California Strip Malls to Be Upzoned Tomorrow | Hacker News Reader

California Strip Malls to Be Upzoned Tomorrow

darrellowens.substack.com

53 pointsjseliger44 comments

This is always great to see.

Something I’ve never understood with opposition to denser zoning is the following. If the land is up zoned surely it’s market value increases in turn because the range of what can be built on it increases? Your house might be worth $X amount as a single family home but if your land were incorporated into a new apartment complex which has 4-5x more homes in the same space, it is objectively worth more, right? Where then, does the common belief that an increase in housing decreases home value arise?

Never made sense to me.

1. Total value would probably end up being more, but the values of existing stocks would drop due to the increased supply

2. Rent would certainly drop

Surely there’s a level at which the market is price saturated. As in, marginally, a homes value can’t increase as rapidly zoned as a single family home as it could if it were zoned less restrictively. This would be based on overall location desirability I would think. I wonder if there have been any studies done on this topic.

> I wonder if there have been any studies done on this topic. Just look at Tokyo.

Cali is definitely desirable. Majority of the people leave because of the cost of the living, i,e housing is just too expensive. If only we could just adopt Tokyo's zoning model

The fantasy is that you get to stay in your house while its value rises. Having to leave (because they need to build the apartment complex) is less appealing, not least because now you have to find a new place to live and, if nearby prices have gone up, you're not much better off than before (this is especially true of the huge number of people who bought houses at extremely low rates since 2008, since they'd have to refinance at current rates), or else you have to move further away from your friends/family/community.

The value of some places is the very fact that they're low density. I don't think that applies to strip malls necessarily, but this is why people come out strong against upzoning suburban or rural areas. The people that live there like it the way it is, and you can't give more people that experience as more people ruins what's good about it.

> The value of some places is the very fact that they're low density.

Exactly. Just look at a satellite image of Atherton, CA or Lexington MA; they're low-density residential places with plenty of greenery where each lot is sizable and crucially, near major economic centers with plenty of high-paying jobs. They're desirable precisely because they allow you more breathing room while being geographically close to the hustle and bustle of a big city.

There is an interesting assumption here that is sadly codified into law. I.e that individuals' who desire the characteristics you describe are willing to pay more than the "true" value of the land if it were not protected by zoning.

We might never know what case is true because both scenarios can't exist at once. I think the closest we can get would actually be Brookline, MA in the same vein as your example of Lexington. There are dense clusters in the area as well as single family homes. One could potentially look at any plots converted from single family homes to apartments/condos to determine each individual's willingness to be located in that relatively sparse city.

This is an interesting way to frame something I've seen stated as "if you don't own the land you don't get to decide what to do with it". I can't say for certain if people would be willing to pay above "market" for more space in all areas, but I think they would in some.

Your comment is not part of this and is thoughtful, but it does touch on the anti-democratic streak present in the YIMBY/urbanist community. At its worst, this attitude is essentially "I know better what is good for this area than the people that live there" which has had disastrous consequences historically

I really appreciate this perspective. It’s important for people to live where they agree to common principles. In the end that’s why you choose to live where you live.

In some sense it cuts both ways. I’m more of the opinion that these areas are allowed to exist to the extent that the market allows them to exist. It’s obviously not desirable to have your neighbor sell of their house to someone who builds a 20 story apartment or something like that. But, if both you, your neighbor, and society as a whole can financially benefit from this fact, why prevent it from happening in a legal sense. Zoning only masks the true value of an area.

It’s strange, however, because I recognize the history of razing historic areas in the hopes of progress (see Paris’ Île de la Cité) and how invasive it is to have your home change because of one person selling out. I love old buildings and often marvel at how quaint and peaceful these areas can be. I don’t want them to be lost and I want future generations to experience the same emotions I feel when looking at these areas.

Ultimately, I think it would be beneficial just to have an idea of how land could be used for purposes other than what it is currently zoned for. Obfuscation of the price of a piece of land due to zoning is, in my opinion, more detrimental than helpful.

> This is an interesting way to frame something I've seen stated as "if you don't own the land you don't get to decide what to do with it".

How about “if you cannot afford to defend the land, you do not get to decide what to do with it”?

Who is paying for all the police/military/courts/legal system keeping that highly desirable land secure from “outsiders”?

Land owners in the US have an enormous subsidy from non land owners simply by being able to secure their asset without commensurate payment for security, and doubly so in California with their prop 13 property tax increase cap.

Calling letting people use their own property as they choose "anti-democratic" is a bizarre argument.

