[HN Gopher] Berkeley may get rid of single-family zoning
___________________________________________________________________
Berkeley may get rid of single-family zoning
Author : jseliger
Score : 220 points
Date : 2021-02-24 16:14 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.berkeleyside.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.berkeleyside.com)
| lacker wrote:
| It'll be interesting to see how much of an effect this has.
| Construction in Berkeley is still extremely difficult. Neighbors
| have many ways to oppose new construction, and something as
| simple as adding an extra room to a house can end up requiring
| multiple city council votes.
|
| Still, I'm excited to see things moving in the right direction.
| Berkeley is fundamentally a university town with one of the best
| public universities in the world, so making it affordable to live
| in Berkeley is providing a great opportunity to many people.
| sep_field wrote:
| time to confiscate the houses of the rich and give them to the
| poor.
| cft wrote:
| These comments are better for Reddit. HN is not yet a
| political platform
| sep_field wrote:
| "start ups" are inherently a political topic -- the culture
| of them promotes hypercapitalism.
| castlecrasher2 wrote:
| Every topic is inherently political/religious to
| cultists.
| sep_field wrote:
| oh, how silly of me! of course, poisoning the planet and
| selling out peoples privacy to line the pockets of
| vultures isn't political at all! gosh what was I
| thinking.
| ed312 wrote:
| Sure! Let's start with you first comrade.
| sep_field wrote:
| I'm not rich, and don't live in Berkeley.
| cft wrote:
| I looked up his comment and submission history. All are
| political propaganda, with no contribution to any technical
| or start-up topics
| sep_field wrote:
| That's blatantly false and a ridiculous attempt at
| character assassination. I have posted about lockpicking,
| a proof that the MOV instruction is turing-complete, and
| have contributed to a number of technical discussions.
|
| Also, I'm not a "he", and your assumptions about my
| gender are offensive. My pronouns are they/them.
| kindatrue wrote:
| >Construction in Berkeley is still extremely difficult
|
| True for most of the Bay Area
| shuckles wrote:
| Gut renovating old single family homes is a lot more difficult
| than demolishing them to build small, newer multi family (think
| a 2 story quadplex). There was plenty of the former happening
| throughout the Bay Area, and the latter was largely illegal.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| It remains very good to remove SFH mandates, but it probably
| won't result in significant change for a good long while.
|
| Purely from the underlying economics, you'd be surprised but in
| many cases the "highest and best" use of land will still be to
| maintain an existing detached house.
|
| This policy however _could_ make it that in cases where
| existing property is a tear down, and we 're talking about what
| to build on bare land, it makes more sense to build with
| intenser uses.
| xwdv wrote:
| What can they do to bring in more people of color?
| zetazzed wrote:
| Yes, this resolution is just symbolic. However, more concrete
| legislation to allow quadplexes in the vast majority of the city
| is coming soon. Our councilmember, Lori Droste, has been the
| champion for both initiatives. Following her on Twitter is a good
| way to stay up to date on these issues:
| https://twitter.com/loridroste
| _ah wrote:
| I always liked the idea of budget-based taxation, similar to the
| way that condos do special assessments:
|
| 1. Decide how much money the state needs in taxes to fund the
| various pieces of infrastructure (roads, schools, etc).
|
| 2. Value everyone's property. Divide up the tax proportionally
| based on property value. If your house is worth twice as much as
| your neighbor, you should pay twice as much tax.
|
| The interesting thing about this approach is that it creates a
| stable tax income rate for the state and mostly eliminates market
| fluctuations. Did the economy boom? Ok great, your house is now
| worth 50% more but so is your neighbor's house, so the ratio is
| the same and you pay the same tax as the prior year. Same
| mechanism works in reverse during a crash.
|
| With this method, the tax paid directly relates to the budget.
| Spending too much? It's not the economy's fault, it's yours:
| maybe try voting for different initiatives (or representatives)
| next time.
|
| This also aligns the incentives for older residents. If an area
| is economically static you should expect city budgets (and taxes)
| to increase roughly in line with inflation. If the area grows and
| develops and becomes a much more interesting place to live, it's
| no longer the same city. You have the option to pay for those
| increased services or you can move... similar to the way that
| you'll pay more rent if the landlord remodels your apartment
| building. But in fact, the effect is moderated: a house built in
| 1930 will probably be less valuable than new 2021 construction so
| the hold-out retiree should see taxes that increase at a rate
| less than the average.
| jedberg wrote:
| I mean, this is good progress, but very little of Berkeley was
| zoned single family anymore anyway. Basically just up in the
| hills. Everything near campus was already multi-family, and if it
| wasn't the city council would approve a zoning change for anyone
| who asked.
|
| https://www.cityofberkeley.info/gisportal/
| lacker wrote:
| According to this map, 49% of Berkeley residential areas are
| single-family zoned:
|
| https://www.berkeleyside.com/2021/02/17/berkeley-may-get-rid...
|
| But yeah I think in practice the bigger question is whether
| Berkeley will streamline the process for replacing single-
| family houses with apartment buildings. AFAICT that is
| technically permitted but the approval process rejects the vast
| majority of applications.
| jedberg wrote:
| Right, but you wouldn't build apartments in most of the pink
| area anyway, because it's all up in the hills. The part of
| the city that anyone would want to build multi-family on is,
| for the most part, already zoned for it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The supposed reforms should also loosen regulations in R-1A and
| R-2 zones, which are much larger. The press coverage of this is
| garbage. Read the actual resolution.
|
| https://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Item...
| shuckles wrote:
| In practice, reforms like this are more impactful when combined
| with density bonuses and ministerial approvals for housing
| proposals if the city is behind targets. Both of those are
| already in play in California.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Is zoning purely the domain of local governments? I don't see how
| we can realistically tackle climate change without a serious push
| to build extremely energy efficient high density housing. But
| sadly it seems that would have a snowball chance in hell in many
| areas with NIMBYism.
|
| Would the Federal gov be able to do something about that?
| clairity wrote:
| no, again, the state is the canonical unit of government in the
| _united states of america_. states can delegate zoning to
| localities, termed "local control", but it can also revoke it
| and madate zoning (or not) at a state level. the federal
| government is not an umbrella organization, but rather an
| interstitial one with limited, delegated powers from the
| collective states.
|
| the feds can regulate pollution generally because it's an
| interstate (and global) concern, but can't reach into states to
| coerce zoning directly.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| It can certainly do so if Congress passes laws to give it
| that power, as long as it isn't unconstitutional. And that
| constitutionality can also be changed through amendments.
| Similarly within states, the power given to the state can be
| modified over time. I'm not sure that the states are the
| "canonical" model as much as the principle that America tries
| to provide locality of decision making as much as possible,
| so that people can live how they want based on their own
| local values, culture, etc.
| clairity wrote:
| no, it can't. congress could try but it would be quickly
| challenged and ultimately found unconstitutional. states
| are the canonical units of government by design. an
| amendment might work in limited ways, but that's also a
| much harder road (e.g., equal rights act).
| mercutio2 wrote:
| The Berkeleyside link [0] seems vastly more informative.
|
| [0] https://www.berkeleyside.com/2021/02/17/berkeley-may-get-
| rid...
| supernova87a wrote:
| Yes, but this is still only one of about 10 other factors that
| prevent the region or city from having enough housing, or
| affordable housing (and I don't mean in the public government-run
| housing sense).
|
| Maybe Berkeley should also try to address the other unending
| issues that they keep up to prevent any meaningful change, if
| they really mean it:
|
| -- Endless and convoluted environmental + city approvals
| processes that corrupt any transparent application for
| development and favor those who have money to navigate it
|
| -- Picking and choosing special interest / special case
| neighborhoods or people to try to protect, to the detriment of
| everyone else wanting to live there
|
| -- Rent control
|
| -- The extremely backwards property tax policies that favor
| existing landowners over anyone new, young, poor (though this
| admittedly is California's problem, not just one city or county)
| and make everything else attempted bandaids -- and misguided
| bandaids, at that -- to fix the system.
| caturopath wrote:
| > The extremely backwards property tax policies that favor
| existing landowners over anyone new, young, poor (though this
| admittedly is California's problem, not just one city or
| county) and make everything else attempted bandaids -- and
| misguided bandaids, at that -- to fix the system.
|
| It's bizarre how much Prop 13 appeals to folks, even those who
| don't benefit from it. When you explain it to people, their
| initial reaction is to express worry about the millionaires who
| own the houses that have quintupled in value, as though they
| are in need of protection.
|
| I hope someone eventually finds the right sales pitch to get
| rid of it: the policy distorts not only price but liquidity.
| zepto wrote:
| > It's bizarre how much Prop 13 appeals to folks, even those
| who don't benefit from it.
|
| It should appeals to anyone who buys a house _at any age_.
|
| Without Prop 13, home owners tax rates rise _just because
| nearby businesses are successful_ , which is absurdly
| regressive.
|
| Prop 13 appeals to and _benefits_ people who don't own real-
| estate yet, because it means that when they can do so, they
| know that their costs will be predictable, and they won't be
| forced out of their homes by the next wave of IPOs or
| whatever else _beyond their control_ (such as government
| money printing) pushes prices up.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| >Without Prop 13, home owners tax rates rise just because
| nearby businesses are successful, which is absurdly
| regressive.
|
| Because the value of the asset they own has increased.
|
| Prop 13 discourages people from moving and unfairly shifts
| the tax burden on new residents
| zepto wrote:
| > Because the value of the asset they own has increased.
|
| Ok, so do you propose giving cash payments to home owners
| whenever there is a dip in their property price?
|
| Also, what's wrong with being able to call a place home
| and be able to live there without being driven out?
|
| Seems like a human right since we first moved into caves.
| strange_quark wrote:
| Property taxes aren't like income taxes -- the tax rate
| is incredibly variable and set at at the local level when
| cities make their budgets. So if the city doesn't need
| more revenue, the tax rate can just be adjusted down to
| keep property tax payments the same. But if the city does
| need more revenue, hopefully it's because more public
| services are being provided, in which case, it's entirely
| fair that the people who live there and benefit from the
| increased services pay for them.
| zepto wrote:
| This doesn't actually address anything in my comment.
|
| It sounds like you are saying tax rates should have
| nothing to do with home values and should just be
| arbitrarily adjusted to make property owners pay for
| whatever the local government wants.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Why would they get more money when the price dips?
|
| Property tax rates should be fair to all property owners,
| not favor those that got in first which is what prop13
| does.
|
| >Also, what's wrong with being able to call a place home
| and be able to live there without being driven out?
|
| Nothing, just don't make others pay for it. Prop13 has
| created a distorted housing market that hurts many more
| people than it helps
| zepto wrote:
| > Why would they get more money when the price dips?
|
| Because they paid tax on a gain that wasn't real.
|
| > just don't make others pay for it. Prop13 has created a
| distorted housing market that hurts many more people than
| it helps
|
| People who don't pay property taxes aren't paying
| anything at all.
|
| As soon as you buy property, you are benefiting from prop
| 13 yourself.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| >Because they paid tax on a gain that wasn't real.
|
| You pay property tax on the assessed value of a piece of
| property.
|
| >As soon as you buy property, you are benefiting from
| prop 13 yourself.
|
| Based on what? Newer homeowners are carrying more of the
| tax burden than they would have without prop 13.
| jdxcode wrote:
| I literally pay 10x as much tax as my next door neighbor in
| a house with the same value. The schools need to be funded
| and the cost should be shared far more equally.
| zepto wrote:
| > The schools need to be funded and the cost should be
| shared far more equally.
|
| You'll get no argument for me on that one.
|
| Property taxes are an absolutely terrible way to fund
| local government.
