How Californians are weaponizing environmental law to eliminate housing | Hacker News Reader

How Californians are weaponizing environmental law to eliminate housing

theatlantic.com

192 pointsjseliger223 comments

When I first moved to Sacramento from LA I saw multiple attempts to build high density housing projects seemingly get delayed by neighbors occupying admittedly beautiful and restrained early-20th century single family homes.

Most notably somebody bought and bull-dosed Dimple, an amazing used music / movies / clothing store near the original Tower Records location, with the intention of putting a multistory housing development there. That was years ago and of course its still just a huge crumbling concrete lot fenced in with barbed wire.

But since pandemic restrictions lifted we've seen a ridiculous number of 3-5 story housing developments going up all over midtown. It's honestly shocking and so far they look beautiful intermingled with the overgrown trees and houses built in the early 1900s.

We've got our problems in Sac but it feels like a vision of the future of California. I hope I start to see this with the same frequency more when I visit the bay.

What changed to the planning process to make this work all of a sudden?

Capital flight. CA (the state) is bankrupt and they need the tax money from these properties.

What? No. Everything about this short comment is wrong.

Wealthy people are staying in California, it's lower income people that can't pay rent and are leaving.

The state's finances have had many years of huge surpluses, when these 3-5 stories were being built. This year's deficit is a tiny fraction of the magnitude of 2022's surplus.

Second, the state doesn't see any money from new developments. Property taxes fund county and city budgets, not the state.

Finally, despite property tax going to local governments that approve or deny housing, increased tax revenue is almost never part of the decision, and to the degree that tax revenue has come up for residential approvals, it's usually a negative because residential housing is viewed as likely consuming more city budget in services than it generates. Instead, government officials fast track hotels, retail, and other types of land use that generate lots of tax revenue.

Doesn't the state get its pound of flesh from new home sales and resale? I know this can be offset by purchase of a similar home but has anyone calculated how much it is in terms of the state budget

Do you have a source showing that lower income people are the ones who are leaving or are you guessing?

Bloomberg has pretty convincingly argued that it is actually the middle class (the upper-middle class particularly), those who can afford rent and pay the highest tax load to states, who are leaving places like CA and NY. New York has all but admitted that is the case, too:

* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-02-16/new-yo...

* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-31/states-wi...

* https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-mayor-eric-adams-ce...

* https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-remote-work-eric-a...

My data comes from a detailed analysis from the LAO, but back in 2018.

https://everythingsouthcity.com/2018/02/california-legislati...

It follows trends over the past decades in California where for emigration internal to the US, California loses more residents to other states than it gains, and overall population growth comes from international immigration.

If there were actually a change in this trend, I wouldn't doubt it, but I wouldn't believe the change unless I saw it from an actual analysis, not from the narratives that the media pushes in terms of fuzzy, sloppy news articles about feelings that get published in the main steam media.

The churn of news articles it based on the vibes of journalists, typically their friends and social circles.

For example, note the shift from terms headlines; people are leaving "high tax states" for "lower cost", but it's little known that "high tax" California is actually lower tax than Texas, except for those who are very wealthy.

Trends on mobility of people have changed a lot post-pandemic. I wouldn't put much faith in any data from before 2021.

By the way, in 2018, the NIMBYs were still getting their way, so that isn't exactly relevant to the current discussion. At the time, CA was importing a middle class from abroad and losing poor residents. Currently, the importation of that middle class has slowed down a lot, and the existing middle class appears to be moving away. Supposedly, the lower-income bracket also isn't moving around as much because it's harder.

You aren't going to get a decade-long analytical post-mortem of this trend until... about 2031. The news stories are what we have, and their underlying data (which you can probably find in FRED if you search enough).

Also, I don't know what you consider "very wealthy," but if the line is "people for whom total tax burden in CA is higher than total tax burden in TX," your definition of "very wealthy" is at a much lower income than most people will think - the break-even point is less than $100k of income for many people.

It’s not so much the planning process it’s literally that small enough developments are exempt from CEQA as of 2018 until 2023. So as long as you’re building below a certain threshold nuisance environmental lawsuits can’t be brought anymore.

Yeah and I believe they lifted zoning restrictions before covid as long as something like 20% of the units are low income? Somebody might check me on that.

And often it's not even as much an actual lawsuit, but the mere threat of one. The lawsuit doesn't have to be successful or based in environmental reality to stop projects, it merely has to delay construction long enough to force the builder to go get a different loan, pay for the frivolous legal defense, and in the meantime labor costs have risen resulting in having to redo all the planning work around the budget, pro forma, etc.

CEQA lawsuit threats would disappear if they were resolved in a timely manner, say 30-60 days. Instead, a multi-year delay will kill projects.

Yes. CEQA lawsuits are generally inconclusive initially and the first step of the lawsuit is that the builder has to conduct more expensive environmental studies. The studies may result in easy to implement solutions or small environmental impact but there is no liability on the potentially anonymous lawsuit bringer so even if the builder eventually wins they are out the entire costs of the court fight the entire costs of doing the additional assessments and the entire costs of delaying the project.

Got any street view examples? I'm always interested in urban success stories.

To me 3-5 stories is the sweet spot for density most cities should be aiming for. You get plenty of people in a given area without it feeling crowded. 3-5 story buildings are among the cheapest to construct since you can use pretty run-of-the-mill techniques and materials to maximize the square-cube law per dollar. It's dense enough to make investment in mass transit really viable without really straining city services like water and sewers. Plus it avoids the "Manhattenification" suburbanities seem so terrified of any time the word density is hinted at.

I've seen convincing arguments that 3-5 stories is also about as far as you can go and still be "connected" to the neighborhood. Anything taller and you might as well be walking through a portal to another world.

Where I lived in Brooklyn, the limit (and most common height) was 12 story. I did not feel any visible difference in "connection" and IMHO connection is more about community institutions which drive the connections.

I can give several examples of what I think were the connective tissue of the neighborhood: We had an awesome food cooperative https://www.foodcoop.com/, a playground, a fro-yo place with outdoor seating, a YMCA, and numerous cafes. These days there is a recreation center.

Now, there is a different problem -- housing is expensive. When you have a huge mortgage, you spend more time at work, more time worrying about work, and less time enjoying life. That isnt the fault of the buildings, it is more about restrictive housing policy and multi-decade-ZIRP.

I like 3-5 story buildings for aesthetic reasons, but my anecdotal experience is that taller buildings don't preclude personal connections: I grew up in a ~16 story building that was built in the 1930s, and had lots of connections with my neighbors, their children, etc.

4-5 stories is typically the maximum before an elevator is required by code/overwhelmingly desired.

You can compare the relative success of low-income low-rise developments vs. the notorious high-rise projects that were universal failures

A big problem in the US is we don’t allow tiny elevators, except in pre-WWII buildings that already have them. In Spain I’ve seen new 4 story flats with 1-2 units per floor with a small 2-person sized elevator. In the US that elevator would need to be much larger, as it needs to fit a stretcher (despite the fact that if the elevator wasn’t there, the stretcher would be taking the stairs anyways). But because a single elevator in the US takes up so much space they cause floor plans to get really weird and it makes it difficult to justify the expense.

The apartment that my friend lived in is stereotypical. It had probably 300-400 units over seven floors. Not a 5-over-1, but similar design. Cloistered hallways with balconies facing exterior or to interior pool/parking garage areas.

In that building there were two elevators - one "normal" for US standards and one oversized, presumably for moving.

I don't think it's unreasonable to have such a setup for a large building, particularly with how large furniture and beds can be.

In that size range you can open the window on the top floor, identify people at ground level and even have a conversation even if it means yelling.

