystopian America is.
The opportunity and jobs are in big cities. But housing makes it impossible for many people to even live near the city. People want to solve this problem, but are blocked because people like that their neighborhood has street parking.
It’s killing America and it’s really killing our ability to become a modern, progressive society.
The problem is people that want to stop other people from being able to live the way they want.
Any heavy industry, teaching, services, anything involving a lab, medicine.. working from home is not something just anyone can do.
The majority of jobs in an urban core is not heavy industry or medical or teaching. Those are on the outside of the urban core, especially heavy industry is usually not in an urban environment at all in modern times.
In the city of Boston, fully half the jobs are in healthcare and education. Many urban jobs can certainly go remote but I don’t think it’s more than half.
Incidentally, if it were 100 years old it would be Georgian. Vitoria died in 1901
> In the United States, 'Victorian' architecture generally describes styles that were most popular between 1860 and 1900
This is the same reason why there's a persistent myth that homeless are bused in from other states or whatever (when in reality, 70-90% of them were in homes in San Francisco before going on the street). It absolves people of blame
Do you have a citation for that? I could do with a decent source.
https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=3437-2019-greater-los-ang...
That seems to show 65% of the homeless population of LA County were living there before they became homeless - others travelled within state or from another state to be there.
That wasn't quite what I expected to see based on the stats cited above, but it's useful info. Thank you.
Seriously, I don't care if developers are "greedy". "Greedy" describes every business and most people!
They make something that people would like. Calling that "power" is extremely unhelpful.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages” ― Adam Smith
That is an interesting question. In many cases people here are advocating that the locals don't get what they want, so that "the rest of society" does.
The process has been setup to allow a few squeaky wheels to have veto power over change. It's just pure narcissism of the NIMBY that all the other community members have the same belief as them.