OT: California Dreamin': Density is the Future.

[prototoast]

Originally Posted by jkbrwn

^On that note, an ugly 1980s office building in Pasadena on Los Robles and Cordova has just been converted to apartments… except they’re ginormous ultra luxury apartments with Italian marble floors and all of them are upwards of $1,000,000. Seems like a real missed opportunity. Hoping that with the slew of empty office buildings in Pasadena, some affordable apartments will be built…

"affordable" apartments are a red herring. The fundamental issue is the mismatch between the number of buyers and the number of housing units. Anything that increases the total number of housing units makes housing more affordable for everyone. Many insanely expensive housing units in California are equivalent to what would be considered "affordable housing" in most of the country. Rich people need places to live to, and if you don't build it for them, they'll just drive up the price of everything else.

[prototoast]

Originally Posted by cgolvin

Very difficult problem, but I too think that a statewide mandate is unlikely to be a good solution, local perspective is necessary.

The fundamental problem with local perspective is that what's good for existing residents of a locality is often worse for the state more broadly. Restricting new housing inflates real estate values for existing homeowners, but keeps people away from areas with high productivity industries.

Estimates of these costs are massive: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~moretti/growth.pdf

The losers of these exclusionary housing policies aren't the people who already live in a location, but the people who aren't able to live there. Local control seems like a nice idea, but leads to very inefficient outcomes.

[HenryA]

Wouldn’t want local people deciding what’s best for themselves. Who knows what what might happen to the plans of the State. The plans might get derailed and people might live as they choose.

[prototoast]

Originally Posted by HenryA

Wouldn’t want local people deciding what’s best for themselves. Who knows what what might happen to the plans of the State. The plans might get derailed and people might live as they choose.

Under prior law, most people couldn't decided what they wanted for themselves. They were restricted to only being allowed to build single family housing. The new state law expands the freedom given to property owners, but only slightly. Currently, homeowners are burdened by local zoning regulations that restrict their choices and inhibit a free real estate market.

The consequences of this have been incredibly high housing costs, and significant lost economic productivity. Can you really look at a row of dilapidated 1500 sq ft houses selling for $2 million dollars whose residents have hour-long commutes and think to yourself "this is a good policy outcome"?

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by cgolvin

Very difficult problem, but I too think that a statewide mandate is unlikely to be a good solution, local perspective is necessary.

I live some miles west of @JasonF and my neighbors would scream bloody murder at the prospect of MDUs replacing homes. OTOH, smaller homes that sell in my neighborhood frequently get bought by developers who raze perfectly good stock in order to build something 3x the size and 10x as ugly, so if an MDU were well-designed I might consider it less of an eyesore. And the light rail system is only a mile+ walk (might as well be 10 for a majority of Angelenos).

But density can increase in various ways. One solution I have seen in a neighborhood just to the west of us is to split a single family lot in half and build two houses, each of which is larger than the single home that was there previously since they're 2 story. These are done with good design and still provide a similar sense of space to the owners, though of course the yard is smaller. There is enough street parking in this area to deal with the expanded density, though I'm not sure that would be the case were every lot converted in this way.

It also seems apparent that there is and will continue to be a significant glut of commercial real estate. I don't know enough about construction to contrast the cost of repurposing these spaces to housing versus the cost of demolition and new build, but I'd be surprised if it's prohibitive. What had long been a mall in my neighborhood is in the process of being turned into commercial space, leased by Google … who, I understand, is now trying to get out from under the decade+ lease they signed. Many of these commercial spaces tend to be close to public transit and amenities which make their repurposing even more attractive.

Honest and understandable response. I get it. I got into a heated debate with my partner about the same subject. Ultimately, the argument comes down to an adverse effect on property values. (I live in an apartment building)

Apropos of this discussion, it’s always interesting how California is lauded as a bastion of progressivism. It’s the birthplace of “redlining” (Berkeley), Prop 13, and the annihilation of one of the most celebrated public transportation systems in the country - the LA trolley cars. https://www.streetcar.la/project-info/304-2/

“For years the system was considered by many to be “the vital cog in the city’s transportation system,” and according to author Steven Ealson, provided transportation for millions who enjoyed the streetcar so much they would “ride for miles simply for fun or for transportation to places of amusement.” The demise of the streetcar began with the unprecedented development of single-family tract housing designed and built to accommodate automobiles. This pattern of development quickened during post-war housing construction, and accelerated the downfall of the streetcar system as the region shifted its focus toward private transportation.”

Ultimately, the environmental and social costs of NIMBYISM aren’t sustainable.

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by prototoast

Under prior law, most people couldn't decided what they wanted for themselves. They were restricted to only being allowed to build single family housing. The new state law expands the freedom given to property owners, but only slightly. Currently, homeowners are burdened by local zoning regulations that restrict their choices and inhibit a free real estate market.

The consequences of this have been incredibly high housing costs, and significant lost economic productivity. [I]Can you really look at a row of dilapidated 1500 sq ft houses selling for $2 million dollars whose residents have hour-long commutes and think to yourself "this is a good policy outcome"?