I grew up in a 15-story apartment in Seoul - every day there's a stream of students walking to schools and back, passing along stationery shops, snacks, barber shops, groceries, and what not. Even now, when I visit the place (my parents still live there), I feel much more connected to the neighborhood than my current suburban single house could ever be. Here you take five steps out of your door and drive away, because there's nothing interesting within walking distance. There's no sense of a "neighborhood."

(To be fair, the noise was always an issue, and in my current place, it feels really nice to be able to do jumping jacks and play the piano at 9pm. So there's that.)

Good share, I had the same feeling visiting Taiwan and then coming back to California.

But yeah when I was in LA and had to start going to therapy because the neighbors in our orwellian apartment building were making so much noise I was having week-long panic attacks the therapist told me he grew up in S.Korea and people would stab their neighbors over noise regularly.

He was a great guy but that was kind of his only advice? That stuck with me.

Yep the noise was always an issue, and from what I've heard it's actually getting worse because construction quality is going down. (In the old days, Korea didn't have much experience in construction, so they compensated by pouring a generous amount of concrete and steel, or so I've heard. Now they know exactly how much they need, so walls are getting thinner and thinner.)

A sad state of affairs.

I'm not sure about connected, but I do like being able to walk the stairs to the apt, being able to open a door to a balcony. Its also less instrusive to the neighborhood than a tower which overlooks everyone.

Well what were those arguments? There are unconvinced respondents here.

I think it was in one of the other volumes of the set that includes A Pattern Language, I'll have to try to dig it up.

It mainly had to do with being "disconnected" with the street once you were more than 5 floors up if I remember correctly.

5 over 1 construction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1

It's awesome, it should be everywhere.

That's fantastic and yeah that's exactly what I'm seeing in Sacramento!

I live in one, it isn't that awesome. Lots of noise from neighbours, but the worst thing is the big fire hazard. The risk of fire means there is a lot of sprinklers everywhere which regularly get damaged and leak everywhere. Usually every 2-3 years in our building a sprinkler pipe will get broken or leak will appear and destroy a few units.

The issue with the modern apartment building noise, in my estimation, isn't wood construction (which is commonly blamed), but ducts. The double-loaded corridor requires extra ventilation per fire code. The demand for central air conditioning implies ducts. A properly designed double-stud wooden wall can have a Sound Transmission Class higher than 60, but a small hole in a wall can cut the STC by as much as 30. The presence of a large void in the wall (duct) could severely reduce the efficacy of the sound insulation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Transmission_Class#Sound_...

The apartment buildings I've lived in without central A/C (in Atlanta and San Francisco) were consistently quieter than the ones with central A/C. Underfloor radiant heating and wall A/C units might be a better way to design apartment buildings. Removing climate control from the access corridor and letting it vent to the outside would reduce the need for sprinklers and complex ventilation. This is slightly less energy efficient, but apartment buildings are already way more energy efficient than houses, and anything that makes apartments more livable can increase the efficiency of the whole society by increasing people's willingness to live in apartments.

You shouldn't be sharing any air with you neighbors, so I doubt ducts are to blame. You can build highly sound-proof timber-framed walls, but most people don't because it's more expensive. Like everything in modern construction, the cheapest permissible option usually wins.

> The apartment buildings I've lived in without central A/C (in Atlanta and San Francisco) were consistently quieter than the ones with central A/C.

When were the units built?

> You can build highly sound-proof timber-framed walls, but most people don't because it's more expensive. Like everything in modern construction, the cheapest permissible option usually wins.

Especially when reduced cost is the reason mid-rise wood construction became popular in the first place.

I don't think it's about sharing air. It's about the duct being in the wall at all.

You can puts ducts in a soffit so they don't necessarily need to be inside the walls. I've lived in two apartments with ducts inside soffits. Both were still very loud.

A soffit must necessarily pass through the wall. Unless it is well-designed, it could cause the same problem.

It passes though a wall, but not necessarily a wall you'd share with a neighbor typically. For instance, in my apartment we had an in-unit air handler with soffits running long the ceiling. We could hear every step on neighbors made. Most building codes require fire separation between units, so you generally wouldn't have duct work running through walls like that as it'd be a path for fire to spread.

How old was the building? Currently I'm in a noisy building — it was built in 1890, before rock wool was invented, to say nothing of fiberglass. It definitely tracks that floors tend to be worse than walls (especially bad with Euclidean zoning that encourages low ceilings and thin platforms).

The building was built in the 90s. Ultimately, the construction was very cheap.

>When were the units built?

1962 (Atlanta) and 1978 (San Francisco).

I think the issue is that the people building wood apartments aren’t the same people who care enough to ensure there are no small holes in the wall.

Actually its a good thing about our condo is independent heat pumps per unit so everyone gets their own air handler and ducts. Its expensive to replace each one individuall though.

Likewise - I've lived in these 5 story things and in proper high rises, and there is no comparison. It's likely that the 5 story buildings could be built to the same standard as a high rise, but there is little incentive for the builders to do so, and instead they're absolute lowest bar of quality.

Just the elevator speed makes a huge difference: I could get to floor 18 of the most recent high rise I lived in quicker than floor 3 of the mid rise.

yeah—I feel like this is something that can be solved by code modification to expect better. 5-over-1's are already min/max'ing code, so if they're fire hazards, then we should expect cities to rein it in. Safety shouldn't be what makes 5-over-1s fail.

I would like to live in one instead of my current situation but the noise is what is concerning. Newer units should be more quiet than past buildings. I don't know what modern building techniques they use, if any, for sound isolation. Are there airgaps? I'm guessing no concrete slabs between floors? To me it seems like it's the difference between a high rise hotel/apt where it's like a tomb in the room and a smaller building that uses less expensive/more robust material and you can hear much more from the outside and your neighbors.

I'm sure it varies a bit, but generally not good in my experience. Except between the ground floor (usually retail, lobby, parking, etc...) and above everything is wood, no concrete slabs. They typically use the cheapest, least sound isolating materials so neighbor noise, both through walls and floors, is very noticeable. It's a bit jarring because they are modern and not usually low cost, but isolation is much more like the smaller building since they share more construction techniques with a cheap two-story row apartment.

> and not usually low cost

> they share more construction techniques with a cheap two-story row apartment.

Low in cost, high in price, builders love it.

I discussed this issue a bit with someone who worked for a company that focused on affordable housing, and he told me a "joke": what's the difference between a regular condo and a luxury condo? The price.

Yeah I lived in one (in the Domain in Austin) and one thing that bothered me about the noise, was that I would hear it from the unit above me through my side wall. That is, if they played loud music or talked loudly, it sounded like it was coming from the side, not from above. (Specifically, the side that was the end of the building and didn’t adjoin another unit. I was on the first floor.)

I've seen multiple condos in San Francisco in 5 over 1 that have perfect sound insulation, generally they're on busy streets though (and thus you don't really want to live there).

In most buildings there is no concrete between walls but floors have a ~1 inch layer of lightweight-concrete, I think for fire resistance, its not solid so you hear every footprint.

I've lived in multiple of them, and they were often about the same or better than more "traditional" apartments in the area. Usually way lower energy costs than the traditional units. About the same amount of noise for a given build quality, it mostly depended on who lived in the neighboring units.

There were sprinklers in every apartment I've lived in. Building codes in my area require them in any structure with multiple households sharing the structure. Townhouses, apartments, commercial buildings, etc. all have sprinklers everywhere. It doesn't matter if its a high rise or a duplex, if it was built since like the early 90s its got sprinklers.

IIRC sprinkler systems are just code now for all residential construction. Even new build single family homes must have them.

How new? I've never seen a sprinkler in a SFH, including one I was in built ~2018-2019.

https://www.dalkita.com/sprinklers-in-single-family-resident...

> Surprisingly enough, sprinklers have actually technically been a requirement in all single family homes per the International Residential Code, since 2006. Regardless of home size, location, or construction type. IRC 313.2 states:

    R313.2 One- and two-family dwellings automatic fire systems.
     An automatic residential fire sprinkler system shall be
     installed in one- and two-family dwellings.