Individual rights are one of the traditional pillars of democracy.

It's not really possible to determine this because it's a prisoner's dilemma of sorts.

If I have 50 neighbours with no zoning rules, 49 of them stay put, but one sells up to a developer, the 49 who chose not to sell now have to live with the additional density, while the one family that sold up "wins" and moves elsewhere with their stacks of cash.

Without zoning, or planning permission, or _some_ way of the locals preventing land use changes in this way, you eventually end up surrounded by tower blocks.

You spelled out NIMBY without spelling out NIMBY. Too bad for the suburbanites I suppose.

NIMBY is not an insult.

I chose where to live, I know the reasons I moved here, I will fight to keep the place I moved to the way it was when I chose to move here. I'm a proud NIMBY.

Things around you are going to change. That’s the nature of life. You can fight against it, for a while.

One might consider to provide 1 point for self-awareness, but as the great philosopher of our time Bo Burnham said, “self awareness does not absolve anyone of anything.”

Don't need to be absolved of anything. I want my life to get better, not worse. I'll fight for that and it's nothing that requires some sort of religious absolution.

Name calling aside, putting high density housing in suburban neighborhoods with no transit stops and no additional parking is a terrible idea.

(You seem to be advocating for this, given the content of the article.)

It would be much better to upzone stuff in areas that are already medium density, since those areas have busses, trains, walkable shops, etc.

I mean some people legitimately do not want to live in denser areas or want an apartment building next door to them. The value of the land isn't just the utility of it.

Like I would probably sell my house and move if my neighborhood was upzoned and my neighbors sold to a developer putting in a multi unit building. That would suck. Great for society, terrible for me.

In some ways it’s bad for society too in my opinion. As suburbs become more dense, people with money who don’t want to deal with the hassle of increased local traffic, higher property taxes, higher crime move even further out and get an even bigger house for cheaper. Rinse and repeat. My favorite example is that I live in the Phoenix metro. Tempe, the suburban city bordering Phoenix to the east has a major street called Rural Road. It is of course in no way rural anymore and I can continue East on the US 60 for another 30 minutes and not sure I’d encounter anything truly “rural”.

The issue in CA is that everywhere is the suburbs. My grandma’s house is in a single family neighborhood 10 minutes away from a huge office building with Illumina on the outside. The fact that this company, which has revolutionized biological research is in an area without enough housing and requires its workers to drive 1-2 h through traffic is insane from a society development perspective.

Suburbs can still exist but you need to have density around transit and provide an alternative to sitting in traffic.

How would it be terrible for you?

I mean this is going to be hard to phrase without sounding like an old man shouting at the clouds, but it comes down to the fact that I don't want to live next door to dozens of people. It's one of the reasons I chose not to live in a denser area. People and their cars are loud. I don't want light pollution shining onto my property at night. I don't want a tall building next door with windows looming into my yard. I would be sad to see all the old growth trees cut down to make way for the construction or street widened for the traffic.

And you can say if I don't like those things then don't live somewhere where it's a thing. Which is exactly why I live where I do, and if that situation changed I'd leave. But it's not hard to empathize with people that want to preserve the kind of community they bought into.

> But it's not hard to empathize with people that want to preserve the kind of community they bought into

It is hard to empathize when common sense says the basic math of increasing populations means things will change, and continue changing, especially in highly desirable areas.

On the flip side the value of your lane will have massively increased so you’re getting significant compensation. Maybe you are wealthy enough not to care about the extra money you’ve been given.

Unless you're interested in selling your house, that it technically rises in value really only means that you pay more in property tax. It being worth more doesn't help you.

Lots of people have purchased a home where they have with the intention of living there permanently. If the density around them increases, that decreases their enjoyment of their home and ultimately may force them to sell and move elsewhere. Which is a serious PITA and may not be feasible if it means they'd have to find a new job elsewhere.

So for many people, there is nothing but downside to this happening for them, personally.

I mean not in cali, the property tax isn’t allowed to increase. That’s part of the problem.

This is understandable and I almost wanted to include it as a caveat in my original comment. Tax burden from upzoning could really hurt some homeowners. On the flip side, zoning could be seen as subsidizing land that would otherwise be more productive if it were zoned to what the market demands.

Not in California it can't. Property taxes can rise a maximum of 2% per year for as long as you own a property. That's rarely enough to even keep up with inflation.

You completely missed "decreases their enjoyment of their home" part. It's not just about money, some people actually prefer to live in low-density environments, as evidenced by the existence of expensive low-density towns.