|
| Other countries don't do it that way, and there is no
| reason we should.
|
| England for example just has a flat tax per person living
| in a given county or borough, with some exemptions for
| people who don't have enough income.
|
| Income taxes, sales taxes and business taxes are of
| course other possibilities.
|
| Taxing economic activity on the basis that a well
| serviced community supports that activity is very
| reasonable.
| caturopath wrote:
| Taxing wealth -- albeit in this limited form -- is fairly
| attractive, and especially the taxation of land (rather
| than improvements) is. (We should be incentivizing folks
| to make efficient use of land.)
| zepto wrote:
| > We should be incentivizing folks to make efficient use
| of land.
|
| Yes - why don't we invest in places where house prices
| are lower?
|
| Stockton keeps being mentioned.
|
| The incentives are for people to live there and for
| businesses to set up offices there, and amenities to be
| created for the people who live and work there.
|
| Why would you be against developing areas that are not as
| nice right now?
| paconbork wrote:
| >The incentives are for people to live there and for
| businesses to set up offices there
|
| Clearly not, otherwise people would move there. As it
| turns out, network effects exist, causing jobs to be near
| each other and for some reason people like to be close to
| their jobs rather than commuting 90 minutes from
| Stockton.
|
| >Why would you be against developing areas that are not
| as nice right now?
|
| These aren't mutually exclusive and you know that.
| toast0 wrote:
| Property taxes under Prop 13 are actually a pretty good
| way to fund local government.
|
| The revenue is very stable and dependable. Even in the
| depths of the 2009 dowturn, almost all California
| counties still had slightly increasing tax rolls.
| Assuming most municipal business is pretty stable, this
| would seem to be a good match.
|
| Other states solve this in other ways. In Washington
| state, the overall assessment for a municipality can only
| go up slightly each year, but individual property
| assessments are not limited, so you can still have your
| share of the tax go up a lot if your neighborhood is
| assessed higher and other neighborhoods in the
| municipality are assessed lower.
| zepto wrote:
| Good point - stability of taxes is important for the govt
| as well as homeowners.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Taxing property has a massive advantage of stability and
| predictability for local governments. If you have a local
| sales tax, a neighboring jurisdiction might compete for
| lower tax rates; you might have a high-volume retailer
| close or move to the neighboring town; you might have a
| large business close (or get enticed to move).
|
| I'd like my city to have a stable source of funding, so
| we don't have problems issuing bonds and don't have to
| cut school funding during a recession.
| lokar wrote:
| IMO it is best to view conflicts like this in terms of
| trying to provide a benefit to some people, and how to pay
| for it.
|
| Prop 13 is promoted as helping people of modest means
| (lower income, or retired) who see the value of their
| property go way up, thus imposing an unaffordable tax
| burden and forcing them to sell and move.
|
| The cost of this benefit is currently (AIUI), higher income
| taxes generally, and particularly on high earners, as well
| as higher sales tax. If you look at state and local revenue
| over time you will see a shift away from property tax and
| towards these other taxes.
|
| The thing to focus on is that the total amount of state
| revenue is going to end up about the same, laws like this
| just shift who pays it.
| caturopath wrote:
| Equity is not the only concern, though Prop 13 is
| certainly a transfer of wealth too established, richer
| people from poorer, less-established ones.
|
| Prop 13 also incentivizes people _not to move_. This adds
| friction to an already high-friction market: people are
| disincentivized to upsize/downsize, move closer to work,
| etc., which harms the market beyond just the fact that
| it's an inequitable wealth transfer.
| zepto wrote:
| And yet California has a buoyant real estate market.
|
| It's not an inequitable wealth transfer. Only people who
| own property pay these taxes, and all property owners
| benefit from Prop 13.
| vladgur wrote:
| With prop 13, the burden of paying for infrastructure and
| services provided to you and your neighbors falls to new
| generation of owners who pay 5 times in property taxes than
| their neighbors. This is unfair and is absurdly regressive.
|
| Most other states regularly reassess the property of your
| home for taxation purposes and many have mechanisms to
| reduce tax liability of people living in their homes(vs
| renting them out) or seniors.
|
| In california however due to prop 13, both the state and
| the city are forced to find different ways to pay for their
| costs, such as raising sales tax(which went up
| significantly since passing of prop 13 in 1978) or passing
| local bond measures to pay for schools, sewage etc.
|
| The only people who win are those who won a lottery of
| being able to afford a home in CA 10/20/30 years ago.
| zepto wrote:
| > With prop 13, the burden of paying for infrastructure
| and services provided to you and your neighbors falls to
| new generation of owners who pay 5 times in property
| taxes than their neighbors.
|
| At first yes, but over time you become one of the people
| who pays relatively less compared to new buyers.
|
| Nobody won a lottery 10 , 20 or 30 years ago.
|
| If you buy a home today, then in 10, 20, 30 years time
| people will be saying you won the lottery.
| pbuzbee wrote:
| I feel that the solution to the issue you raise is to
| reform property tax in CA, not to stick with Prop 13.
|
| Prop 13 definitely doesn't benefit people who don't own
| real estate because property owners have an incentive not
| to sell: they can keep their lower tax rate _and_ their
| expensive home! This restricts supply and raises property
| prices.
| zepto wrote:
| Property prices in CA have risen because salaries and
| IPOs have enabled people to compete for property.
|
| Property owners should be able to keep an affordable tax
| _and_ their home, regardless of what their home cost.
|
| Raising property taxes based on market values, is taxing
| people based on _how much other people want their homes_.
|
| I agree that property taxes should be reformed.
|
| Let's not make houses even more risky and expensive to
| own.
|
| Instead, let's fund public services in other ways, so
| school quality isn't dependent on the average income
| bracket of the neighborhood, for example.
| caturopath wrote:
| There are a lot of reasons that property taxes have risen
| in California. Giving people free money that expires when
| they sell their home is one. Making building more housing
| mostly illegal is another. Economic prosperity among some
| people in the urban regions of California is certainly
| one too.
|
| Property tax - especially on the land value rather than
| the improvements - is good. It can provide a feedback of
| the cost of what someone is using.
|
| Funding schools based on tiny districts is of course a
| poor policy, and local taxes -- be it property taxes,
| income taxes, corporate taxes, sales tax, fees, whatever
| -- shouldn't be what dictates the funding of local
| schools. That's really a separate question.
| zepto wrote:
| I'm glad you agree that Prop 13 is not the cause of
| rising prices.
|
| > That's really a separate question.
|
| Schools are just one example of a service funded by
| property taxes.
|
| It's not a separate question at all.
|
| > Property tax - especially on the land value rather than
| the improvements - is good. It can provide a feedback of
| the cost of what someone is using.
|
| What you are calling 'value' in this case is just a
| measure of how much other people want the property. It
| has nothing whatsoever to do with _cost_.
|
| This just makes it easier for even richer people to take
| existing property rather than invest in developing other
| places.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > What you are calling 'value' in this case is just a
| measure of how much other people want the property. It
| has nothing whatsoever to do with cost. This just makes
| it easier for even richer people to take existing
| property rather than invest in developing other places.
|
| Allocating resources to the people who want it most (and
| presumably make the most of it) seems like a good goal to
| have. Wouldn't that be the most effective use of
| resources?
| rendang wrote:
| I don't think that having gotten lucky and bought a home
| somewhere when it was cheap should entitle you to enjoy
| living there forever when others are willing to pay more
| for the same home. Imagine you spent your life eating a
| certain kind of shellfish, which used to be cheap, but
| then a foreign country started importing this shellfish
| in huge quantities and drove the price very high. I don't
| think you should feel entitled to be able to buy the
| product for the rest of your life at the cheaper price
| you were used to.
|
| People who bought may feel more entitled to a stake than
| renters, but in either case it's necessary to have some
| kind of incentive (high property tax) to drive out people
| who don't want to pay the market rate for living
| somewhere, so that available housing slots end up being
| given to those people who are willing to pay the most for
| them.
| godshatter wrote:
| > I don't think that having gotten lucky and bought a
| home somewhere when it was cheap should entitle you to
| enjoy living there forever when others are willing to pay
| more for the same home.
|
| If others are willing to pay more for the same home, then
| they should make the current owner of the home an offer.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > I don't think that having gotten lucky and bought a
| home somewhere when it was cheap should entitle you to
| enjoy living there forever when others are willing to pay
| more for the same home.
|
| What should buying a home mean if not that? Sure, if
| someone else is willing to pay a lot more, they're
| welcome to bid on it, but it's still up to you if you
| want to give that up and stay put where you have roots,
| friends, family, kids in school, etc.
| nybble41 wrote:
| Agreed. There is some cognitive dissonance going on
| between the idea of the home you _bought_ being _your
| property_ --meaning you shouldn't be affected by changes
| in market value unless you choose to sell it--and the
| requirement to pay annual property taxes merely to retain
| what you already own. People buy homes rather than rent
| precisely to avoid this sort of situation, but to the tax
| collector everyone looks like a renter.
| zepto wrote:
| > I don't think that having gotten lucky and bought a
| home somewhere when it was cheap
|
| What makes you think it was luck?
|
| How about people who saw the potential in a place before
| other people did, and contributed to its success?
|
| How about ordinary working class families who have lived
| there for generations?
|
| > should entitle you to enjoy living there forever when
| others are willing to pay more for the same home.
|
| I don't see why people with money should have the right
| to force people out of their homes.
|
| > that available housing slots end up being given to
| those people who are willing to pay the most for them
|
| I see, so this is about people with lots of money being
| able to force people out of their homes.
|
| Why are there limited slots? Why not just invest in other
| places? There are many underdeveloped towns even in
| California, where prices are cheaper.
|
| The market signal is that people should go and invest in
| those places.
| tqi wrote:
| Property owners are also artificially inflating their own
| home values by blocking any and all attempts to build
| more houses.
| zepto wrote:
| That's not typically how the relationship between
| building and home values works over time. Places where
| density increases also see increases in prices for
| existing homeowners.
|
| But sure - Prop 13 and new building are separate issues.
| tqi wrote:
| Home owners definitely believe that proximity to
| multitenant housing lowers property values, and vote
| accordingly (whether that is actually the case is up for
| debate, but also less relevant to voting behavior than
| perception).
|
| [1] page 4: https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/fi
| les/rr07-14_obr...
| zepto wrote:
| Yes, the belief is prevalent, even though mostly wrong.
|
| My guess is that other downsides, real and imagined, make
| people overestimate the impact on prices.
| majormajor wrote:
| That's not what single family zoning does. It keeps the
| value of the land a bit lower than it would be otherwise
| by preventing denser development. In most areas, a
| developer can get a lot more money out of a medium-
| density condo building or a tower than out of a house.
|
| If that wasn't the case, developers _wouldn 't want to
| build denser buildings_.
|
| Consider how much would it cost to get a standalone house
| with a sizable yard on Manhattan?
| pbuzbee wrote:
| Since you seem to think Prop 13 is beneficial, I'd be
| curious to hear your ideas on reforming property taxes!
| What would you keep or change?
| eweise wrote:
| One way would be to tie property rates for everyone to
| inflation. Not sure why just because housing prices
| double, that the government needs twice as much money.
| caturopath wrote:
| Property tax rates rise WHEN YOU HAVE MADE MONEY ON THE
| HOUSE. It's as simple as that. If you don't want to pay
| them, sell the house for a huge profit and leave. If you do
| want to pay your fair share and continue to live there,
| take out a second mortgage.
|
| We're talking about millionaires, not vulnerable victims.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Millions of Californians are millionaires on paper
| because they bought their house 30 years ago and held
| onto it.