> Period. It's just simply required. Only exception is for alterations or additions to existing building without sprinklers.

Your link seems to suggest the opposite above that quote.

> They base the need on distance to nearest fire house and nearest credible fire hydrant.

So there are obviously situations where SFHs do not need automatic sprinkler systems.

Most of my subdivision was built after 2006; none of the homes have sprinkler systems but there are also fire hydrants every 5 or 6 homes so I imagine that has something to do with it. The fire house is also a ~90 second drive down one street (at the speed they'd be going).

Possibly... and also the next bit:

> So, why don’t we see every newer house since 2006 with sprinklers? Because most jurisdictions amend their local codes to delete this requirement. Only CA, MD, & Washington DC now keep this requirement.

> Most jurisdictions delete this requirement for various reasons, but the obvious one is the uproar it causes from citizens, builders, etc , because with this new requirement, comes increased cost.

So while its in the building code, local codes may relax that.

California code requires this when the SFH is 3,600 sqft or larger.

https://library.qcode.us/lib/temecula_ca/pub/municipal_code/...

There’s some massive variance in 4-over-1 and 5-over-1, with newer units very much built to a price.

I lived in one in Boston that was 4 total floors, actually all steel framed (so not really a 3-over-1), polished concrete floors in every unit, and built to the tune of $55M for ~150 units. Was intended to be condos, bottom fell out in 2007/2008, so it was rezoned to apartments. Dead silent in the over 8 years I was there. I must’nt of been the only one that thought it was good — there was a notable rapper as my next door neighbor, and a Stanley Cup winner in another hallway on my floor. I moved in when the market bottomed out, and paid like $1700/mo for years (moved out when it went up to $2450). I think it’d be ~$4000/mo now.

The newer ones though? I’ve heard of sub-$20M costs for similar number of units. They leak not because of the sprinklers, but because the general waterproofing and roofing is beyond awful, and just cost-cutting everywhere. I talked to some maintenance folks that had been to several new ones owned by the same company as the $55M one: “They don’t build them like that anymore. If they did, we wouldn’t be dealing with constant problems.”. Talk up your maintenance folk — they’ll be more than happy to vent about your building’s issues.

So the issue is building things to a price, knowing some people will pay because the vacancy rate is one of the tightest in the country.

It's also a matter of information asymmetry. Most potential renters or buyers don't have a good way to check for construction quality and interior noise levels. Even an independent pre-purchase inspection doesn't tell you much beyond really obvious problems. Customers aren't willing to pay more for higher quality because they can't easily determine quality, so most developers will go with the cheapest possible option and then slap on some granite countertops to make it look nice.

This could be addressed through stricter building codes. But that would drive up construction costs at a time when we already have a housing shortage in many areas.

Another fix would be to independently measure noise isolation and report that, so renters can actually make decisions based on it, and builders would have an incentive to include it, since they could more reliably charge more for it.

Someone should do that with good branding. Sorta like carfax. Call the Zillow Report or find a similar firm. License the standards and a saas interface to Inspectors to have another revenue stream (or maybe more broadly to contractors). Then it could become a defacto standard, especially if you get in with real estate agents.

It would be nice if they could make them look good. The examples in that article are hideous. Sad that beautiful towns will have to take in such awful architecture because it's relatively cheap to construct and will get the builder through warranty. But it isn't based in any historical standard, just a post-modern hellscape. Especially that one in NJ - it's just the worst thing I think I've ever seen.

They should at least make the facades respect a standard sort of like how they do in England and parts of Europe.

I agree in part but it doesn't take much design-wise to make them blend in smoothly from what I'm seeing. At least when theres a lot of trees around maybe?

Anyway the real postmodern hellscape kinda seems like its the homelessness thing more than the too much housing in walkable mixed-use zoning thing.

But again, I hear you on the architecture.

Yeah the first one in Austin was nice to see the semi-mature trees. Makes a huge difference and one of the reasons living in an old town with mature trees (and a well financed program to plant and maintain) is so awesome. Walkable things are awesome. And it's even more awesome when you're walking into a denser part of town that actually has nice looking buildings that don't look ridiculous.

Build but build smart and build beautifully. A beautiful environment is super important to the mental health of a community. We should surround ourselves in beauty.

It's especially bad if affordances for green space aren't taken into account. New York City, for all its problems, has done an excellent job of ensuring that there are trees and parks basically everywhere, combined with generally wide sidewalks, which makes the endless rows of 3-5 story apartment buildings feel comfortable to inhabit.

Personally I think they look pretty good.

The really ugly buildings, at least in San Francisco and Oakland that I'm familiar with, are where they take a single family house and chop it up into a bunch of little apartments. It's such an illogical abomination. From the outside you have a bunch of doors stuck in crazy places, kind of a "shanty town" vibe. From the inside all the rooms are weirdly shaped and extra plumbing is stuck in where it doesn't make sense.

It reminds me of the old joke about C++, that it's like designing an octopus by nailing extra legs onto a dog.

Anyway, I would like to see all of those replaced with something-over-1 apartment buildings.

Oh no I completely disagree. SF has some of the best dense architecture IMO. Duplex/triplex/etc townhomes give density without having big overwhelming buildings. It means you don’t have big stretches of road without variance or entrance in the building you’re walking against. It also often gives garages and small backyards which a lot of people want.

I will agree that it means there’s a lot more individual maintenance required with more facade space having more owners. So poorer neighborhoods look… poorer.

They are garbage, and ought to be banned.

Its one thing to not like a style yourself, its quite another to say nobody else should be allowed to have it either.

It's probably possible to build a quality 5-over-1, but I haven't seen it. Poor-quality insulation, cheap sheathing and poor sound insulation inevitably leads to fast depreciation.

Still, if 5-over-1s were banned, you'd just see the next cheapest option built to similar standards. The issue is quality control, not the architecture itself.

Yeah, I'd ban them by making quality standards high enough to eliminate them. Politically connected contractors working through YIMBYs will never let that happen.

Why do you assume to know best about what should be everywhere? This thread gives examples of how this is the only level of density that is even being allowed, but why cheer that? People, when left to their own devices, have generally preferred something like von Thunen rings, rather than a single level of density. Letting such decisions play out organically ought to be the default position, unless you have some very strong non-aesthetic reason to do otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_von_Th%C3%BCne...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentric_zone_model

> People, when left to their own devices, have generally preferred something like von Thunen rings, rather than a single level of density.

Citation please. The US can’t be used as an example because zoning laws have enforced strict single use zones for many decade. When you look at Europe which never had such zone if laws, you don’t find clear cut zones, or such clear cut concentric rings of density.

The Seattle area is full of them. I've also been seeing 5 over 2 over 1 (?) where there are 2 floors of parking sandwiched between the housing and stores. One floor is for residents, while the other is for guests and shoppers.

> I saw multiple attempts to build high density housing projects seemingly get delayed by neighbors occupying admittedly beautiful and restrained early-20th century single family homes.

There is plenty of space to build high(er) density housing in Los Angeles if you know where to look [1]. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to fight tooth-and-nail against NIMBY types to build 5 over 1s next to SFH when you've got way better options. This is true for almost every city in America too. Urban infill needs to be prioritized to boost density. Everything else is inefficient at best and wasteful and unnecessary at worst. You cannot have cars and have density. It's a contradiction.

[1] https://la.curbed.com/2018/11/30/18119646/los-angeles-parkin...

CEQA lawsuits come from everywhere, not just neighbors. That's part of why they're so vexatious. Advocacy and lobbying organizations push hard against CEQA reforms as they regularly abuse CEQA to fight developments they oppose for reasons having little or nothing to do with the health of natural ecosystems, or even anything to do with the neighborhood.

humans are a migratory species.