An unrealized capital gain being "nothing but downside" is the possibly the most charitable spin of an interpretation. If you can't support the carrying cost of your private property, you sell it, just as you would with a car, for example. And in this case, the large gain eases the pain immensely. If you wish to inefficiently use land that otherwise would have a much higher utility to your surrounding community, you need to pay for that privilege.

A home — where your family lives, where your children have made friends and go to school, where you have built an extended community — is not a car.

If you wish to rob other people of their homes, you ought to pay for that privilege, and only with their acquiescence.

Disagree. The refusal to build any new homes where people want to live is creating huge problems for all of society: it prevents people from starting families, it's massive wasted economic opportunity whenever people can't move to where they'd be most efficient, and it shunts tons of investment dollars into the pockets of landlords instead of providing useful value. It's an existential threat to the country.

At some point it has to be treated as a negative externality like pollution, and the people responsible for it need to pay their fair share of these externality costs.

> At some point it has to be treated as a negative externality like pollution, and the people responsible for it need to pay their fair share of these externality costs.

I disagree strongly with categorizing it as an externality. But ignoring that, what you're actually arguing is that nobody can ever own a home that they can rely on being a home for the rest of their lives. Unless you're into real estate investing, this cuts out the one real advantage to owning a home and allows something you purportedly own to be legally stolen from you.

> If you can't support the carrying cost of your private property, you sell it, just as you would with a car, for example.

A house, being a home, is radically different than anything else precisely because you can't just sell it without incurring an enormous disruption in your life, and if you're being forced out of a location you invested in for "life", then an enormous personal toll as well.

I can sell my car without completely uprooting my life and perhaps ending up with a lower level of happiness. Very often, this is not possible with a home.

> And in this case, the large gain eases the pain immensely.

Not really. There are plenty of things that money doesn't make better.

You're looking at this through a purely economic lens. That's pretty mercenary, but fair enough. The point that I'm making is that for many, a house is something far larger and deeper than just an economic unit.

A home still needs to use socialized resources be viable. It needs the surrounding infrastructure, the schools must be funded, etc. Unless your home is in the middle of nowhere, it will definitely need to contribute to the upkeep of the region around it.

Rising property tax forces people to move which is a good thing imho.

California property taxes are fixed to when you bought the property + 2% change per year

The logical flaw in that argument is assuming that home owners care about money.

Many don’t, or money is not the primary motivation.

Protecting their lifestyle location is likely a stronger motivator.

I don’t want even a low rise apartment opposite my house, or a 7/11 on my street, even if it meant my house value doubled.

I like my community and neighbours. And that is the point.

I could move for sure, if my property value doubled, but I’d be losing so much more!

There was a previous “too good to be true” post from this same sub stack author a few months ago.

IIRC he claimed that zoning was nearly going to end due to the builder’s remedy provision in some recent CA bills.

When I searched for other commentary from informed CA lawyers it seemed like the claims in the article were exaggerated.

I hope that these are not exaggerated bc the changes outlined would be a good step, but do keep the caveat in mind.

From my research, the claims themselves are true or at least close to true, but the implications behind those claims were not. Builders remedy did end the zoning regime as it existed, but it didn't abolish zoning, merely replace it with something arguably (slightly?) better. Its also time gated, and subject to the whim of the market, and has caveats that could fill a page.

I wish they’d get rid of the affordability clauses.

I have lived in upgraded low income places priced for high wage earners, and aging high income construction with much lower rents.

Older luxury buildings uniformly provide a much higher quality of living than more expensive, new low income construction.

The push to force people to build uneconomical low income garbage just means there will be generations of kids with health impacts due to being raised in poorly constructed, but still overpriced housing.

That just perpetuates the cycle of poverty, and I’ve lived in California long enough to suspect that this is the intended outcome.

On the other hand, glutting the high and mid end of the market with more inventory will increase the supply of high quality affordable housing. This is basic supply and demand and it has been shown again and again.

Also, doing it that way avoids a bunch of wasted taxpayer money that’s currently spent on bureaucracy and subsidies.

There are even a bunch of suckers in the real estate development world willing to build the glut of houses, and then eat the demand risk.

One more thing, which I just realized:

The affordable housing is deed restricted to always be affordable. That suppresses the value of the housing, so that the people living in the housing make a lower return on their investment than their neighbors.

I really don’t see how this is better for the people living in the affordable housing than adding inventory in normal neighborhoods, and lowering market prices for used houses to an affordable level.

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