|
| Millions of them are also retired or on SS and if they
| had to pay market value property taxes they would be not
| be able to. Take a huge profit and leave, for where?
| You've lived somewhere most of your life and should be
| kicked to Stockton?
|
| For some reason I hear Tom Selleck's voice talking about
| reverse mortgages. There's a winner for public policy.
| pbuzbee wrote:
| In the case of HCOL places like the Bay Area, yes,
| perhaps they should move somewhere cheaper. The money
| they would make from selling their house gives them a lot
| of options.
|
| As it is today, young families are the ones buying in far
| out places like Tracy, Stockton, etc., and they still
| might pay higher property taxes than a retiree in the
| heart of the Bay Area. It seems backwards to me to have
| an incentive structure that keeps the labor force farther
| from work than retirees.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Perhaps they _should_ move someplace cheaper if they
| want. But, they shouldn 't be _forced to do so_ if they
| don 't want to.
|
| "Beat it grandpa; young people want to live here now..."
| caturopath wrote:
| "Grandpa" is a millionaire, if he wants to stay he should
| pay what his neighbors do.
| zepto wrote:
| He already has.
| zepto wrote:
| > It seems backwards to me to have an incentive structure
| that keeps the labor force farther from work than
| retirees.
|
| That is a problem that we don't have to solve by
| destroying communities through eviction.
|
| We can build workplaces where property is affordable, and
| those communities can develop into attractive places to
| live, and their property prices will rise too.
|
| It seems like a weird non-goal to try to create a society
| where there are only a few places where there is work and
| amenities.
|
| The natural response to one place becoming too expensive
| is to invest in making more places where people can live
| and work.
| pbuzbee wrote:
| I wouldn't call it "destroying communities through
| eviction", but I do agree that cramming everyone into the
| same small set of places is its own harmful issue and
| should be reconsidered as well.
| zepto wrote:
| High property prices are just a signal that investment is
| better spent elsewhere.
|
| Trying to tax people out of homes because someone else
| wants them just means underinvestment in other
| communities.
| yongjik wrote:
| Cupertino school district is planning to close some
| schools[1] because there aren't enough kids - fewer and
| fewer young parents can afford to live in this area.
|
| There are multiple ways to destroy a community.
| Apparently, one way is to artificially cap tax on long-
| time residents until only old people are left.
|
| [1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/09/14/cupertino-
| district-pl...
| zepto wrote:
| > fewer and fewer young parents can afford to live in
| this area.
|
| That is due to wage stagnation, not prop 13.
| dahfizz wrote:
| "screw old people, kick them out of the city" is not a
| stance that wins votes.
| pbuzbee wrote:
| No, it's definitely not. Thus why Prop 13 is referred to
| as the third rail of CA politics :)
| caturopath wrote:
| They would have options like
|
| 1. Move
|
| 2. Take out a loan
|
| 3. Take in a boarder
|
| 4. Refuse to pay and know they will not be evicted for
| their lien (this could be codified statewide if this were
| the real problem)
|
| I don't know why anyone would think that poorer, less-
| established people should be paying for these
| millionaires to stay there.
| zepto wrote:
| > I don't know why anyone would think that poorer, less-
| established people should be paying for these
| millionaires to stay there.
|
| I don't know why anyone would think that they _are_.
| souprock wrote:
| My "millionaire" grandma in the middle of San Francisco
| would literally die from those options. She is fragile
| due to age. Her house is familiar to her. Familiarity
| reduces stress, confusion, and accidents. She is close to
| family.
|
| She will die soon enough. You can wait.
|
| Better yet, you can do what she did many decades ago. Get
| a house built on undesirable land, then be part of a
| community that makes the value go up. The home you now
| covet is only valuable because of people like her.
| Nothing stops you from doing likewise. Pick some crummy
| land out in Mississippi or West Virginia and create a
| community.
| gkop wrote:
| Had it not been for the distortion of prop 13, your
| grandma would have been incentivized to move long ago.
|
| We can roll-back prop 13 _going forward for properties
| purchased some buffer of time after the new law goes into
| effect_ , without harming your grandma.
| zepto wrote:
| Why force her out?
|
| Why don't you go somewhere where prices are cheaper and
| make a nice community there?
| gkop wrote:
| I didn't say force. I said incentivize. Society benefits
| from incentivizing her to move, so that more humans can
| occupy the space she is currently occupying, which will
| improve regional productivity, reduce highway and transit
| overcrowding, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, all sorts
| of good stuff.
|
| If her property taxes aren't artificially constrained by
| prop 13, she'll see her taxes go up over time, and decide
| how much she values staying in the house and paying the
| increasing taxes, versus retiring sooner or investing her
| resources in other areas of her life. The market at work.
|
| Also, ideally we wouldn't simply remove prop 13, but
| replace it with a better, progressive-not-regressive tax
| code, eg. allowing homeowners of limited means to defer
| portions of their property taxes until the sale of their
| property. This would make it easy for grandma to stay
| put, and be vastly more fair and healthy for society than
| the status quo.
|
| > Why don't you go somewhere where prices are cheaper and
| make a nice community there?
|
| Would you rephrase this in a kinder way please?
| caturopath wrote:
| > My "millionaire" grandma in the middle of San Francisco
| would literally die from those options.
|
| I don't see why (2) or (4) would affect her lifestyle
| much.
|
| > Better yet, you can do what she did many decades ago.
| Get a house built on undesirable land, then be part of a
| community that makes the value go up. The home you now
| covet is only valuable because of people like her.
| Nothing stops you from doing likewise. Pick some crummy
| land out in Mississippi or West Virginia and create a
| community.
|
| I don't follow any of this. I don't understand why this
| viewpoint would mean it makes sense that people who have
| made tons of money should contribute less of it to their
| societies.
|
| Winning by taking from others ain't the goal. When new
| people arrive, they should be getting the same deal from
| the government you are, not getting hosed because they're
| less established.
|
| (Obviously your prescience is rewarded: you made tons of
| money on your house.)
| zepto wrote:
| > Winning by taking from others ain't the goal. When new
| people arrive, they should be getting the same deal from
| the government you are, not getting hosed because they're
| less established.
|
| But that's just it - they _do_ get the same deal.
|
| Everyone pays the same percentage of what their house
| cost when they buy it.
|
| Grandma got the same deal you do.
|
| If you buy a house now, it too will be worth more if you
| wait 30 years.
|
| You just have to wait as long as grandma did. That is
| _literally_ the same deal.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| The median valuation in Stockton would be $350K. Your
| poorer 1/3rd millionaires will be screwed also. Which is
| pretty much everyone in CA who has owned for 10 years.
|
| I guess they can all move to trailer parks in the Mojave
| and make way for the real millionaires.
| [deleted]
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| At a tax rate of 1.3% the jump in monthly taxes for a
| house valued at 400k to 1.2M is about $433 to $1300. It's
| not nothing but it's also backed by a house that's now
| worth $800,000 more - allowing them to take a second
| mortgage or a HELOC. In no way am I dismissing the
| concerns here. It probably affects some people more than
| others and we can talk about specific targeted
| exclusions. Right now, even the proposal to eliminate
| this for _commercial_ buildings was rejected.
|
| Like rent control, this is indiscriminate welfare.
| Qualified welfare reaches the people who need it the
| most.
| gowld wrote:
| "qualified welfare" doesn't reach people who can't
| navigate the bureaucracy.
| caturopath wrote:
| Aiming it at the people who have made lots of money is
| the worst of all worlds.
| zepto wrote:
| Prop 13 benefits everyone who owns property.
|
| It is not aimed at people who have made lots of money.
| caturopath wrote:
| Only in the sense that food stamps benefit everyone with
| kids and medicaid benefits everyone with a body. Is that
| what you mean, you're valuing prop 13 as a potentially-
| out-of-the-money option / a safetynet?
|
| The people who are actually receiving the value of the
| benefit for prop 13 are those who have made lots of money
| on their house -- the more money they've made, the more
| benefit they get.
| zepto wrote:
| My point is that just from the outset, property taxes are
| a tax that transfers wealth from those who own property
| to those who do not.
|
| All property taxes are always a transfer from property
| owners to everyone else. _Prop 13 or no Prop 13_ this is
| true.
|
| So then when we're talking about Prop 13, we are talking
| about a putative transfer only _between property owners_
| - long-standing vs recent.
|
| When I say that it's also not a transfer, what I mean is
| that anyone who holds property will end up with the same
| relative gain over time.
|
| This of course assumes that prices continue to rise.
|
| If they don't then these schemes to tax people on
| unrealized gains fail too.
| zepto wrote:
| > take a second mortgage or a HELOC
|
| Taking a loan against an inflated asset and using it to
| pay cash, is a good way to risk bankruptcy if prices go
| down.
|
| Not to mention exposing them to leverage if rates rise.
| majormajor wrote:
| > Property tax rates rise WHEN YOU HAVE MADE MONEY ON THE
| HOUSE.
|
| That's not true. You have only made money on the house
| when you sell it. Should we force people to sell their
| own houses because _other people_ have more money than
| them?
|
| I don't think "if you have enough money you can push
| others out" is great policy.
| zepto wrote:
| > Property tax rates rise WHEN YOU HAVE MADE MONEY ON THE
| HOUSE. It's as simple as that.
|
| That's not how property taxes work. You pay them whether
| you make money on the house or not.
|
| You only make money on a house when you sell it.
|
| > We're talking about millionaires, not vulnerable
| victims.
|
| This makes no sense.
|
| Buying or owning a house doesn't make you a millionaire.
| Most people take out large loans to do so, and generally
| their net worth goes down at the point when they do so
| because of the costs.
|
| Purchase prices may go up, but they also go down when the
| economy weakens.
| caturopath wrote:
| I don't know why you think value doesn't exist until a
| transaction. Nonetheless, people are welcome to contest
| the price if it's wrong and they're welcome to sell the
| house and leave if they don't want to pay the tax.
|
| They're actually welcome to stay and have a lien on their
| house: if you're living there you aren't going to have it
| taken away for a property tax lien. (If they will where
| you are, they can fix that in the same bill that repeals
| property tax distortions.)
|
| > Buying or owning a house doesn't make you a
| millionaire.
|
| I'm focusing on the millions of houses in California that
| have went up in value by huge amounts since the last
| market snapshot for the tax basis whose owners are
| millionaires.
| pwg wrote:
| > if you're living there you aren't going to have it
| taken away for a property tax lien.
|
| I don't know if that is true for CA, but in some
| localities, you most certainly will, eventually, be
| evicted from your own property for a property tax lien.
| It will take quite some time for the court case to wind
| its way to completion, but eventually the Sheriff will
| show up one day with an eviction notice and forcibly
| remove you from the property.
| zepto wrote:
| > I don't know why you think value doesn't exist until a
| transaction.
|
| Value is determined by what the market actually pays, not
| by someone's model of what it would pay. That isn't the
| value - that is an _estimate of what someone would
| receive if and only if they sell at that moment_.
| Contesting an estimate doesn't change that.
|
| Whenever prices fall, do you propose paying cash to
| homeowners to reimburse them for all of the overpaid
| taxes?
|
| Forcing someone to take a loan on a volatile asset that
| they can't sell without losing their home is a brutal
| policy.
|
| > I'm focusing on the millions of houses in California
| that have went up in value by huge amounts since the last
| market snapshot for the tax basis whose owners are
| millionaires.
|
| Ok - so you just don't care how many other people get
| hurt or displaced as long as you get to take money from
| some millionaires?
| [deleted]
| pwg wrote:
| > > Property tax rates rise WHEN YOU HAVE MADE MONEY ON
| THE HOUSE. It's as simple as that.
|
| > That's not how property taxes work. You pay them
| whether you make money on the house or not.
|
| > You only make money on a house when you sell it.
|
| You are correct in that you do not (yet) have cash in
| hand from the value increase of the property. So if one
| defines "make money" as "have cash in hand", no money is
| made until one sells the property.
|
| But, what one does have in this situation is an
| unrealized capital gain. And if one defines "make money"
| to include unrealized capital gains, then the homeowner
| has "made money" -- they just do not yet have cash in
| hand.
| zepto wrote:
| > unrealized capital gain
|
| Unrealized is the operative word here. It means _not
| achieved or created_.
|
| An unrealized capital gain can become an unrealized loss.
| That's because it's not a real gain.
|
| Leveraging unrealized gains through loans is universally
| recognized as a _risky_ investment strategy.
|
| This policy would force people to take on this risk.
|
| Which is exactly the point I'm making.
|
| Homeowners shouldn't be forced to take on risky financial
| instruments that are tied to the performance of local
| businesses.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In a discussion about paying property taxes, which must
| be done with cash, what purpose would it serve to define
| unrealized capital gains as "make money"?
