California just cut the red tape on housing in San Francisco. Is L.A. next? | Hacker News Reader

California just cut the red tape on housing in San Francisco. Is L.A. next?

latimes.com

24 pointsPaulHoule27 comments

"The law now shields the majority of housing projects from the Board of Supervisors’ scrutiny and allows developers to skip through the long wait times, hearings and environmental review processes that tack months"

A lot of these environmental reviews the California government pushed and cheered for, so they're essentially fixing the problem that they created.

There is more nuance going on than that of course. People have used excessive process to abuse their position. The idea that its onerous and time consuming is the entire point, that way bribes are the way to grease the wheels. Three LA city council members from the last 10 years are serving federal prison sentences on racketeering charges. It makes it hard to undo and streamline this system when so many stakeholders with power to enact change are reaping illegal benefit from it as it stands.

> Three LA city council members from the last 10 years are serving federal prison sentences on racketeering charges

Racketeering related to developments and permits? Or something else?

Apparetly 3 was a severe underestimation. Both Mitch Englander, José Huizar, and Justin Jangwoo Kim the former planning commissioner have plead guilty in a scheme related to extorting some 1.5 million from developers over what was basically a pay for play development arrangement. As far as I know that investigation is still ongoing and more unmasked figures in city hall are implicated. Not just cash either but also hookers were apparently offered. Mark Ridley Thomas was indicted over favorably awarding contracts to USC in a quid pro quo exchange involving giving his son a graduate degree and a professorship. Curren Price has also been implicated in pay for play and still holds office despite an ongoing state level investigation.

"Records show current and former Councilmembers Joe Buscaino, Englander, Martinez, Huizar and Cedillo, as well as now-County Supervisor Janice Hahn, all received substantial donations linked to Leung, sometimes receiving the money as they were poised to make key decisions about the development. Donations tied to Leung also went to an independent campaign committee that supported Garcetti but was not controlled by him." (1)

Former deputy mayor recently found guilty of racketeering over development as well. (2)

Quite a good summary of the current circus as of 2022: (1) https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-14/a-guide-...

(2) https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/former-los-angeles-depu...

Meanwhile, most people in the city I wager have no idea any of this has been going on, since most local papers have shut down in recent years and LA times has severely cut down on its staff as well.

Thanks for the research and details - appreciate it.

> Meanwhile, most people in the city I wager have no idea any of this has been going on, since most local papers have shut down in recent years and LA times has severely cut down on its staff as well.

I think this is a bigger problem than just local news (although I do want that problem solved too). People simply don’t have time to keep up on all of this even if the news was there. We have too little time and too many source of information, entertainment, etc. to follow all of this closely. If you have a family, forget it. Personally I think the issue is more structural - like the ease with which small numbers of representatives or public employees can be influenced.

Structural issues are certainly there. The council was supposed to reform and empower their ethics comission in light of these scandals but they've been dragging their heels lately to no surprise (1). There is still something to be said about a lack fo good sources of local news but also how we tend to fill our time focusing on irrelevant details. I'm sure many more angelenos are up to date about the latest gaffes in the national debate that hardly affects their daily lives than they are about their own blatantly corrupted leadership that has a much more direct effect on everything local, through their effect on home prices, rents, traffic, economic opportunity, and even local air pollution. Especially in a place like California that does a lot of functions such as social welfare or environmental regulation through its own state or municipal institutions vs. a large reliance on federal decisions or subsidy.

1. https://laist.com/news/politics/ethics-reform-stalled-la-cit...

My understanding is that the environmental reviews were intended to e.g. help less-privileged people from having highways and refineries built where they lived. Of course it has been abused to no end by more politically savvy folks.

Terrible. The locals who live in communities affected by this overreach will lose the culture and quality of life they enjoy over time, as density increases. I’m not sure why everyone needs to crowd into a few cities. We should be developing mid tier cities more and building a more distributed economy. That way everyone can enjoy prosperous lives without being in each others way to an excessive degree. Other countries have used financial incentives to attract businesses to mid tier cities. America doesn’t do that as well.

There is no shortage of units nationwide - just people who feel entitled to live in the most desirable and expensive places at a price they can afford. There are plenty of towns where housing is available and cheap. Sure people may not get the desk job they want in the field they want but there are jobs available.

In summary: “screw you, I got mine. Go some where else”.

OP whines about the entitled but sounds like he’s pretty entitled as well.

The fact that replies of this quality level are so common on this topic even on HN, where internet-style sarcasm/bitterness is otherwise relatively rare, makes me desperately sad. It just makes me feel like nobody cares about anybody. I understand you probably have good intentions, but please don't fan the flames of hatred on yet another topic we simply can't seem to be rational about as a culture. There is no unambiguous moral high-ground on virtually any topic, particularly this one.