Another cautionary tale that too many of us ignore with our virtue signaling: "I support X because it sounds good for cause Y". Unfortunately, we often don't consider system or policy resilience - how will it hold up if people intentionally abuse its rules. Sometimes it doesn't help cause Y and has other negative effects.

I would put heritage building laws into a similar category of well-intentioned rules that can so easily be weaponized alongside overly strict environmental review.

In isolation keeping a neighbourhood character by setting rules around the paint colours and trim designs permitted seems like a benign set of laws to keep some interesting older neighbourhoods around. In practice they lock a city at a specific low density, often very close to the downtown core since the oldest development tends to be closest to the action. It can also exclude poorer residents (or even pretty well off people who can afford a $250,000 reno but not the $500,000 it'll take to satisfy the heritage committee).

I love an old victorian house, but not when there are hundreds of people living in tents next door and thousands more terrified they will have to join them because the cost of living is rapidly rising. If someone wants to pay to move that charming house to an area of lower average density, great. Otherwise it needs to come down to make way for hundreds of new units so people can actually afford the city.

Sorry but in housing the value comes from "Location, location, location". If a neighbourhood can change into anything what kind of confidence do I have about the home that I'm buying? Things are already variable enough as is. Maybe if zoning changes had a 20 year window from being enacted to being effected. That might balance out needs.

(In case it's suggested otherwise, I live in urban high-density housing, I'm just sympathetic to the concerns of others)

Why would we use municipal regulation as a way to give homebuyers "confidence" that their neighborhood will never change?

Circular logic?

Municipal regulation has been keeping the neighborhood the same so why not expect it will continue to?

Because the homebuyers just are the municipality?

And as we're seeing here, if they can't get what they want one way they do it another way.

I've always thought the way out (besides just waiting until a neighborhood is an absolute shithole of a slum and can be redeveloped because poor people have little political power) is just to straight up bribe people. New developments have a "fee" that is directly applied in cash to other homes in the area to reduce property tax.

Everyone likes a good bribe.

> homebuyers just are the municipality

I think in most US states, the legal situation is actually that local governments are creations of the state. They are allowed to have their own ordinances and so on as a matter of convenience, to avoid state legislators having to bother worrying about every edge case that only comes up in one county, but they do not have a right to exist independent of the state saying that they do. There are exceptions, but municipal ordinances (and HOA rules) can be overridden by state law.

We don't /have/ to let all these little NIMBY fiefdoms exist. They exist at the pleasure of the state legislature, and therefore voters statewide, not just locally (modulo gerrymandering, a big caveat).

We're seeing that play out right now in California, the state overrode local areas and the problem hasn't gone away, it's shifted to other avenues.

If you don't change hearts and minds they'll keep fighting against it via any method available.

The answer is quite clearly that it is immoral to allow those who can afford homes from being protectionist about their assets when it comes at the expense of those who lack affordable housing.

The need for housing outweighs the desire to get a return on your investment.

Unfortunately, home owners vote at a higher rate, so this is unlikely to happen (even though it probably should).

Why don't renters or homeless vote at a higher rate?

> quite clearly that it is immoral

> The need for housing

And who is the arbiter of this morality or the urgency of this need? I say it would be elections where everyone in that area gets a chance to vote and decide for themselves.

Study after study shows that the value of property goes up when density increases, not the other way around. People who cling to property values as a gatekeeper are actually arguing against their self-interest, usually without knowing it.

> People who cling to property values as a gatekeeper are actually arguing against their self-interest, usually without knowing it.

That is rarely the reason, in my experience. It is merely an accusation that gets thrown around by people who want the NIMBYs to look shallow. There are usually far more specific reasons for opposing new development.

There are always just a few, however, who do want the money. So they cash in and sell out to developers, and then move to a less dense neighborhood. Eventually the whole neighborhood character does in fact change, it just takes years.

The existence of heritage designations and the related restrictions also encourage developers to completely tear down any existing, older, undesignated buildings on their properties as soon as they acquire them, even if the buildings are still usable, and the new developments may be years away.

The developers don't want to risk the buildings being designated, or even just the designation process itself being used to introduce lengthy delays and extra costs, at some point in the future.

Rather than helping to preserve older buildings, the risk of a heritage designation just speeds up the destruction of them. In the end, there are fewer older buildings, and more empty lots.

Just like how the Endangered Species Act creates a perverse incentive not to report any Bald Eagle nests or even drive off any special animals. Also a rent control law that caps increases to CPI +2% results in landlords taking the maximum increase every year in response to the loss of optionality.

> heritage building laws

We really overuse these regulations. There are a relatively few buildings that are actually historic enough to warrant saving. But in many areas we're marking any old building as historic on the thinnest of pretenses. Having grown up in a city that was ruled by the historic review board, I'm unimpressed with the results. Maybe it's nice to see what they built 100+ years ago, but being forced to live in it forever? No. People change, neighborhoods evolve, we should carefully embrace that.

I would, as emperor, have a maximum percentage of buildings that can be protected as historic.

Especially for tax codes. Every tax break is a richer man's loophole.

I agree it would be way easier to have a transaction tax than tax corporate "profits"

it could be tiered like income tax.

billion$ corp buy X from a billion$ corp biggest rate.

poor person sells some food to another poor person lowest rate.

That's going to make the food that the poor person is ultimately buying from the billion dollar supermarket pretty expensive...

Supermarkets are, generally, ground zero for problems with corporate taxes on things other than profits. They're extremely low-margin, so proposed revenue and transaction taxes would generally just increase prices of everything in the supermarket by whatever the tax is.

(That's just one problem, of course, but it's a very obvious one.)

> on things other than profits

Well, profits or VAT. Even more if you make some actually sane VAT that discounts all VAT paying expenses and all labor expenses.

I'm not sure any VAT on the world fits that description, but it is the one way to make them work as well as profit taxes, but as easy to tax as any other VAT.

Yes, fair, VAT done right would have a much lower (though still non-zero) impact than transaction taxes.

Transaction taxes have an entirely different set of loopholes.

You're not solving anything by switching the form of taxation.

The unintended consequences of laws often vastly outweigh the benefits. I am a big proponent of time limiting laws as well as requiring higher levels of support upon renewal, that way laws that have serious unintended consequences will be removed automatically.

If a software team just argued about what software to build, finally came to an agreement on what they should build and then built it saying it was done without getting any feedback from the users of the software would not be successful. Likewise government shouldn't release a law and expect to never have to tweak it. In fact they should be prepared to make changes until they get a satisfactory result.

There also needs to be a firm consensus on how those changes get tweaked. Guiding principles that don't get changed with the legislation.

This is how laws work in the US though, it’s called rule making authority. For example, the clean air act doesn’t specify any of the levels or pollutants, it empowers (or in that case creates) the Department or Agency to make rules within some often quite broad guidelines. That agency will then conduct research, hold public meetings that nobody goes to, and then make rules which are enforced under the law.

Edit: those laws sometimes get amended by congress and sometimes extended or have their enforcement deprioritized by the executive.

That how its done, said the King. Been to plenty of stakeholder meetings where the outcome was pre-determined and the meeting was simply a rouse to demonstrate public involvement.

Survey asks: Rate the benefits of this plan

- Its good

- Its great

- Its awesome

99% of respondents said this plan is good or better

There is no chance that those were the three options at a federal public meeting, primarily because that type of survey is not how public meetings work.

It’s certainly the case that public meetings are not binding on the agency, nor should they be. We already have a process for determining the will of the people and it’s not “turf the problem to the 5-10 people who showed up to this meeting on a random Tuesday”.

Public meetings are one part of a larger process.

> the clean air act . . . empowers (or in that case creates) the Department or Agency to make rules within some often quite broad guidelines

I think the SCOTUS disagrees. This evidence among others:

https://nypost.com/2022/06/30/scotus-restricts-upholds-epas-...