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| rent control is not the problem, the lack of new housing caused
| by rich people not wanting to devalue their property values is
| the problem
| rendang wrote:
| Both are problems! Rent controlled units don't count toward
| the market-rate housing supply and thus raise the market
| rent.
| tqi wrote:
| Rent control does allow renters to vote against new housing
| development (in the name of "preserving" a neighborhood)
| without having to bear the cost of increased rent.
| samstave wrote:
| >>* _-- The extremely backwards property tax policies that
| favor existing landowners over anyone new, young, poor (though
| this admittedly is California 's problem, not just one city or
| county) and make everything else attempted bandaids -- and
| misguided bandaids, at that -- to fix the system*_
|
| Can you please educate me on this? What specifically is this
| issue? How can I educate myself on it?
| isoskeles wrote:
| California's Prop 13 caps how much an owner's property taxes
| can increase every year.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
| jdxcode wrote:
| https://www.taxfairnessproject.org/
| ClydeBruckmans wrote:
| What is most unfair about prop 13 is that the lower tax rate
| can be transferred to your descendants. It's one thing to pay
| 10x the taxes of your neighbors, it's another thing altogether
| to have a class of people benefiting from lower taxes over
| generations!
|
| Also, I know there are probably better ways to finance a city,
| but that's how we currently do it. It should be done fairly,
| ideally we should meet in the middle. It's fundamentally unfair
| that some folks pay up to 10x or more than others. I'm speaking
| personally, but it really bothers me that my neighbors are
| actually OK with this.
|
| Also, there are lots of ways to ensure elderly/retired folks
| can stay in their homes. Taxes can be deferred.
| onislandtime wrote:
| Prop 13 needs to be reformed because taxes need to be fair.
| Taxes can be deferred for those who cannot afford to pay the
| full tax so they don't have to move. The benefit should be
| restricted to a primary residence, no vacation, investment,
| or commercial properties. Deferred taxes can be paid when the
| owner sells the house if there is enough equity. At some
| points victims of prop 13 will out number those that benefit
| from it. One can only hope people will wake up and do the
| right thing.
| eweise wrote:
| Taxes are fair under Prop 13. What's fair about making
| people pay more tax just because the market value of their
| house has increased? They will pay taxes on those gains
| (over a certain limit) when they sell.
| avidiax wrote:
| How is it fair that two houses built side by side in the
| same year with the same floorplan might have one pay
| literally 10x the property tax than the other, merely
| because it changed hands? What's worse, the 10x house
| actually realized those capital gains, so the state also
| got that cash.
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| Theoretically the house that changed hands, the new
| owners knew what they were signing up for and could
| verify their budget could handle the higher taxes.
| Whereas the original owners, whose home value has shot up
| significantly since purchase way back when, may not be
| able to pay for the new higher taxes if they were applied
| in full.
| eweise wrote:
| Simple, the people in the houses moved in at a different
| time. A house isn't just a thing you buy and sell. You
| live in the house, raise a family, become part of a
| community. My neighbor across the street bought her house
| 30 years ago. She's an artist and doesn't make much
| money. She is well known in the community. Should she be
| forced out of her house so that some rich tech worker can
| move in?
|
| If want to cry unfair, then it would be better to aim at
| commercial real estate. That's a pure money business. Why
| should they get protection under prop 13? Make no sense
| at all.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > What's fair about making people pay more tax just
| because the market value of their house has increased?
|
| If you believe that, then why ratchet them up just
| because the property is sold? If you're going to detach
| property taxes from the value of the property, then do it
| for new homeowners too.
|
| If we _are_ scaling property taxes with the property 's
| value, we might as well do it for everyone and not treat
| people special just because they were living there
| longer. Other costs people deal with scale at least by
| local cost of living. Groceries, electricity, water
| service, etc. all increase year after year. Do we let
| people pay 1960s costs for everything else just because
| they happened to move to the area in 1960?
|
| Prop 13 as it currently stands, is a wealth transfer from
| young, new homeowners to elderly, established homeowners.
| eweise wrote:
| Property values go up over time. I initially paid $8k a
| year and now its $14K, which is actually about right for
| the market. I am protected from wild increases so that I
| don't have to move my kids out of a neighborhood and
| school they've grown up in.
|
| I agree that scaling property taxes with their values is
| bad. Not sure why government expenses magically double
| when housing value do.
| gkop wrote:
| Look into land value tax. The goal of property tax is not
| just to fund collective expenses, but also to encourage
| the most valuable use of the land for the collective
| benefit (eg. let's not waste valuable inner Bay Area land
| on single family homes, but instead with more dense uses
| like four plexes).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
| eweise wrote:
| I guess that makes sense if your goal is to use land most
| efficiently. Not sure that what is most important though.
| gkop wrote:
| Agreed, it's a balance. I think replacing prop 13 with
| taxes deferable until sale would be a good step in the
| right direction.
| bdowling wrote:
| > What is most unfair about prop 13 is that the lower tax
| rate can be transferred to your descendants
|
| That's mostly gone now with Prop 19. It used to be that
| children could inherit apartment buildings, multiple houses,
| commercial buildings, with no new tax assessment. Now,
| children can only inherit a parent's primary residence
| without a new tax assessment. Even then, they can only avoid
| a tax increase up to the first $1m in value and only if the
| children live in the property. If they keep it as a rental,
| they lose the benefit.
|
| The change should result in more properties being sold after
| inheritance, which will increase market supply and lower
| prices.
| ClydeBruckmans wrote:
| Oh that's right, prop 19 makes this a lot better. Thank you
| for the precision.
| jdxcode wrote:
| How can you hate prop 13 but think rent control is good?
| gowld wrote:
| A believe that property owners don't deserve extra privileges
| but everyone deserves a place to live.
| Lammy wrote:
| It's hard to argue against rent control because one is
| effectively forced to advocate for kicking the most
| vulnerable people out of their homes, but you can count me
| as deeply suspicious of anything that incentivizes people
| to stay in one (poor) place instead of having the economic
| mobility to live in any area they desire.
| isoskeles wrote:
| I read it as the commenter "hates" both. Both are listed here
| as factors of the housing problems in the Bay Area.
| jdxcode wrote:
| oh I think you're right, I misread
| 1MoreThing wrote:
| > neighborhoods or people to try to protect, to the detriment
| of everyone else wanting to live there
|
| Wait, you have a problem with a city government trying to serve
| the people who actually live in a neighborhood rather than
| potential new residents?
|
| That's the whole point of a city government. To serve the
| people living in the city.
| rsync wrote:
| "Wait, you have a problem with a city government trying to
| serve the people who actually live in a neighborhood rather
| than potential new residents?"
|
| I am not sure if you are asking this as a rhetorical
| question, but if not ...
|
| This aspect of the housing (and democracy) debate in the bay
| area is now framed in terms which reject local decision
| making ("local control") if those local decisions reinforce
| existing, exclusionary housing policies.
|
| Which is to say, _we like local control_ when it delivers
| results we agree with - like non-federal legalization of
| marijuana or so-called "sanctuary cities" but _we don 't
| like local control_ when it delivers results we disagree
| with.
|
| Or, more succinctly:
|
| "Democracy for me, but not for thee".
| pbuzbee wrote:
| I feel the issue is that the governments are primarily
| protecting property owners, which are not all of the city's
| residents. Property owners may prefer the status quo, but
| there's still an effect on the citizens who rent, which
| shouldn't be disregarded.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I don't believe that "we got here first" is the principle by
| which I (or many others) want to live.
| jdxcode wrote:
| Becoming myopic with the only stakeholders that matter are
| the current residents has similar problems with corporations
| that place profits above all else.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The Venn Diagram of "serving the people in a city" and
| "actions harmful to society" have a lot over overlap.
| davidw wrote:
| Did you read the origins of their zoning code? "Protecting"
| the city by attempting to limit Black people to certain
| areas. Not a great look.
|
| A lot of zoning code is based on similar ideas, even if most
| people are not dumb enough to say the quiet part out loud
| these days.
|
| You do still hear it on occasion: Bend, Oregon, where I live,
| passed a similar change a few years back, which was then
| superseded by Oregon's HB 2001, which effectively eliminates
| exclusionary zoning in our cities. At the local hearing for
| the Bend rule, there was a woman who was really upset that
| "renters" might be able to live in her neighborhood. They're
| dirty, messy, and "don't care about where they live",
| according to her testimony.
|
| It's economic segregation, plain and simple.
| Lammy wrote:
| > A lot of zoning code is based on similar ideas, even if
| most people are not dumb enough to say the quiet part out
| loud these days.
|
| That's the way it's always been. Here's an '80s example I
| ran across just the other day, and I'm actually grimly
| impressed by the clever video editing that puts up a
| WW2-era photo of mostly-white schoolkids to anchor a
| viewer's thinking away from "is this racist?" just as he
| says the worst part about "them" lol
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=973&v=jCMvOiupDLo
| centimeter wrote:
| > "Protecting" the city by attempting to limit Black people
| to certain areas.
|
| Why do you put protecting in quotes? The residents of areas
| typically like to be protected from demographic disruption,
| especially if the disrupting demographic is known to bring
| problems.
|
| > Not a great look.
|
| People are more worried about the place that they have to
| live, work, and raise their children than they are about
| your patronizing condescension.
| driverdan wrote:
| > especially if the disrupting demographic is known to
| bring problems.
|
| So racism, got it.
| dominotw wrote:
| What does it matter what they are based on. GP's point " To
| serve the people living in the city." still holds.
| xvedejas wrote:
| We're discovering that zoning is a tragedy of the commons
| style issue where it may sound good for any individual
| city, but is detrimental if everyone does it. It makes no
| sense to put on blinders with respect to the problems
| cities create just because of some notion that cities can
| operate in a vacuum, narrowly focused inward at the
| expense of good citizenship.
| cameldrv wrote:
| I can't say what was in that woman's head, but
| neighborhoods that have a lot of rentals tend to have a
| different character independent of race. Homeowners have
| stable enough lives to have saved up a down payment, they
| tend to be older and have families. They also have a reason
| to not annoy their neighbors, because they will have to
| live with them for many years.
|
| Now, younger less settled people also need places to live,
| and the Bay Area's solution is to send them to Stockton or
| something, but not everything is about race.
| davidw wrote:
| "Economic segregation" is what I wrote, so not just race,
| but keeping those with less money away from "nice"
| neighborhoods and their good schools.
|
| Plenty of people who rent might buy if there were more
| opportunities to do so, which there would be if housing
| weren't such an artificially scarce good in the US.
|
| And when you describe 'those neighborhoods', keep in mind
| that that's probably a policy. If all neighborhoods had a
| mix of people, you wouldn't have quite so much of a
| concentration of people who aren't as wealthy.
