Why It Took 17 Years to Build 49 Housing Units in Los Angeles | Hacker News Reader

Why It Took 17 Years to Build 49 Housing Units in Los Angeles

wsj.com

32 pointscs70214 comments

Open articleView on HN

...compared to 1+ year for the Empire State building:

https://patrickcollison.com/fast

Clearly, whatever we've been doing to solve the shortage of low-income housing in the US is not working. At all.

We ought to try different things, even if they ruffle a lot of feathers.

Here's a different approach to low-income housing that looks promising/interesting, posted on HN a few days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38581891

Like everything new, I'm sure it will face resistance on many fronts.

This Padsplit thing you link to is pretty amazing, in the scale of the difference in rent, moving costs, and even property financial return. Yes, we'll have to see how long before neighborhoods try blocking them but for now that looks very interesting. (Also a lot of low-income housing is supposed to come with supervision and living or mental health assistance but obviously not everyone needs that.)

https://archive.ph/3LWD2

Why is housing so expensive in CA??

Anti-building factions dominated the democratic party and have taken over zoning boards and other relevant councils at the local and regional level. Building anything requires navigating a byzantine bureaucracy and paying for expensive permits and the like. Most of all, people just don't want more things to be built. This is from 2018 but bar state-wide measures to force cities to build more, it hasn't improved much https://reason.com/video/2018/12/27/san-francisco-mission-ho....

> Most of all, people just don't want more things to be built.

Home and property owners are effective at organizing against building permits. They have both a desire and a means to stop new building.

The desire to restrict new building permits comes from the understanding that restricting supply shifts the supply curve to the left. They have enough collective bargaining power that they can effectively operate as a block.

Their means comes from Cal. Gov. Code § 65100

> There is in each city and county a planning agency with the powers necessary to carry out the purposes of this title. The legislative body of each city and county shall by ordinance assign the functions of the planning agency to a planning department, one or more planning commissions, administrative bodies or hearing officers, the legislative body itself, or any combination thereof, as it deems appropriate and necessary.

and like you pointed out, the byzantine system of each planning agency. Property owners operate within the system of zoning, at the local level, to stymie new building to restrict supply. Zoning laws allow property owners to effective operate as a cartel.

Still it's important to ask, "How much self-determination are citizens and neighborhoods afforded when it comes to city planning?" or "How can self-determination be balanced against cartelization?"

Do Angelinos find this embarrassing? I find NYCs crime spike and our failure to build rail transit at the rate of my grandfather. Do angelinos feel that same internalization?

I think the mayor does, but the populace seems happy w/“my house got more valuable, who cares about the homeless encampments?”

Most property owners don't think "I don't care about homelessness."

They think, "Please make homelessness go away! It's presence is lowering the value of my property." That's why so many homelessness sweeps act as neighborhood clean up operations. It's also why so many people make the association between police and the maintenance of the current property-ownership system.

Those wealthy enough to own home have a financial and social incentive not to view it as embarrassing.

Those not wealthy enough to afford a home tend more towards feeling despairing or humiliated about it.

I guess you're right. I'm a homeowner but also an annoying pro-housing YIMBY, but for some reason I see Angelinos as more cynical about "I got mine"

Maybe because the city is so sprawling? "Move them over there" seems to be the default plan, not "shit, why is my kids teacher living in a camper?"

"Would I object if the city decided to raze all the single-family homes on my block and build a housing tower for teachers?" is a good example of where zoning beliefs and neighborhood beliefs often come into conflict, and where United States land politics tend especially to get mired in "anything but that"; thus, the tendency to sprawl.

there's a lot of options in the middle? We could allow building over 2 stories near subway stations, we could get rid of parking minimums, we could allow missing middle in Eastern Queens and Staten Island by right, etc.

But sure, if it ended homelessness, you could build a tower on my block.

Whatever that article is talking about, I will point out for the people who don't live in the Los Angeles area, that developers have been standing up a LOT of new apartment buildings in the past 5 years or so. I can think of some areas in the 'south bay' where I've seen old houses and shopping centers get torn down and replaced with huge 5 floor buildings with at least 100 units. There's an area over by culver city/santa monica (can't quite remember where) where it's just a loooong street of buildings that were built like within the past 5 years...

I'm not saying that we don't have a shortage of housing, but I am saying that article portrays the entire LA area as adding 49 units in 17 years, which is absurd and totally misrepresenting the situation.

Recently? Yes. Historically? Not so much.

You might be referring to Marina del Rey which has had much development in the past decade.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com