[/I]

No.

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by Mike V

I moved from SoCal so I didn't have to smell my neighbor from 3 doors down farts. I'm not ever going back to that ever.

I live in an affordable apartment in a mixed use, mixed density, diverse neighborhood. One of my neighbors has an obnoxious parakeet and another neighbor smells like he bathes in cologne.

But I get to live in a cycling paradise close to my family. I’ll take it.

[joosttx]

I love California. I love where I live. I have lived in most parts of the United States, South America, Europe and Asia. I have traveled all over the world and every state except South Dakota. There is no place I rather live than Marin County in California.

[ORMojo]

Trust me, implementing this in Oregon isn't going well. Not without controversy, not without a lack of understanding from city planners how to implement so the market will actually build as intended, and definitely not quickly.

I serve on a statewide committee (I think 46 members) trying to write rules for implementing elements of this, mainly the climate change, transportation, and equity elements. We will probably take about a year longer in this effort than originally planned.

Here's a local op-ed published two weeks ago, written by a friend (not that I necessarily fully agree with all of his points . . . hint, I don't). I'm pointing this op-ed out because it generated enough feedback that the paper published an entire web page dedicated to the responses, 16 posted so far, plus this one that got it's own page.

To reiterate something I alluded to above, everyone on the rulemaking committee, regardless of what perspective they come from, is skeptical that the market will produce the intended outcome.

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by ORMojo

Trust me, implementing this in Oregon isn't going well. Not without controversy, not without a lack of understanding from city planners how to implement so the market will actually build as intended, and definitely not quickly.

I serve on a statewide committee (I think 46 members) trying to write rules for implementing elements of this, mainly the climate change, transportation, and equity elements. We will probably take about a year longer in this effort than originally planned.

Here's a local op-ed published two weeks ago, written by a friend (not that I necessarily fully agree with all of his points . . . hint, I don't). I'm pointing this op-ed out because it generated enough feedback that the paper published an entire web page dedicated to the responses, 16 posted so far, plus this one that got it's own page.

To reiterate something I alluded to above, everyone on the rulemaking committee, regardless of what perspective they come from, is skeptical that the market will produce the intended outcome.

LA has already tried a few things to alleviate the housing shortage. The good intentions usually run into the reality of the permiting process. They already have the TOC (Transit oriented Communities) zoning excemptions for higher density housing, less parking etc, but the permitting process is onerous, and currently backed up to the point, you have no visibility when permits will be issued and as a developer with LPs, it makes it hard to forecast a IRR.

You also have 3 levels of affordable housing you can include in a multi-family building, but again it brings all sorts of permitting issues.

For any of this to be successful, a huge simplification of permitting needs to happen just to get through the backlogs but bad actors will then try to take advantage. The devil is in the details and I have no idea how to fix the system.

I suspect that if the bill passes, it will immediately cause the price of homes in these small neighborhoods to skyrocket as speculators think teardowns.

[buddybikes]

A friend of mine has been in groups pushing/trying to solve global reduction in births since 1980s. If we can't get our population rate down, people have to go somewhere.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by XXtwindad

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/b...te-bill-9.html

"So far only Oregon has passed a state-level ban on single-family house zoning. If California’s S.B. 9 gets final passage and is signed, it would add a state of 40 million to the list.

In California, where the median home price recently eclipsed $800,000 and more than 100,000 people sleep outside each night, a vision of a single-family home with a yard to enjoy the sun is encoded in residents’ dreams. The move to pass zoning reform has been a yearslong odyssey with the twists and turns of a screenplay.

Single-family-only zoning is something of a California creation: In 1916, Berkeley became what was probably the first U.S. city to restrict neighborhoods to one-family homes. A century later it’s become a bedrock value that homeowners across the nation euphemistically describe as maintaining “neighborhood character.”

A friend of mine has been in groups pushing/trying to solve global reduction in births since 1980s. If we can't get our population rate down, people have to go somewhere.

[HenryA]

Somehow I doubt that more restrictions to fix the old restrictions to fix the older restrictions to fix the even older restrictions is gonna work. Central planning generally fails because it so often defies human nature.


And then there’s this part:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cQp9RC2sfT0

[AngryScientist]

I have not read the article yet, but one of my biggest concerns here is the overcrowding of schools. Obviously if you increase population density you increase the load on resources. Are these concerns being addressed in tandem in Oregon and California?

[prototoast]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

I have not read the article yet, but one of my biggest concerns here is the overcrowding of schools. Obviously if you increase population density you increase the load on resources. Are these concerns being addressed in tandem in Oregon and California?

More population brings more tax revenue, which supports more schools. There's no magic number for population. Tokyo, London, and New York City all manage to educate their populations with higher populations and densities than Los Angeles. Urban schools tend to be better, on average, than rural schools.

This is such a small step, it's unlikely to have a meaningful impact on school enrollment, but if it does, there's no reason to think school capacity couldn't be increased.