| u678u wrote:
| > Plenty of people who rent might buy if there were more
| opportunities to do so, which there would be if housing
| weren't such an artificially scarce good in the US.
|
| America has the cheapest housing in the Developed world.
| SF is not cheap, but its still cheaper than big cities in
| Europe.
| davidw wrote:
| Oh, I know something about that! I own a home in Padova,
| Italy.
|
| Land is mostly cheaper in the US, but Italy and most of
| Europe provide far more housing options, in large part
| because they do not impose things like single family
| zoning.
|
| Padova has twice the population of the town where I live
| here in the US, in about the same area, and housing is
| cheaper.
|
| The economy isn't great there, but that's a separate
| story from housing. If it were hotter, it's a place where
| you can simply build homes in many shapes and sizes, from
| small apartments to nice villas.
| adolph wrote:
| Part of real property TCO is taxes. I wonder how Italy
| stacks up agains comparable areas of other countries.
|
| https://www.accountingbolla.com/blog/property-tax-in-
| italy-g...
| foolinaround wrote:
| some neighbourhoods are nice in and of themselves, due to
| their geography, proximity, etc. most however are good
| only because of the people that reside in it.
|
| When people of different classes ( not races ) have
| different opinions on what 'good' means, there is only
| going to be confusion.
|
| even a good neighborhood, once it is deemed as
| undesirable, will lose its values, its taxes, and soon,
| its schools.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > If all neighborhoods had a mix of people, you wouldn't
| have quite so much of a concentration of people who
| aren't as wealthy.
|
| I don't think this is possible, or even desirable.
|
| A huge part of a home's value is the neighborhood. How
| much crime is there? How good are the schools? How are
| the neighbors?
|
| A "fancy" house and an "affordable" house in the same
| neighborhood are not going to have a large price
| difference. If you revert every neighborhood to the mean,
| then you more or less revert all property prices to the
| mean. Which means you have erased all the "affordable"
| housing options, and also reduced the QOL of the top 50%
| of people.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're missing the simple factor of square footage. A
| 1000 sq ft unit is going to be about a quarter of the
| price of a 4000 sq ft one for the simple reason that
| otherwise the larger unit would be subdivided or vice
| versa. So people with less money get less space, but that
| doesn't mean they can't live on the same street.
|
| Also, even to the extent that values are dominated by
| other factors, the intention is to increase housing
| availability through higher supply and lower prices. All
| housing becoming as expensive as upper middle class
| housing would be a problem, but all housing becoming as
| affordable as existing low income housing would be great.
| dahfizz wrote:
| This only applies to "units", not houses. A similar rule
| could apply to lot size, but lot size only makes up a
| fraction of the value of a house.
| davidw wrote:
| It's telling that so often, in the US, we refer to
| "units" in things like apartments, but it's a "single
| family home".
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > This only applies to "units", not houses.
|
| Your expectation is that a 1000 sq ft "house" on a
| quarter acre of land would cost on the order of the same
| amount as a 4000 sq ft "house" on a full acre of land?
| davidw wrote:
| You could at the very least, leave it to the market,
| rather than using government policy mostly shaped by
| older, wealthier people to heap more crap on people who
| are in less fortunate circumstances.
|
| Where I lived in Italy, you actually had very different
| homes very close by - big expensive single family units
| right next to 10 plexes that are far more affordable.
|
| Frankly, I think it was healthier for my kids to go to
| school there with both some kids from wealthy families as
| well as Nigerian immigrants. Their schools here are much
| more homogeneous.
| syshum wrote:
| There are dual problems with renters, my personal
| experience leads me to believe it is not the renters that
| are the problem in neighborhoods with high amounts of
| renters.
|
| While it is true the renter does not have "skin in the
| game" it is also true that many landlord put in only the
| absolute bare minimum of resources to maintain the rental
| property.
|
| For example my grandmother before she passed lived in a
| aging neighborhood, as the original residents passed the
| homes where sold off as investment properties. She
| generally had a good relationship with most of the
| renters however the owners of homes routinely refused to
| repair things, refused to have proper tree maintenance
| done, and other such problems that would not be the
| responsibility of the renter.
| tt433 wrote:
| If the property is adjacent to a gentrified neighborhood
| but not yet pricey, the landlord can degrade service
| until the low income tenants leave, renovate the
| property, and charge new gentrified prices as well. I
| know of a couple buildings in the DMV area that were
| doing this within the last 10 years
| syshum wrote:
| Well in my families case it was what ever the reverse of
| gentrification is. As the original owners died off in
| that neighborhood the neighborhood got worse and worse,
| more crime, less value, etc etc etc
|
| The owners of the properties were not waiting out the
| poor people hoping to strike it rich like you seem to be
| implying
| tt433 wrote:
| Just wanted to add there's lots of factors at play
| besides the renters specifically
| rsync wrote:
| "Homeowners have stable enough lives to have saved up a
| down payment, they tend to be older and have families.
| They also have a reason to not annoy their neighbors,
| because they will have to live with them for many years."
|
| This can be generalized - beyond the housing debate - as
| "having skin in the game".
|
| As someone who has been (at various times) a short and
| long term renter, a landlord, and a homeowner ... it
| rings true to me that, _generally speaking_ , renters
| invest less in their homes and their neighborhoods and
| have less at stake in the outcomes of those
| neighborhoods/communities.
|
| That was certainly the case with me as a renter.
|
| I don't think it's morally negative to segregate
| neighborhoods on the basis of renting vs. owning. The
| attempts to link this kind of segregation to past periods
| of literal racial segregation is, in my opinion, going to
| find less and less traction - especially as non-white
| stakeholders (homeowners) aspire to the same kind of
| skin-in-the-game cooperation with their neighbors.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > non-white stakeholders (homeowners) aspire to the same
| kind of skin-in-the-game cooperation with their
| neighbors.
|
| What about the rampant housing discrimination in home-
| buying (without any enforcement) [0]? What about massive
| racial wealth disparates?
|
| I think it is pretty naive to suggest that the current
| backlash against having "renters" has _nothing_ to do
| with race. Not more naive than suggesting it _only_ has
| to do with race, but close.
|
| [0]: https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-
| estate-agents-...
| rsync wrote:
| Well, we _could_ argue about this ad infinitum ...
|
| Or, we could take a shortcut and _ask those very people_
| what they think and what they would like.
|
| Which is to say, let's find some non-white stakeholders
| (homeowners) with skin in the game in their neighborhoods
| and communities and _ask them what they think_.
|
| I drive through some very nice, very well ordered, single
| family zoned nieghborhoods in Fremont - the owners of
| which are predominantly non-white. The same exists in
| many other bay area communities.
|
| Are those people vehemently advocating for upzoning and
| loss of local control ? Do those people have a strong
| preference for owners over renters ?
|
| Genuinely curious ...
| Lammy wrote:
| Can I also be a stakeholder if I'd like to live in a
| particular neighborhood but have been priced out by their
| "local control"?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that article. I agree that those who
| are setting different financial requirements for
| different races or asking for different information (like
| identification) before showing homes are discriminating
| based on race, and should be investigated. Leaving those
| instances aside, there are also times when directing
| clients to certain neighborhoods based on race may not be
| a bad thing. For example many minorities want to seek out
| a community they are comfortable with (in terms of
| language, access to religious services, ethnic grocery
| stores, or even just neighbors with similar lifestyles).
| This is especially true for first-generation immigrants
| or the elderly, for whom living in a less ethnically-
| accommodating neighborhood may be a difficult adjustment
| because they may not have shared experiences with those
| around them.
| davidw wrote:
| How do people _get_ any "skin in the game" if the
| incumbents do their utmost to impose policies that
| prevent that from happening?
|
| In some cities in California, houses are "earning" more
| on an hourly - yes, hourly - basis than many people do:
|
| https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article208678414.h
| tml
|
| That's a bit dated, pre-pandemic, but it's likely still
| happening in places.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I mean, the time derivative of housing prices has gotten
| higher during the pandemic, not lower.
| davidw wrote:
| In San Francisco proper, prices fell, because supply and
| demand are real, but those people spread out and prices
| are getting worse in a ton of other places, like where I
| live.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > In San Francisco proper, prices fell, because supply
| and demand are real,
|
| Source on real estate prices in SF falling?
| davidw wrote:
| Not huge drops, but going down at all is pretty amazing
| in that area. You can Google it for the details!
| karpierz wrote:
| > it rings true to me that, generally speaking, renters
| invest less in their homes and their neighborhoods and
| have less at stake in the outcomes of those
| neighborhoods/communities.
|
| Note that this isn't true in locations with actual
| renter's rights, like Switzerland.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > not everything is about race.
|
| Sure, but we're not talking about "everything", we're
| talking about housing trends in American cities.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| > Did you read the origins of their zoning code?
| "Protecting" the city by attempting to limit Black people
| to certain areas. Not a great look.
|
| I've seen this claim in this discussion but without hard
| evidence that this was the sole or even primary motivation
| at the time (who would you even measure/prove that?).
| Regardless, it isn't the motivation today behind zoning so
| I am not sure why it matters what the motivation was 100
| years ago. I feel like that's a weak attempt by urban
| activists to associate a negative label (like "racist")
| with zoning to trivialize the legitimate reasons people
| like zoning restrictions.
|
| People want zoning so that they can retain the kind of city
| or neighborhood character they want to live in. There's
| nothing wrong with incumbents resisting change that
| accommodates others at their own expense. The point of
| local government is to serve the incumbent residents first
| and foremost and I don't see why the desires of newcomers
| to live wherever they want at whatever price point they
| want supersedes the quality of life that existing residents
| have sought out and cultivated for themselves previously.
| Those newcomers are certainly free to move to a part of the
| country with less demand than the Bay Area and make a life
| there.
|
| > It's economic segregation, plain and simple.
|
| Not really. It's segregation by people who are invested in
| their community versus people who may move on because they
| haven't put down deep roots. And even if it was economic
| segregation in effect or directly, so what? I, and
| certainly most other parents, want a safe neighborhood for
| our families, and higher income neighborhoods typically
| experience less crime. I also want better educated and more
| successful people in my neighborhood, because their
| children form the environment and society my children are
| exposed to and influenced by. Leaving all that aside, an
| influx of renters changes a city's politics, culture, and
| other characteristics. I've seen this first-hand in Seattle
| where the dramatic changes of the last 10 years have really
| hurt the quality of life in this city and crowded out 'old
| Seattle' culturally. So I see many understandable and
| legitimate reasons for people to want to avoid renters.
| majormajor wrote:
| So, if you end single family zoning, you'll likely be
| displacing lower-economic-status minorities once again.
| Perpetuating the cycle. Areas with cheaper land and higher
| rates of renter-occupied homes will be easier for
| developers to target and buy up the land.
|
| I don't think you can make an argument that you're going to
| repair any past harms by doing this. I think the argument
| that you're going to continue them if you do this is much
| stronger.
| intrasight wrote:
| Just because the original intent may have bad doesn't mean
| that single family zoning in and of itself is bad. There
| are lots of municipalities with single family zoning. Mine
| does. Mine also doesn't allow any commercial property. And
| lots must be one acre or more. The residents want it this
| way. What's wrong with that?
| davidw wrote:
| Government enforced 1 acre lots is a good proxy for "keep
| the poor people out".
|
| Also contributes massively to sprawl and thus carbon
| emissions because you can't have a more traditional sort
| of neighborhood where people might walk to the park and
| corner store.
|
| Nothing against people owning a 1 acre lot if they want -
| that's fine! Imposing it on everyone is economic
| segregation.