I think many are just exhausted by all the people who constantly miss the forest for the trees on this issue. Supply and demand isn't really something that is taught in our school system unless you go on to take classes that go over this and other basic economic theories.

It’s not about “getting mine”. If I and neighbors have a community, governing it ourselves to maintain our quality of life makes sense. We have put in time and work and money to make our communities what they are. Now others look at these communities and want it for themselves but with the job they want to be in, with the price they can pay, etc. That’s just not reasonable and especially because it requires current residents to subsidize them with a loss of their own quality of life. For example if there is more traffic or less parking or more crowds at parks, it takes away quality of life from the rest of us.

Decisions on density and zoning should remain local, because of how local these decisions and impacts can be, and how directly it impacts current local residents.

By the way I would be happy to even pay taxes to encourage economic or housing development in other cities to strike a balance between affordability and protecting quality of life. I see an often repeated false attack against anti density people that they just care about their house’s value. That’s not on my mind at all. I just don’t want to have my neighborhood crumble into every other decrepit high density city I’ve lived in previously, after building a life that fits me well over years, just because a sudden influx of newcomers want to change everything. Is that really any more “selfish” than those seeking to move in and take away local zoning and permitting process?

This is the same logic folks used to keep black people out of their neighborhood.

People using a line of logic to justify racism doesn't make the logic itself faulty. That would be onerous. If you disagree with the parent, do so, rather than calling them racist. Please save that for other parts of the internet (or for overtly racist people).

I don't see that comment as calling out the previous commenter as a racist, just highlighting how brittle the logic actually is.

I think the lesson is that humans are in fact fungible, and doling out preferential treatment of them in terms of ancestry or color or economics or merely owning land isn't in the spirit of an egalitarian democracy. We certainly don't live in one of those today, but I think we like to at least pretend we do and we should strive for it.

what generally happens to a neighborhood after that particular demographic shift happens?

I really hope you aren't implying that black people cause crime, because that's what this comment reads like.

If you look back to the early 1900's you find that excluding minorities was a big reason for zoning regulations and minimum lot sizes. Minorities tended to live in apartments so banning apartments was a good way to keep them out. Immigrants and minorities tend to live in multi-generational households. Ban that as well.

On the other side of the coin its never you and all your neighbors. Its you and a handful of a noisy minority of neighbors with the free time to show up and complain at development meetings. No census on the issue was ever done. A lot of people don't care at all about apartments or not. Case in point: all the people living in and near apartments across the earth. And on top of all of this most people aren't even qualified to opine on sweeping land use decisions when you consider the economic knowledge required to put all of this in its correct context.

I assume you live in a city. If everyone else before you in your city had thought the same way and blocked development it's very likely you'd have never lived where you are right now, and the culture you are trying to keep would have never even formed.

If your city is attractive enough it will eventually be developed further, instead of fighting completely against an inevitable change it'd be good to help shape how such developments can happen in a way that won't completely erode what you like about what you and your neighbours fostered. It's a much more creative endeavour than attempting to stop the winds of change, those won't stop blowing, work with it.

Or we can build homes where people want to live. Feel free to move to Lubbock, TX to make room for these “locals”. What about the locals in these mid tier cities who would be displaced by Facebook employee #20,727?

Honest question, why does the finger of entitlement point toward people wanting to build more or live in a place instead of toward the people who feel entitled to keep their neighborhoods stagnant, or entitled to rising property values?

Who gets to point the finger of entitlement, and why?

You say the question is honest, but your characterization of each side (neutral words for one side, "stagnant" for the other) implies an uncharitable bias. Regardless, there is not one finger - it is of course not that simple. People on both sides are entitled and people on both sides are the victims of entitlement.

As for who gets to make accusations of entitlement - anybody. When two people make different claims about the spread of entitlement, that's just disagreement. You don't have to build up rules around it.

It's honest. I'm not trying to hide my bias.

The rest of the response though attempts to "both-sides" the issue. The reality is that NIMBYs are wrong. That's just a fact of nature.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Cupertino School District had to close three elementary schools recently because there weren't enough students [1]. This didn't happen in an aging town in the middle of nowhere. This happened in the middle of the Silicon Valley, right next to Apple Campus.

If a town's "culture" is such that even having one of the most desirable workplaces in the world cannot save it from becoming an old retirement town, maybe there's something wrong with the culture and it should serve the town well to shake away that culture.

[1] https://www.svvoice.com/cusd-board-votes-to-close-three-scho...

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