Your claim is how I thought we all believed government worked for many decades, though.

I mean, that is how it works, but sometimes agencies overstep their delegated authority and are overruled by the courts. Then they have to go back to the congress and get their authority amended or not.

> I am a big proponent of time limiting laws

Like the assault weapons ban?

I think its a lack of guiding principles as to how new legislation gets drawn up. It leads to stubborn refusal to do anything. Most people don't mind change, so long as the change is predictable and their neighborhood doesn't get worse.

Plus a lot of the fears are based in the wave of public housing that was constructed in the 70s. Tenants with no investment in their dwellings will shoot a community into a death spiral. Look at Detroit and numerous other cities. There are other issues involved, but that was significant factor.

If we had functioning government, this could possibly work.

Instead, in the current national regime, it has a tendency to ossify current laws. Most legislation can only pass when the stars align (one party has house/senate/president), so even fine legislation would regularly ‘expire’ and not get renewed.

Business planning is also thrown by self destructing legislation. A stable regulatory regime allows businesses to invest appropriately and optimally. Changing regulations more often (via expiring laws that might or might not renew) will necessarily introduce inefficiency.

Business planning is also thrown by new laws

> Instead, in the current national regime, it has a tendency to ossify current laws

Housing is hyper-local. And California (or all the places with housing crises for that matter) tend to have a de-facto one-party government. So it has nothing to do with national regime or aligning stars. Voters just don't want affordable housing.

> often vastly

Well, there are two exaggerations.

But time limiting laws won't work. There will not be enough time to review them before they expire, so they'll all be extended en masse. It'll just be another bureaucratic step that costs time and work.

You're describing sunset clause or sunset provision!

A law requires further legislative action for it to not disappear on a certain pre-set date.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_provision

Another variation I think I read about is where the law is implemented with an explicit goal that must be achieved by a certain date, and if the goal is achieved, the law becomes a regular law; if the pre-defined metric is not met by the certain date, the law disappears.

If you like the article, the author has a book out, 'Arbitrary Lines' about zoning in the US, its ugly history, and what we should replace it with: https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines

Also an interesting guy to talk with if you get the chance.

> its ugly history

Let me guess - denying minorities access to white people?

Yes, racial and economic segregation.

California has many problems, but CEQA really is uniquely bad.

If I was Californian Emperor, I'd look at the 49 other states that get by without CEQA, and just copy the legislation from some state with a good track record on these issues.

Strong agree, this needs to be reevaluated. In particular, Washington State has fantastic environmental protection laws that don't get in the way of good environments improvements.

CEQA is a bad first draft of an environmental law, the definitions are bad, the logic is bad. And CEQA even protected things like level of service of traffic until recently, which greatly increased car traffic and pollution. For the era when it was passed, CEQA was probably good, and it has accomplished lots of good, but today it's causing as many problems as it seems to solve.

I wonder though, if the ballot initiative to repeal and replace it came up, would it stand a snowball’s chance in hell? Prop 13 gets put to the chopping block every few years and seems to always come out unscathed. Wouldn’t the same folks vote to maintain CEQA?

CEQA could be done legislatively. I think that the recent UC Berkeley outrages have created plenty of support for a fix, in the legislature, where discussion is far less ideological and far more pragmatic than during ballot measures. Which isn't to say it's pragmatic and not ideological, it's just far better than what goes on for ballot measures with millions to billions spent on PR campaigns.

Meanwhile: WA House passes bill banning single-family zoning

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-house-...

Progress can be made

Thanks for posting this, it wasn't on my radar.

Couldn't this also contribute to increased home prices in older single-family home neighborhoods? Or it could go the other way, too, depending on the desirability of new neighborhoods versus legacy neighborhoods. I speculate that this type of legislation, despite the benefits, might serve to further entrench generational and class differences between neighborhoods. I'm generally for this type of legislation, but I'm seeing some potential unforeseen consequences.

> But in 1972, the California courts interpreted a “public project” to include any private development that required governmental approvals.

And there it is. This is the real bane of our society, that a group of lifetime elected partisans can completely change the obvious meaning of a law, strike down laws, uphold blatantly unconstitutional laws, you name it.

So, we have a huge power grab by the government at some point in the past, and the government is totally unwilling to relinquish that power.

What is "infill housing"?

The article is never defines the term. That is kind of crucial to understanding what the objections are. This is precisely the kind of writing that infuriates me, because there is a lack of effort to understand anyone with opposing viewpoints.

> Infill housing is the insertion of additional housing units into an already-approved subdivision or neighborhood. They can be provided as additional units built on the same lot, by dividing existing homes into multiple units, or by creating new residential lots by further subdivision or lot line adjustments. (From wikipedia)

So if you own a single family home and add on to it (mother in law apartment, over garage unit, duplex conversion, etc) you're creating infill housing.

Ok, thanks for that. That is sort of what I had in mind. To the extend that it inhibits urban sprawl, I think that's a great thing. So many neighborhoods have been ruined by urban sprawl. There's one neighborhood near me that was ruined by all these strip malls. Almost every inch of ground covered by asphalt. Its a real eyesore. I suspect when people think of new development they envision waves of urban sprawl like that.

That type of sprawl is created by parking mandates. If you hate giant empty parking lots, you'll love the Parking Reform Network: https://parkingreform.org

Interesting ideas. It seems to be mostly about revitalizing cities. Problem is we are so spread out now, its difficult to believe there is any one solution. We still need cars, because no matter how well we fortify mass transit, there is always points that don't connect. I hate to be a debbie downer on this, but I'm just saying its really a tall order without impoverishing the economy. I applaud the effort, however. I just hope it is flexible; different places have different needs.

We should add 2021 to the title. A lot has changed since then.

California has passed a bunch of laws to address this. Some of these passed before 2021 but the effects are only being felt now.

For example: each town or city is required to file a housing element with the state showing how they will meet their quota for increased units. Failing to do so was given teeth in the late 2010s and the targets got a lot higher. Now when a town falls out of compliance the so-called "builder's remedy" comes into effect. This means a court can approve projects bypassing pretty much all local zoning, planning ordinances, review processes and environmental review (ie CEQA) as long as it meets certain requirements (eg 20% "affordable" housing).

Santa Monica fell out of compliance and had courts approve 4000+ new units. it' remains to be seen how many will actually be built but it's a start.

Much of the Bay Area is currently out of compliance or at risk of being out of compliance.

All the while you'll see the same arguments. Something as simple as townhouses or multi-family dwellings will "ruin the character". NIMBY supported councils trying to fight state requirements, etc.

But this is only one of many pieces of legislation. Others include automatic approval for higher density housing with a sufficient right-of-way (70' IIRC), easier approval for building residential over commercial (something that is illegal in most of the US), etc.

My sincere hope that there will be enough support for this to ultimately repeal Prop 13. It's estimated this has cost the state hundreds of billions of dollars and represents a massive giveaway to the states richest residents.

My understanding was builders' remedy skips all the municipal planning rules but that CEQA still applied as a state law. That makes it a key tool left for NIMBYs to smother a project to death.

CA YIMBY has been making a lot of progress on this at the state level. If this stuff makes you mad it’s a good org to donate to: https://cayimby.org/

Environmental justice lawsuits and regulatory action is probably the single greatest impediment to just about every major public works project, from nuclear plants to housing and mass transit. It's not just in California, but California makes it especially easy for one person to stop major developments.

No one is allowed to state the actual reason they oppose high density housing, so any will do.

Pretty sure the idea of a large low income housing building going up next to your house is universally undesirable.

The article bullshits around that fact with "disabled veterans" or some such nonsense, but the reality is the building will be something between a homeless shelter and a section 8 housing.