| syshum wrote:
| >>Nothing against people owning a 1 acre lot if they want
|
| Sounds like you do, you more or less accused anyone that
| desires a 1 acre plot of classism or wanting to "keep the
| poor people out", and of wanting to destroy the
| environment.
|
| In reality most people that want that simply desire
| privacy, I for example desire that because i do not want
| to "walk to the corner store" or have a park at all in my
| neighborhood. I do not want to have "neighborhood"
| events, or be able to talk to my neighbor from my porch.
|
| I want privacy, I want to be able to enjoy my hobbies
| which are solitary pursuits not group activities.
| [deleted]
| intrasight wrote:
| My town is fully built out, so it's not being imposed
| upon anyone except perhaps developers. Nobody can
| purchase a house and tear it down and build four in it's
| place. The lot is only zoned for one house.
| Lammy wrote:
| > Imposing it on everyone is economic segregation.
|
| I agree but only in the sense that it should include 39
| more acres. And a mule.
| zug_zug wrote:
| >>> Government enforced 1 acre lots is a good proxy for
| "keep the poor people out".
|
| Uhhh not in the very least. Many of us want to live in
| areas that have 3-acre minimum lots because of a little
| thing called nature. Those who want to live crammed into
| micro-apartments with 1 tree for every 30 people can, but
| those of us who want a whole town that is more grass that
| pavement should NOT be accused of classism or racism.
|
| If you really want to help poor people, figure out a
| system that doesn't box them into ever-decreasing
| concrete apartments further and further from clean air.
| jdxcode wrote:
| > Those who want to live crammed into micro-apartments
| with 1 tree for every 30 people can.
|
| We can't. That's the problem.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You can, just somewhere else.
| davidw wrote:
| Cities are actually 'greener' if you look at things on a
| global scale, rather than just having few trees outside
| that a few species (deer, say) have somewhat adapted to
| living in the urban/wildland interface.
|
| If everyone lived on 3 acres, you know how much truly
| wild land would be paved over?
|
| Now, I strongly agree that people ought to have the right
| to purchase and live on a large lot if they want. Great,
| you earned it, have fun!
|
| Requiring that? That's using the government to perpetuate
| a sprawly, carbon-intensive lifestyle that very much does
| exclude those who are not wealthy enough to purchase that
| much land. That's part of the point in many places with
| that kind of regulation.
| adolph wrote:
| 7.7b people. https://www.census.gov/popclock/world
|
| 15.77b acres of habitable land.
| http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/THOC/land.html
|
| 15.77 / 7.7 = 2.04
|
| Every human could have about 2 acres. At this level of
| distribution humans would essentially live in wilderness
| and integrate with nature. Oftentimes humans live in
| family groups so the actual point distribution would be
| uneven.
|
| Unfortunately arable land needed to feed the humans
| varies by locale but tops at about .6 hectacres [0] or
| 1.48 acres[1]. This means that effective wilderness could
| be slightly less than .5 acres per human after some
| nominal usage for housing and utility right of ways.
|
| 0. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/arable-land-use-
| per-perso...
|
| 1. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=.6+hectares+to+acres&atb=v83
| -1__&i...
| davidw wrote:
| > integrate with nature
|
| That's false though. There are a lot of animals that _do
| not want_ to be anywhere near humans, roads, houses or
| anything else. The presence of people wrecks it for them.
| Not to mention the jacked up carbon emissions if everyone
| had to drive around for everything because everyone is
| spread out.
| zug_zug wrote:
| >> "That's using the government..."
|
| The majority of residents of an area using the government
| to control that area is the pinnacle of democracy.
|
| >> If everyone lived on 3 acres, you know how much truly
| wild land would be paved over?
|
| Actually, no there's plenty of land in America. Nothing
| would be paved, it would just be moved to yards (hint
| yards aren't paved). And if the population doesn't grow,
| then there's no reason America can't live like that
| forever.
|
| When excluding illegal immigration, the US population is
| actually shrinking. There's no need to artificially box
| ourselves in.
| dave5104 wrote:
| > Many of us want to live in areas that have 3-acre
| minimum lots because of a little thing called nature.
|
| This is fine to have a town like this.
|
| But a town like this has no business being in a major
| metropolitan area of the US such as the Bay Area. (I'm
| looking at you, Atherton.)
| davidw wrote:
| Here's a case in point of how it's utilized in practice:
|
| https://www.vox.com/22252625/america-racist-housing-
| rules-ho...
| neilparikh wrote:
| Central planning is not something we should be
| encouraging, except for cases where the market fails.
| It's not clear to me there's a market failure that's
| being corrected with single family zoning.
|
| Central planning leads to a situation where market
| signals are ignored, and entrenches the status quo,
| rather than allowing cities (and economies in general) to
| change as needed. It seems highly unlikely that we've
| stumbled upon the "perfect" land use pattern. Why make it
| impossible to change from it then?
| intrasight wrote:
| So you're agreeing, right? Have my town be free of
| "central planning" and set it's own course in terms of
| zoning.
| neilparikh wrote:
| What? How did you get that from my comment?
|
| I'm referring to zoning as the central planning. It's
| central planning at a local scale, but still central
| planning.
|
| Instead of letting each town set its own course, why not
| just let each property owner set their own course (within
| reasonable limits for market failures, like safety)?
|
| My entire point is that restrictive zoning is the
| bureaucrats in the city governments deciding what the
| best use is for each plot of land, rather than letting
| the market decide based on demand.
|
| Also, if we look at the Berkley case (which is what the
| OP is about!), there was no external force, the town made
| the change on its own.
| LurkersWillLurk wrote:
| Are new residents not as much of a resident as existing
| residents?
| ghaff wrote:
| New residents are but would be residents aren't.
| LargeWu wrote:
| This is the underlying energy behind NIMBY.
|
| Cities have many stakeholders. Residents, sure. But also
| businesses, workers, the homeless, the environment.
|
| And there are tons of tradeoffs. Maybe by rezoning and not
| mandating single family homes, the increased population
| density will improve access to transit and services. It's not
| necessarily as cut and dried as "Rezoning is negatively
| perceived by current residents, therefore don't do it".
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Why don't city governments spend as much as possible on
| current residents and build up debt that will only have to be
| paid by future, new residents?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Lots of pension programs are underfunded.
| Lammy wrote:
| That's great, but how can we undo the 100 years of segregation
| that this policy contributed to? Prop 13 makes it even worse by
| incentivizing the people who can afford homes to pass them down
| to their children, both enshrining the existing segregation and
| locking the disenfranchised out of that method of building
| generational wealth:
| http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea
| jedberg wrote:
| Luckily prop 19 will help solve this. As of I want to say last
| week, you can no longer keep the tax basis on an inherited
| property unless it becomes your primary residence upon
| inheritance.
|
| But I agree, Prop 13 definitely helps maintain generational
| wealth, but luckily much less so now.
| shuckles wrote:
| My understanding is Prop 19 is can be evaded by trusts. Even
| without hiding ownership, an inheritor could live in the
| property for a year after inheriting (or claim to --
| enforcement seems difficult), lock in the old tax basis, and
| then move out. In particular, the lower tax basis is fixed as
| long as you live in the property for a year; it's not
| permanently contingent on living in the property.
| yonran wrote:
| > My understanding is Prop 19 is easily evaded by trusts
|
| No, trusts do not evade Proposition 19 (although some
| people scrambled to transfer to children with a trust
| before Feb 15 to avoid Proposition 19's new terms). Under
| Proposition 13/RTC 60, the assessor always looks through
| the trust to see the beneficial owner at any time. LLCs may
| be useful though to preserve up to 49% of the discount on
| transfer as described in this article:
| https://www.pe.com/2021/01/15/prop-19-whats-next-for-
| homeown....
|
| > Even without hiding ownership, an inheritor could easily
| live in the property for a year after inheriting (or claim
| to ---- enforcement seems difficult), lock in the old tax
| basis, and then move out
|
| No, the Board of Equalization's guidance is to remove the
| parent-child exclusion as soon as the child stops
| qualifying for the homeowner's exemption. According to the
| Board of Equalization letter to assessors from 2021-01-08,
| "at the time the family home is no longer the primary
| residence of a transferee, the change in ownership
| exclusion that applied at the initial transfer of the
| family home is lost." https://www.boe.ca.gov/meetings/pdf/2
| 021/011421-M1a1-Legal-A...
| shuckles wrote:
| I stand corrected. This is great to know.
| subsaharancoder wrote:
| When I moved stateside I lived in Berkeley for a year, it's
| overpriced (rent and daycare are ridiculously expensive!!),
| overrated, overrun with homeless people (anything below 6th
| street) and the coup de grace has to be the incessant virtue
| signaling with houses competing for who has the most "social
| justice" billboards and signs..Glad I moved away..
| cft wrote:
| Unanimous vote was also practiced in the Soviet Communist Party
| maedla wrote:
| Eating meals was also practiced in the Soviet Communist Party
| williesleg wrote:
| Pack em in!
| tqi wrote:
| Yeah whatever, I'll believe it when I see it. UC Berkeley
| announced plans for student housing 3 years ago, I still see
| scare mongering signs warning about "transient residents."
| Doesn't matter what the zoning says, these people will find a way
| to block anything:
|
| "They thought they were going to get away with doing their soil
| samples," Bates said, referring to UC Berkeley. "We're saying,
| 'No, you cannot get away with it. This is going to be more costly
| than you know.'" [1]
|
| [1] https://www.berkeleyside.com/2021/01/30/protesters-tear-
| down...
| rbanffy wrote:
| > these ppl will find a way to block anything
|
| We need people who place the interests of the overall
| population above their own.
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| Pave the Bay 2021 --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reber_Plan
| endisneigh wrote:
| It's never made any sense that any county in the USA has
| mandatory single-family zoning. If a community wants to keep
| things sparsely populated they should have to purchase land and
| houses at market rate to do so. As surrounding areas become more
| and more popular it would become more and more expensive to do
| so. That's how it should be.
|
| If voting was mandatory in the USA this would've been fixed
| centuries ago.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Neither extreme is viable.
|
| OOH, interest groups exist and restrictive zoning can cause
| illogical cityscapes with way too little housing. OOH, no
| planning, no zoning and laissez faire dynamics don't really get
| you to a logical metropolis either. Both tend to fail at
| density.
|
| High density cities need as much investment in difficult
| infrastructure as they do in real estate. A lot of successful
| examples in the world at large are pretty highly planned. I'd
| also note that most are guided to some extent by national-level
| agendas. A purely local agenda isn't generally going to select
| fast change. All sorts of vested interest to the contrary.
| Property scarcity, but also other things. More people usually
| want their towns to stay the same.
|
| IMO, there really is no way around the need for competent, well
| intentioned decision making... on average. There's also now way
| around a need for intention. What's the actual goal for
| Berkeley? Where do they want to be in 30 years.
| ars wrote:
| And what if your goal is low density?
|
| Your post assume the density is a positive goal. I disagree,
| I think it's a miserable way to live.
|
| Let people live how they want, and keep voting very local.
| Each city can have different density levels and housing
| styles. You want density? Move somewhere dense, and vote that
| way, I have no issue with it.
|
| I'll move to low density areas and vote that way, and I
| expect you not to have an issue with that either.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I disagree - if you want low density _and_ the area is
| popular you should have to pay for the privilege. People
| can live however they want in this world, just not for
| _free_.
| dalbasal wrote:
| If your goals are different, you have different options.
|
| I don't think totally planned or totally laissez faire are
| optimal for most settings, but if there's plenty of land
| and the goal is suburbanized clusters then you'll probably
| lean more laissez faire.
|
| If the goal is to keep things as they are, you have lots of
| options... most western cities are good at this.