California infrastructure was originally scaled for around 20m people. There are currently currently around 40m people and rising living in the state. There are huge cyclical environmental events - periods of drought, wildfires, torrential rain and flooding (the entire central valley flooded in 1892, killing 40k people, bankrupting the state and wiping out housing, cattle and crops). We have a mediocre electric grid that fails if any of the above environmental events happen. We allow 95% of rain water to flow into the ocean then promote panic about global warming when the inadequate reservoirs are depleted in dry spells.

Attempts were made to verticalize housing in the 1970's bay area, with predictable results from building life cycles such as Geneva towers in San Francisco. https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Remembrance_of_Genev...

We don't need to pack people like sardines into metropolitan areas any more. We need to create smaller, more human living spaces closer to resources. There is so much undeveloped land in the state but we are wrecking historically important locations instead of thinking new development. The YIYBY activists are obsessed with existing cities, they are rooted in the past.

Infrastructure is not frozen in amber. It's honestly attitudes like these in the comment above that are the most corrosive to US as a nation. This is a sick disease that has taken root in the American mind, and I don't know what's the cure.

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-build-nothing-country

Add the new SF Muni line to the list of insanely expensive projects https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/muni-central-subway-1...

You want more sprawl? Sprawl that puts people farther away from the job centers and requires the state to build brand new expensive infrastructure in all of these places rather than benefitting from existing infrastructure. Look at how much it less costs to maintain infrastructure in denser settings compared to single family home suburbs. Not to mention if you have more sprawl you are potentially putting people in the way of the wildfires as they push into the forests. And then there are all the other environmental problems that come with sprawl...

We have the engineering knowhow to be able to build taller buildings, that can withstand earthquakes, and it has definitely improved since the 70s.

New towns and cities. Sprawl is last century thinking based on commuter xurbs etc. People should be able to chose to live in new 15 minute towns, historic metropolises or rurally.

Couple of typing errors on my post earlier: flood was 1862 not 1892, and 4k died not 40k. I didn't mention that the 1860's also had 2 major earthquakes, a drought and wildfires.

It is a general problem with regulations that they create bias for no-action. So in complex society with many regulations there is so much friction that vetocracy just wins.

There is a big problem in the U.S. where people don't trust bureaucratic regulation so we do it through the courts instead, which is much more expensive and 'random' because decisions are made by judges and not technocrats. Those technocrats are in theory more qualified to design regulations and are more accountable to voters who elect their bosses. You can go too far with regulations as well (see regulatory capture), but a new election can in theory more directly improve a regulator than it can improve the complex random set of rules set up by the courts.

With laws like CEQA and NEPA, lawsuits just keep layering condition upon condition that needs to be addressed to be compliant. Environmental impact studies have been getting bigger and bigger (and thus much more expensive). Fighting lawsuits is much more burdensome and time consuming than just having a regulator (which is not to say that regulatory oversight is never burdensome, just better than what we have). It also means rich people who can afford lawyers are more able to enforce regulations than poor people. This is a difficult hole to get out of unless we can persuade voters to push politicians to reform these laws.

Meanwhile, in WA: https://twitter.com/CSElmendorf/status/1633484561685561344

It drives me crazy that California is seen as the model of big-D Democratic governance when there's another state nearby, also with a more-or-less permanent Democratic majority, which is not a dysfunctional mess.

Pretty much just gerontocracy life. It is common for many societies to take this path. Repeated technology successes by the youth have permitted California to keep the machine going but the old here continue to bleed the young dry like vampires.

Decline is inevitable when technology gains stall. San Francisco is the bellwether. The city is already reeling. We will repair it or it will break.

All through the way down, our parasitic elders will lament its decline, denying their role in it.

What’s your long term view on California hydrology? Will droughts and desertification make it increasingly harder to live here?

The discussion seems to focus around people who don't want their neighborhood to change but California has global problems such as "where to get the water" that are sensitive to the total number of people in the state.

It's even more of a struggle to provision transportation infrastructure for these people, whether or not it is public transit or more roads and parking for cars.

People forget that California has about the same population density as Germany despite being mostly uninhabitable, uninhabited, military reservations, farms larger than some European countries, etc. Sure San Francisco is not up there in density with the densest cities such as Singapore (5 million), Hong Kong (7 million people) and the Gaza Strip (2 million) but answers from those places might not be scalable to a state with 40 million people and in fact all of those places struggle with inequality and governance issues.

As far as I understand the water problem in CA is mainly caused by agriculture.

There is some truth in that but it is also about having a diversified economy.

Water conservation could go a long way in both the rural and urban areas. In fact, if LA could find a cubic kilometer of water storage it could be self-sufficient based on rainfall.. With the concern that you might have to clean up PoPs in manufactured products in a way that makes Prop 65 look like a mashup of Phillip Morris and the 3M corporation.

>California has global problems such as "where to get the water"

Yet is still growing almonds in massive quantities.

This discussion is starting to remind me of when Trump got really invested in the number of birds killed by wind turbines.

If you look at the numbers, California total water use is going down over time, even as population has risen. Efficiency has outpaced population growth.

And that's just residential water use, which is a tiny fraction of agricultural, which is far more wasteful, and often used to grow alfalfa to export internationally, in addition to dairy in the state.

So the total number of people in the state is nowhere near a cap from water.

As for transit, that is easily solved with density. In the vast majority of California, even in its larger cities, it is not legal to build densely enough to support transit. Which means that everybody drives everywhere, which doesn't scale at all. Transit and density with mixed use solve the problem in two ways, by both greatly reducing the need to drive for miles for any small errand or social event, and replace it with means of transit that are orders of magnitude more efficient than cars.

Except isn't density the reason why they can't build HSR between LA and San Francisco but only between Fresno and Bakersfield?

Attitudes have a lot to do with why transit "doesn't work" in California. People who've never been to LA think it is "sprawling" but it "sprawling" because it is large, compared to other American cities it is highly dense, it is as dense or denser than the outer boros in NY.

One bad attitude is that "nobody takes the bus" but if you ever took the bus in LA you'd find it is crazy crowded.

It is not bad to take the bus from Beverley Hills to Hollywood or take the subway to downtown and then express bus to the airport (in the HOV lane at high speed with a view that shows you what inspired The Jetsons.) There is no bus that stops on Rodeo Drive, since there is a social stigma about the bus, but the bus does stop on the next block over so the people who work there can get to work. It's that sense of stigma that's the problem.

Similarly for some perverse reason BART terminates in Milbrae despite there being a perfectly good track that is barely used that heads through Palo Alto and further south from San Francisco. Places in Germany that are similarly populated as Palo Alto have excellent train service (ever heard of the S-Bahn or Metro North?)

Granted I imagine a Utopia where the density of the neighborhood around that rail line was doubled by demolishing a single family house or two per block and putting in an 8-12 story high tower (think some neighborhoods in L.A. or some very nice neighborhoods like Moema in São Paulo) and an occasional duplex or triplex. Attitudes get in the way.

Land assembly is a huge hassle, of course. But I know HSR is going up through San Jose, and possible to SF too, and will likely get to some point in LA. I don't think they can't build there, just that it's taking longer.

For example, the San Jose to Merced section had its environment impact report approved "recently":

https://hsr.ca.gov/high-speed-rail-in-california/project-sec...

Most people even if they actually have legitimate concerns do not possess the aptitude to make meaningful decisions. They will make whatever micro change they can as long as it's morally correct in their head simply for the fact that it errs to the green side vs the corporate/consumer side. Obviously, this just leads to shooting yourself in the foot.

Here's something I'm seeing on recent LCDs, they show this popup (with a countdown) when you first turn it on:

> In compliance with California Energy Commission, the brightness and contrast settings cannot be adjusted in the sRGB mode. Would you like to remain in the sRGB mode?