|
| This conversation (I'm contending) is context dependent. I
| think the/a current issue and the topic of this article
| (besides Berkely) is extremely high demand cities and their
| problems growing. It's a similar set of issues in Munich,
| London, NY, SF, etc. Housing availability is terrible.
| There are overcrowding & transport related problems.
| Looking at them, it seems like they're mice grown to
| elephant sized. The body plan doesn't suite the scale.
|
| It gets philosophical, and you can definitely lean too far
| into creative destruction as well... I tend to favour
| evolution. Things will change. They need to.
|
| Besides that, I think there is plenty of choice. Especially
| in the US, different locals are different. If you can and
| want to move, choice exists. I don't think that's the
| friction. The friction is from people who stay put and
| aren't comfortable with change. Those two things also go
| together. We all have a more conservative disposition about
| the things we've known the longest.
| dtwest wrote:
| While I agree with the general sentiment, increasing city
| density takes careful planning. If a neighborhood doesn't
| invest in the necessary public services such as transportation
| and education, more density can be a problem. So the entire
| community who pays for these services should have some say in
| what happens.
|
| That said, I'm still pro growth as long as we plan accordingly.
| duxup wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Unwavering the weave takes some care if you want to do it
| right ... do it wrong and I suspect you get even more
| opposition / problems.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Berkeley's population has been static for more than 70 years.
| In the meantime we've built a freeway and a subway with three
| underground stations. Also the number of _jobs_ in Berkeley
| has more than doubled. It is high time the city grew its
| population in order to benefit from these infrastructure
| investments.
| runako wrote:
| The purpose of single-family voting is not to maintain sparse
| density, it's to keep the city white:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26252258
|
| > If voting was mandatory in the USA this would've been fixed
| centuries ago.
|
| Those negatively affected by policies like this have only been
| able to vote for about 50 years.
| jacob2484 wrote:
| Sigh... not everything is about race - folks may prefer live
| in a less developed, single-home community no matter the
| color of their neighbors.
| shuckles wrote:
| Single family zoning is about what you are forced to build,
| not about what people choose to live in. In fact, if the
| demand for detached SFHs was as real as you suggest, there
| would be no downside to zoning for multi-family; nobody
| would prefer to build it!
|
| Also, ultimately, the history of single family zoning is
| definitely all about race.
| caturopath wrote:
| Not everything is about race, but American suburbanism is.
|
| I'm not saying that everyone who lives in the burbs is
| making a choice about race, but that is 100% how we got
| here.
| runako wrote:
| Others have pointed out the historical nature of this
| policy, so I won't dwell there.
|
| But instead I do want to highlight that a key aspect of our
| legal segregation regime was enacting policies that did not
| appear to be explicitly racist, so that they could achieve
| buy-in from moderates who might not share the racist aims.
| (The secondary benefit is that they were more resilient to
| legal challenges.)
|
| So your response makes absolute sense: there are reasons
| for wanting to live in a less-developed SFH community. But
| there are also valid-sounding reasons that we might want
| voters to have to put a few dollars up as skin in the game
| before casting votes. Or why we might want to make sure
| voters meet some literacy requirements before voting. Et
| cetera.
|
| This is about a 100-year-old policy. It's not crazy to
| raise aspects from the history of US housing policy in this
| discussion.
| danans wrote:
| Folks may prefer that, but the original policy in Berkeley
| was put in place 100 years ago specifically in response to
| the perceived threat of the African American influx.
|
| In _highly developed_ urban /suburban areas today all over
| the country (not bucolic hamlets that people imagine), this
| zoning policy (along with others like large minimum lot
| sizes) effectively function as a demographic and economic
| sieve.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Yes, these days it's more classism than racism.
|
| Mandatory single-family home zoning means that you are
| required to rent or own a sizable amount of land in order
| to live in a neighborhood. This has the obvious impact of
| creating invisibly gated communities where the less
| affluent are unable to live there, even if they were
| willing to live in smaller accommodations, which also means
| their children may not go to the same schools.
|
| It's _literally_ economic segregation, because it 's the
| government forcibly segregating where people live through
| their finances.
| omginternets wrote:
| To add to this, some things can be tinted with racism while
| also being motivated by other -- sometimes even legitimate
| -- things.
|
| It's easy to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It
| takes effort to throw away the bad and keep the good.
|
| As stated in another thread: it's not a bad idea to prevent
| apartments from being built such that they overlook a
| single-family dwelling's back-yard.
|
| EDIT: in all fairness, I should point out that others seem
| to know something about the historical origins of zoning
| policy that I do not. It's possible that I'm
| underestimating the degree to which racism played a role in
| shaping the legal landscape. Nevertheless, I can imagine a
| handful of legitimate reasons for single-family zoning...
| caturopath wrote:
| > it's not a bad idea to prevent apartments from being
| built such that they overlook a single-family dwelling's
| back-yard
|
| It's totally a bad idea to say that once someone has
| built a dwelling on a plot of land, they have forever
| banned increased density near them.
|
| This is more severe when we're in our current situation,
| where we punish high-value uses of land and subsidize
| low-value uses of land, like single-family homes and
| parking lots.
|
| Obviously the core observation -- that there are harmful
| ways to mix intensity -- is certainly true. The thing
| Berkeley, Sacramento, Oregon, etc. are doing are not to
| allow apartment complexes built in R1 zone, but ADUs,
| duplexes, and other low-intensity suburban housing.
|
| -----
|
| The history of American suburbanism is a story of race.
| There are other players (cars, telephones, pollution),
| but race was a major pillar, and is why you didn't see
| US-style suburbs pop up in other countries without
| similar race relations.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
|
| Race-restrictive covenants are still on the books for
| many older HOAs (obviously illegal/unenforceable) -- this
| isn't a conspiracy theory, these covenants were in black
| and white https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/04/3-...
| omginternets wrote:
| >It's totally a bad idea to say that once someone has
| built a dwelling on a plot of land, they have forever
| banned increased density near them.
|
| That needs to be argued, not stated (ideally without the
| 'forever' part, which is very much a strawman).
|
| >The history of American suburbanism is a story of race.
| There are other players (cars, telephones, pollution),
| but race was a major pillar
|
| I think the question for most people is (1) how much of
| an influence is race _today_ and (2) does racist
| motivation yesterday make the policy bad _today_.
|
| In all the discussions I see on HN and elsewhere,
| discussion of these questions is conspicuously absent.
| What we have instead is a doxa such that anything
| contaminated by racism -- in any quantity or at any stage
| of history -- is to be rooted out. Such arguments are not
| terribly convincing, even though we both agree that
| racism is a bad thing.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Urban development in the United States is already about
| race; it is inescapable and cannot be ignored. The
| demographics of about every American city bears a striking
| resemblance to the "redlining" maps used to deny affordable
| mortgages to non-whites. Redlining still happens, but now
| it takes the form of predatory lending.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Only on HN will someone look at housing & geographic
| distribution in urban America and somehow think "well I
| don't see how race had anything to do with this!"
|
| Beyond that, so much evidence points to continued rampant
| housing discrimination today and we don't even _try_ to
| enforce anti-discrimination law anymore like we did in
| the 70s and 80s. Compare [0] with [1].
|
| [0]: https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-
| estate-agents-... [1]:
| https://www.propublica.org/article/no-sting-feds-wont-go-
| und...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Voting is how we got here. A city or any entity can adopt
| exclusionary policies based on the votes of the people who
| already live there, which obviously excludes the people to be
| excluded. What we need is the next higher level of government
| to set basic ground rules. There should be a state right-to-
| build law that automatically permits a moderate level of
| density. There shouldn't be any place within incorporated
| cities of California you can't build a four-family dwelling on
| a 4000-square-foot lot.
| MrMan wrote:
| i agree that voting is another oldster NIMBY legacy tactic,
| and soon they will be swept away
| bdw5204 wrote:
| If Thomas Jefferson hadn't replaced "property" with "pursuit
| of happiness" when he quoted Locke in the Declaration of
| Independence, we probably wouldn't be in this situation.
| People who own land should be free to use it as they wish as
| long as they aren't violating the rights of somebody else.
| Building an apartment building or a store anywhere you want
| should be fine but building a factory or power plant that
| pollutes or an open air stadium to hold concerts and sports
| events next to somebody's house without their permission
| wouldn't be. Free use of your own property should be a
| constitutional right just like free speech, freedom of
| religion and owning guns are.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Meh, it's harder. I don't want my neighbor to be blasting
| music at 2am, so you do need some sort of regulations.
| froh wrote:
| > free to use it as they wish _as long as they aren 't
| violating the rights of somebody else._
|
| That's the part with the regulations, right?
| endisneigh wrote:
| You are right, however if voting were _mandatory_ nationwide
| the situation you 're describing wouldn't happen.
|
| If 1000 people live in California and 100 of those people
| live in Berkeley, even if all 100 people in Berkeley agree
| with something, if the majority of Californians disagree it
| would and should override what the Berkeleyians want.
|
| If voting is mandatory there's no situation in which a
| majority decision is actually suboptimal, unless you believe
| that a minority should somehow be able to override a
| majority.
|
| The way democracy is implemented in this country is
| effectively rule of the minority over the majority - the
| catch is the minority just has to draw arbitrary boundaries
| surrounding their decisions. You can already see this if you
| just look at the Bay Area - how can it be so difficult to
| build if polls show the majority of people support it? Turns
| out the minority (homeowners) have more power than the
| majority (renters) in the Bay Area.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > If 1000 people live in California and 100 of those people
| live in Berkeley, even if all 100 people in Berkeley agree
| with something, if the majority of Californians disagree it
| would and should override what the Berkeleyians want.
|
| This comment is facile. Your stance is much more broad and
| encompassing than "mandatory voting" if you're saying that
| higher levels of government have unilateral authority to
| override local authority.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If voting is mandatory there's no situation in which a
| majority decision is actually suboptimal
|
| If majoritarianism defines optimality this is
| tautologically true, otherwise it is distinctly non-
| obvious.
|
| > unless you believe that a minority should somehow be able
| to override a majority.
|
| The belief in inalienable rights is exactly the belief that
| on some issues a hypermajority of all but one is
| suboptimal.
|
| So, yes, it's true that majoritarianism is optimal unless
| one believes that sometimes it's not, but _not_ believing
| that majoritarianism is sometimes suboptimal is equivalent
| to not believing in human, civil, or political rights
| beyond the right to an equal vote.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I understand what you're saying, but in terms of coming
| up with a decision in which the majority is happy, a
| majority decision is inherently always the most optimal.
| The parent post example is effectively an example of
| that.
|
| I do concede that for general governance what I'm talking
| about obviously requires more nuance.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| What about a 60% majority voting to commit kill the other
| 40% of the population because they felt mildly irritated
| by that 40%? How does killing 40% weigh against relieving
| the irritation of 60% and how is that optimal?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Again, this has already happened in the American Civil
| War. In your example the issue would be resolved or the
| country should fracture.
|
| Also, would the reverse scenario (40% deciding to kill
| the 60% majority) be more optimal? No, it wouldn't.
| Assuming people _have_ to die, it would be more optimal
| for the 40% to die than the 60%. Obviously if this was
| actually happening a moderate stance would emerge and
| they (being the majority likely) would decide there
| shouldn 't be any death at all and that would win out.
|
| Your examples are ridiculous and make having a meaningful
| discussion difficult. A good example, if you can think of
| one, is one where the minority is right and the majority
| is wrong without stating the majority is somehow worse
| than the minority.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I understand what you're saying, but in terms of coming
| up with a decision in which the majority is happy, a
| majority decision is inherently always the most optimal
|
| Sure, but why would that be the goal unless one believes
| that utility is a simple binary of "happy" vs. "not
| happy" and policy choices are also simple binaries?