1. LCDs already only use maybe 15W. Changing the brightness makes almost no difference.

2. Changing the contrast makes absolutely no difference in terms of power usage

3. sRGB mode implies I'm going to see the image the way it's meant to be displayed. Switching to racing mode (whatevr the hell that means), among 10 other options like "movie mode" to bypass it sounds like a non-starter especially given that LCD menus are practically impossible to use. Disabling brightness makes the monitor likely to find the trash can as it will be uncomfortable by default if the room lighting is too dim or too high compared to the monitor.

4. A popup should not be a thing on a monitor. It already has the worst GUI on earth. The physical buttons are randomly placed. They react in literally 1-2 seconds each time you manage to even press the right one. And they switch up the GUI and button designs every 6 months with someone who has zero know-how.

5. LCDs are beta tech and there is always something a vendor can do to massively improve. Examples include: input lag from bad programming, viewing angle phenomena, VRR which doesn't really fix anything in the long run but was still easily sellable, the future when they fix strobing which is just a small engineering exercise of rearranging timings, but the difference will be big enough to merit buying a new LCD. Just the intro of IPS which didn't even fix the viewing angle but substantially improved it had almost every tech enthusiast trashing his old LCD for new ones, circa 2007.

6. Every single CCFL LCD ever made is now in the trash and each contains mercury to boot.

7. Vendors also lie to the consumer to trick them into buying new LCDs, further reducing any green benefit. A massive example of this is when they switched to LED backlights and every single piece of marketing material, from in store to manufacturer deliberately called them "LED monitors" to make it seem like this is a new technology.

Surprised there is no archive link since its been locked behind a paywall. Here it is for anyone who is having trouble:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220403135108/https://www.theat...

Anyone ever been to Bolinas, CA?

Yes

Nice.

They’d do anything to lower supply to increase demand for their homes

Californians: Let's oppose all new housing

Also Californians: Let's vote in a Property Tax scheme where the amount you pay is based on when you or your ancestors bought the home.

Also, also Californians: Weird why do we have 25% of the nation's homeless population???

fairly certain the weather has a bit to do with point 3.

as for point 1, it's kinda not the case. My area is > 70% new construction (5 years or younger). There are whole neighborhoods here that look totally finished up until a certain house, and then are just rows on rows of half built plywood.

There is non zero housing being built in CA, but it's way, way below what's needed to make housing anywhere near affordable in urban areas!

It is not the weather:

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/everything-you-think-you-k...

I buy into the idea that high housing costs are the #1 reason, but I do want to point out that mild weather increases the visibility of the homeless population.

For most Americans, when they think of homeless people they don’t really care as long as they are out of sight and out of mind. So I believe that’s where the misconception comes from.

You bring up visibility of the homeless, that is one thing, but it is besides parent's point. There are government statistics on the homeless population and California has a huge share of it. See the 2022 HUD report [1] (also note the distinction between homeless and unsheltered):

• More than half of all people experiencing homelessness in the country were in four states: California (30% or 171,521 people); New York (13% or 74,178 people); Florida (5% or 25,959 people); and Washington (4% or 25,211).

• California accounted for half of all unsheltered people in the country (115,491 people). This is more than nine times the number of unsheltered people in the state with the next highest number, Washington. In the 2022 point-in-time count, Washington reported 12,668 people or just six percent of the national total of people in unsheltered locations.

[1] page 16 of https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2022-...

Absolute numbers are not very useful. You want to look at per capita statistics, which the link I posted does. It's worth a read.

For sure. I was just bringing numbers to support the >25% number claimed higher, and that it is not a matter of visibility. I frequently find people seem to think the homeless are simply more visible in California.

Also didn't want to copy paste the whole page, thinking people here know that California's population is nowhere near half or even 30% of the US population. The link I shared has on page 16 a map that addresses your point, and also on the same page:

• California also had the highest rate of homelessness, with 44 people experiencing homelessness out of every 10,000 people in the state.

The link you posted is interesting. It does take numbers form a variety of different sources and it is difficult to know if the methodologies are always comparable. That page uses HUD numbers (and the map I am pointing to) as one of the sources. The states ranking it gives for homeless per capita is from 2019 (prepandemic), and different from the one HUD has in their latest report.

Thanks for the link! It adds some context I didn't have. It does seem fairly obvious that the primary driver of homelessness is the cost of a home. So obvious that it almost doesn't even seem like there's a point in bringing it up, but that's just because I'm giving people too much credit, I suppose.

I guess I also always assumed that like, "hey, if it were me, I'd be going where I won't die from the cold". I hold that there's gotta be some displaced individuals in this cohort, but by the looks of the numbers, they're mostly drowned out in what looks like a much worse problem than one might assume.

At the end of the day, this is (as so many things are) rooted in the wealth gap. There's a certain level of difficulty one can be forgiven for not wanting to engage in - and it's real hard to make ends meet under the current circumstances.

Oh dear lord the weather. This keeps getting trotted out. And something about Regan. Newsflash: European countries with Mediterranean climates are not overrun with all of Europe’s homeless. Regan was president over 30 years ago!

California’s first problem is that it is in denial. Its second problem is that it refuses to think it is the cause of the problem or responsible for the solution.

Your straw man argument might hold up better if you at least spelled the former president's name correctly.

Thanks for the spellcheck. By saying my argument was a strawman, you are implying that no one is actually saying that, when it’s truly one of the most common things that comes up when you talk to people in SF about homelessness.

There might be a few other relevant distinctions between California (part of the US, remember?) and European states, e.g. their robust safety nets and health systems.

Bingo. And California is responsible for funding and administering many of these safety net programs.

> Californians: Let's oppose all new housing

This is like snarkily claiming "Senators: let's oppose all new laws", which refuses to acknowledge that gridlock comes from a sufficient minority exists to create hurdles for any new policy.

The problem is that roughly 0% of Californians will say they want no new housing, but a enough of them will oppose the specific projects that are near them, with the effect that all housing construction projects get hindered, even when everyone says in the abstract that more housing is needed and important.

This is certainly a more accurate and interesting analysis. I’d also like to point out how anti-gentrification activists and wealthy NIMBYs often work towards the same goal. I believe the anti-gentrification activists have the more noble cause, but the net effect is the same.

What we are seeing is only a product of extremely high demand meeting an unstoppable (ish) force. The results are not great.

As much as people hate on market solutions, completely ignoring Market forces simply makes them build and compound until they reach a breaking point.

much like squeezing a balloon

I was talking about Newsom being anti-NIMBY and my dad says "Judging from people I talk too, that seems anti-democractic" and my response was "Well actually for any given backyard, 99% of the population wants housing built there" So it is an important, if subtle, distinction.

>Also, also Californians: Weird why do we have 25% of the nation's homeless population???

I'm pretty sure a large contingent of the most wealthy Californians (oligarch types) are secretly quite pro homelessness. Their mere presence exerts a motivating effect on the workforce simply by dint of a clear example of what may happen to you too if you lose your job.

Also, the only really effective way to arrest the rise of homelessness is to trash the value of their existing property portfolios by building sufficient housing.

Only in California will you find someone who can say with a straight face: "we need more housing" followed by "no we can't allow that housing". It seems to me that Californian's (at least the activists) like the idea of more housing, they just hate more housing.

It's almost like the folks screaming about "affordable housing" figured out they like yelling about the problem more than they actually want the problem to be solved.

I met someone that seemed to experience the cognitive dissonance in real time. Voted for people who advocated affordable housing. They built some next to her and she started calling and complaining and going to meetings.

Apparently the building was too tall or too close or too many of the people in it were not the sort she wanted to live next to. But shes is still a fan of affordable housing in other neighborhoods.

Definition of NIMBY

True, but there's an interesting difference between this case and, e.g., nuclear power or something.

Government is one way to outsource charity. Vote for programs, pay your taxes, and you care. When it actually affects you directly, that's a very different kind of charity, and requires a different kind of caring.

"It seems to me that Californian's (at least the activists) like the idea of more housing, they just hate more housing."

As a I Californian, think it's darker. I think Californians don't believe in more housing at all. I think they will say to your face they want more lower income housing, but behind closed voting booth they vote NO to housing.

> Only in California will you find someone who can say with a straight face: "we need more housing" followed by "no we can't allow that housing".

I don't think NIMBYism is confined to California. Lots of people understand more housing is needed somewhere, but also don't want a high-rise next door to them.

Discussing prop 13 is a can of worms but I don't think it is a major factor in the affordability crisis.

It does not drive the cost to build or buy a new home up. In fact, it increases the cost of new home ownership and therefore drive new home price down.

It is more complicated in the case of rental prices, but it is still a 1% tax that gets passed on to renters.

The problem is that a new house costs 1 million dollars, not that there is a 1% tax on that new house. This is a supply problem. If a new house cost 250k, a 1% tax would be irrelevant

> Also, also Californians: Weird why do we have 25% of the nation's homeless population???

doesn’t help most of the union have been busing homeless people to California. And sadly California has started turning to busing as well.

Housing in Cali is known to cause cancer

While its fun to point out the hypocrisy and self-centered blinders of Californians, this is how most of the country behaves.

Raise taxes, just not mine (I'm not as rich as that other guy).

More affordable housing, but less sprawl. Don't tell me what to do with my property, but subsidize that last mile of internet.

Those evil (whatevers) need to pay their fair share, and give me free stuff

Finally a use case for generative AI that might improve the world.

Why must they want to get denser? What is wrong with liking the density they have and wanting no more? Go live somewhere else! Surely there's got to be some answer to the tech giant jobs by now.

I do not want to live in a high rise or even a 5 story, but if I did, I cannot imagine going some place that doesn't have them and challenging "why don't you have a borg cube for me to live in?"

It's nice to live in walking distance of your job, friends, and favourite restaurants. It's nice to be able to visit bars and not worry about how to get home. It's nice to not be stuck on a virtual island without your car.

Sure, but so what? To me that means you don't want to live in some parts of California. So don't.

Who is “they” in this situation? The issue in this article is developers wanting to build housing being blocked by misuse of an environmental quality law.

If you live in a city with a large and growing population it’s natural to build more housing to accommodate the growth. If you don’t like it you’re also free to “Go live somewhere else!” Right?

The newcomer has the superior moral right to the land?

Although the entire US is the result of newcomers bulldozing the natives, I thought we at least on paper recognize that was not a good thing.

I wasn't sure about expressing an argument that even hints conservative sympathy, but this completely amazing thing you just said removes all doubt. I don't live there and probably never will, but now I say good for them. I hope they tell anyone coming along with the attitude you just expressed to gfys.

Rezoning empowers the existing landowner to do what they want with the land, within reason. Newcomers don't have any "moral right" over the land but neither do existing residents have an absolute right to dictate what happens on land that isn't theirs. Nobody's forcing people to bulldoze existing housing to increase density, but lifting arbitrary density restrictions give the current set of owners more power over their own property.

If nobody wants to force anyone then what's the complaint? If the municipalities are maintaining their desired zoning, it's for a reason and they perfectly well have that right.

Clearly the communities as a whole are trying to maintain an environment they like, and which they already have, not trying to create in anyone else's place to suit themselves, and the zoning is doing exactly the job it exists to do.

I see no reason that more people have to cram in to a place that is already full to capacity according to it's desired density level, until such time as the country runs out of space anywhere else.

I don't see why municipalities have any right to enact zoning, or really anything at all. Municipalities are just conveniences for the state, and municipalities should only have the power that the state gives them.

Should a community be able to vote to exclude people who don't make a certain amount of money? How about people of a certain race or sexual orientation? These are freedoms that supersede the desires of the community, and since the single-family zoning laws are roughly paramount to gatekeeping by income, it makes sense to eliminate them.

I will note again that eliminating the restrictive zoning also doesn't equal a mandate over what landowners must to do with their land. You're welcome to keep your plot as-is. You just can't tell your neighbor what to do with their land.

No one is excluding based on class. They're simply full. You have no right to be somewhere where someone else already is. Prices are only high because a bezillion people want to try to get in the same place. Just go live somewhere else and there's no more problem. This argument that since there's not enough housing for all the outsiders that want to move in, they must build housing for you (or change their desired zoning) is completely entitled.

The municipality IS keeping it's plot the way they want it.

0.25 acre plot is not a country, it's a part of something else, and at that something else level, it is valid to make the same sorts of decisions for themselves as the homeowner does for their lot.

I would hate life in an HOA. What I do about that is I don't move into an HOA, not to move into one and demand that they let me raise chickens on "my own property".

I think I was 15 years old or less the last time I thought zones were some sort of travesty of injustice. Same a taxes.

I agree with your aesthetic, but don't see why the government needs to be involved. People who want borg cubes should build and live in borg cubes. People who want spacious suburbs should build and live in spacious suburbs. Nobody should be able to force someone else to live how they want.

Things only get difficult when people try to use the government as a cudgel to impose their wants on other people and their land.

If you don't want to live next to someone's Cube or Suburban House, sucks to suck. It's not your land.

Ah but zones have always existed. Even in don't-tread-on-me Texas you aren't free to just do anything just anywhere.

If you don't like that we all have to share the space and that some places get earmarked for particular uses, and no you aren't free to build a pig farm or even a human farm just anywhere, even if you buy the land, sucks to suck.

Buy all the land in the entire municipality and populate it with people who all vote to change the zoning. Or don't. But complaining that the current residents won't let you in is just not very defensible.

first off, zone have not always existed, and in practice, have always been subject to reclassification, which occurs routinely. You dont have to go back far to find that most areas that are now single family zoning were something else, often agriculture outside of large metros.

You raise a fair question regarding what the appropriate level of government and consensus should be to make or change zoning back in reality.

However, it doesnt address the question of how to the reality of populations with mixed opinions on zoning change. Are you talking about a 51% vote threshold, 100% consensus, or simply based on the whim of an unelected official.

I don't like complaining as much as the next guy and dont think anyone has a defacto right to "get in". Rather, Im talking about what rights I have if I'm already in, and maybe always have been.

"Even in don't-tread-on-me Texas you aren't free to just do anything just anywhere."

Texas has "normal" zoning laws everywhere but the city of Houston. You will often see people say that Houston has de facto zoning because of deed restrictions and neighborhood covenants, and this is sort of true, but a lot of Houston does allow for more mixed use than other places and the city seems visibly different than L.A. (or Dallas). Lots of restaurants in industrial areas, etc. Houston is ugly to my eye but I don't think this is why.

On the other hand, I don't want pig farms in residential neighborhoods. On the third hand, the in the U.S. the state government (depending on the state constitution) has the legal right to take those decisions away from municipalities and neighborhoods and probably should. It really is too easy to be in favor of building things that are genuinely necessary and beneficial (not pig farms) in the abstract as long as you can't see them.

> In 2018, a proposal to redevelop a San Francisco laundromat as a 75-unit apartment building

75 housing units? Wow, they must have big laundromats in San Francisco. I've never seen a laundromat that was bigger than approximately one housing unit. Were they planning to replace a two-storey building with a tower block?

I don't mind being downvoted, but I like to know why. For example, are laundromats in SF really huge?

Its the whole building over the laundromat, and its big enough. Reason did an article and video interviewing Bob Tillman[0], the owner, who has spent nearly 5 years and $1.4 million trying to convert his laundromat into new housing.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4

I see, thanks.

I support this. High density housing destroys property values by enabling poor people to move in, and results in higher crime. NIMBYism works. Keep the immigrants, criminals, and homeless centralized I'm the dystopian cities and the rest of the state can survive. The point is to pretend you care about the poor and the environment while really just using these as covers for your own self interest. Then just demonize those who oppose said policies as bigots or uneducated. Works every time.

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