|
| If the amount of (un)happiness is more complex than 0/1
| and you have a complex multidimensional policy space,
| majoritarianism may be the most tractable general
| approach, but it is delusional to think it is necessarily
| inherently _optimal_.
|
| A lot of rules diverging from majoritarianism in
| otherwise majoritarian systems are designed in
| recognition of this and in the belief that the
| concentration of impacts of decisions in a particular
| domain make it particularly prone to the kind of things
| where majoritarianism is distinctly nonoptimal.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Basically you are saying that California cities should not
| have planning authority. I happen to agree but that's not
| on the table.
| jacob2484 wrote:
| Folks moved into a single family home region/city for a
| reason - to live in not a mass developed community. Now
| outsiders would force them that they can't do so.
| caturopath wrote:
| > Folks moved into a single family home region/city for a
| reason
|
| (To get away from Black people.)
| endisneigh wrote:
| 1. Historically that's not true.
|
| 2. Even if it were true, that would imply SFH are
| superior. There would be no need to make SFH-zoning
| mandatory then. The free market would show that SFH is
| the most cost-effective.
|
| 3. If there were folks living in an area that was
| previously SFH-only that's now becoming more and more
| filled with multi-families that would imply their SFH are
| now worth more and more. If they _actually_ prefer SFH
| living they would cash-out and move to an unpopular area
| where SFHs are the norm. In practice what a lot of these
| people want is to live in a popular area, but not have
| any neighbors. In effect this is at odds with a democracy
| - the will of the minority must not override the
| majority.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That clearly isn't true of Berkeley. The current zoning
| and design rules of Berkeley outlaw Berkeley as it
| stands. The current question is whether we should return
| to the rules under which 85% of the city was built.
| dalbasal wrote:
| What do you think that no planning authority achieves?
| The majority of actual high density cities that got that
| way in the last 100 years have been pretty highly
| planned. The best low planning examples of recent years
| have generally been suburban.
|
| Got a counterexample?
| jeffbee wrote:
| I didn't say that planning shouldn't exist. I think most
| of the powers should be reserved by the state, though.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I misunderstood.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I disagree with that position, but I concur that the
| residents of the state _could vote to give_ that power
| unilaterally to the state [in a way that the federal
| government could not seize that power from the states, at
| least in theory if we followed the Constitution].
|
| I think that decisions should be as locally as is
| feasible, whether that's individual, family,
| neighborhood, town/city, county, state, or federally only
| as a last resort.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The state constitution already favors the state wherever
| there is conflict. If the state passed a law that anyone
| could build such-and-such thing, that would preempt any
| and all city laws.
| endisneigh wrote:
| It's not about California specifically - in general the
| majority should always have to ability to reject the
| decision of a smaller body by pure simple majority. To
| believe otherwise is basically to not believe in
| democracy.
|
| To some extent this is already possible, but with
| gerrymandering and non-mandatory voting the obvious
| solution to this problem for the minority is just to
| suppress votes - hence mandatory voting.
| nybble41 wrote:
| A majority with no standing in the matter should have
| zero influence over the rights of a minority whose
| interests are directly affected. You're advocating the
| two wolves vs. one sheep model of unchecked direct
| democracy, which is pretty much the worst of all possible
| choices short of a malevolent oligopoly or dictatorship.
| When people speak fondly of "democracy" what most of them
| have in mind is a representative, republican form of
| government with at least some legal protection for the
| rights of minorities, even when the majority disagree.
|
| This is orthogonal to the issue of whether voting should
| be mandatory or (pseudo-)voluntary[1]. Mandatory voting
| ensures higher participation at the expense of
| encouraging less _informed_ voting on average. It also
| masks the absence of consent which would be implied by
| abstaining. (You can turn in a blank /voided ballot in
| protest under most mandatory systems but there is no
| record of who did that, whereas there must be a record of
| who did or did not vote.) "Voter suppression" is frankly
| not a very plausible explanation for why a majority of
| outsiders with no particular interest in the matter have
| thus failed to vote to set aside local planning rules
| (which for the most part don't affect them) and force
| cities to allow more high-density construction. Even if
| you made voting mandatory it's unlikely that this would
| change. And are you going to require everyone in the
| state (or country, or world) to take the time to vote yes
| or no on every trivial local ordinance? Besides being
| impractical, that would certainly generate a great deal
| of resentment regarding both the mandatory voting _and_
| the outside interference in local affairs.
|
| [1] "Pseudo-voluntary" because to be _actually_ voluntary
| the majority would need to respect the preexisting rights
| of those who didn 't participate in the vote and the
| absence of their consent, and refrain from infringing on
| those rights as they attempt to carry out the majority's
| will. Since in practice you'll be made to conform to the
| result whether or not you participate, and others will
| insist that you accept the majority's will because "you
| had your chance to be represented" regardless of the
| degree of influence you did or (more likely) did not have
| on the outcome of the vote, it can't really be considered
| voluntary.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > A majority with no standing in the matter should have
| zero influence over the rights of a minority whose
| interests are directly affected. You're advocating the
| two wolves vs. one sheep model of unchecked direct
| democracy, which is pretty much the worst of all possible
| choices short of a malevolent oligopoly or dictatorship.
| When people speak fondly of "democracy" what most of them
| have in mind is a representative, republican form of
| government with at least some legal protection for the
| rights of minorities, even when the majority disagree.
|
| Sure, but this never happens in the real world - all
| people are connected.
|
| > "Voter suppression" is frankly not a very plausible
| explanation for why a majority of outsiders with no
| particular interest in the matter have thus failed to
| vote to set aside local planning rules (which for the
| most part don't affect them) and force cities to allow
| more high-density construction.
|
| I'm not sure you're from the USA but this is just not
| true at all. Blacks and women, for example being able to
| vote could and would have made a difference - which is
| exactly why they were not allowed to vote to begin with,
| e.g. suppression.
| ghaff wrote:
| The United States is not intended to be a pure democracy.
| You're basically arguing against the existence of the
| federal judiciary. The Supreme Court has absolutely
| disallowed laws around things like segregation which were
| supported by a majority of people--whether nationally or
| at a relevant local level.
| MichaelBurge wrote:
| > If voting is mandatory there's no situation in which a
| majority decision is actually suboptimal, unless you
| believe that a minority should somehow be able to override
| a majority.
|
| What if the majority make a law saying "anyone gay or black
| is to be executed"?
|
| Or "anyone with more than $1 million in assets should pay a
| 90% tax rate"?
|
| Or "wildfire prevention, nuclear power plant inspection,
| SEC regulation, should all be defunded in favor of a
| federal football team with free bread at the stadium"?
| Maybe it takes 10-20 years for huge-impact consequences to
| be felt, and in the meantime you get free bread.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > What if the majority make a law saying "anyone gay or
| black is to be executed"?
|
| What you're saying has already happened. The majority
| realized that was a terrible idea and undid that law.
|
| > Or "anyone with more than $1 million in assets should
| pay a 90% tax rate"?
|
| What's wrong with that? If it ends up being a bad idea
| the majority will undo the decision.
|
| > Or "wildfire prevention, nuclear power plant
| inspection, SEC regulation, should all be defunded in
| favor of a federal football team with free bread at the
| stadium"? Maybe it takes 10-20 years for huge-impact
| consequences to be felt, and in the meantime you get free
| bread.
|
| Yes, and once the realize the consequences the majority
| will undo their decision.
|
| There are no problems with any of your examples. What's
| the alternative? The _minority_ of the population makes
| all of the decisions?
| jonahx wrote:
| > What's the alternative? The minority of the population
| makes all of the decisions?
|
| That some decisions are based on evidence and expert-
| knowledge. Of course, this can be gamed, but it's not
| clear at all that this risk is greater than the risk of
| damage by the short-term thinking or false reasoning of
| an uninformed majority.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I disagree - in your post you're assuming an "uninformed"
| and "false reasoning" with respect to the majority but
| not this so-called "expert" minority. Knowledge spreads -
| the majority will take it into account, and if they're
| wrong the majority will undo it as the majority will feel
| the effects.
| jonahx wrote:
| I would argue this claim is empirically false.
|
| > and if they're wrong the majority will undo it as the
| majority will feel the effects.
|
| This assumes the majority will correctly identify the
| root cause. Whereas, in fact, they cannot do this even in
| simple cases, let alone a case where the root cause was
| an innocuous-seeming policy enacted 10+ years ago.
| Especially while the current politicians du jour are
| providing dramatic, simple, alternative narratives of the
| cause to suit their own goals.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > This assumes the majority will correctly identify the
| root cause. Whereas, in fact, they cannot do this even in
| simple cases, let alone a case where the root cause was
| an innocuous-seeming policy enacted 10+ years ago.
| Especially while the current politicians du jour are
| providing dramatic, simple, alternative narratives of the
| cause to suit their own goals.
|
| I agree, but it's still no worse (and in practice much
| better) than trying to let the minority figure it out,
| whom are no more likely to figure out the root cause
| either.
|
| We can probably agree that governance is complicated
| though.
| jonahx wrote:
| > We can probably agree that governance is complicated
| though.
|
| Yes. I don't think there is an obviously correct solution
| either way. I'm really only arguing that "trust the
| majority" is not something I trust. Not that "trust
| experts" is without its own (possibly equally fraught)
| set of problems.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| Basically, the main reason we have a Supreme Court is so
| the majority _doesn 't_ have absolute power.
| endisneigh wrote:
| No, if the entire population of the United States, except
| the members of the Supreme Court agreed on something they
| can and would override all Supreme Court decisions. The
| Supreme Court does not function the way you think it
| does.
|
| The main reason the Supreme Court appears to have so much
| power is because our Legislative Branch has been slow to
| actually pass new laws, meaning the interpretation of
| existing laws to new scenarios is becoming more and more
| important.
| ghaff wrote:
| If an overwhelming percentage of the population disagrees
| with the Supreme Court on something, they can of course
| pass a constitutional amendment. For example, if enough
| people didn't like the Obergefell v. Hodges decision (gay
| marriage), a constitutional amendment could presumably
| (IANAL) have been passed that said states can only
| recognize marriage between a man and a woman.(This may
| get into state sovereignty issues but not important for
| this discussion).
|
| Now, as a practical matter, the Supreme Court is a
| political creature and tends not to stray too far from
| popular opinion. Thus, the decision above was possible in
| 2015. It's likely not a right they'd have "discovered" in
| 1980.
|
| However, the Supreme Court has certainly made decisions
| such as Brown v. Board of Education that were almost
| certainly not majority opinion even in many relatively
| liberal locations.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I think we have a slight misunderstanding. I'm not saying
| that the Supreme Court doesn't make decisions that are
| not popular. I'm simply responding to the original claim
| that the Supreme Court exists so the majority doesn't
| have absolute power, as you originally stated. This we
| now apparently agree on.
|
| Now, as for the rest of your post - I completely agree.
| ghaff wrote:
| You're splitting hairs. The Supreme Court is absolutely a
| check on majority rule--even if it's _also_ the case that
| it can effectively be over-ridden by a supermajority that
| goes through a typically lengthy constitutional amendment
| process. That it 's a check doesn't mean that it has
| absolute final say for all time.
| rsync wrote:
| "What we need is the next higher level of government to set
| basic ground rules."
|
| (to the parallel discussion, further upthread ...)
|
| Here is a very good example of the state of the current
| debate that I was referring to. Democratic processes that
| produce undesirable outcomes are rejected.
|
| Or, as I said:
|
| "Democracy for me but not for thee."
| sobellian wrote:
| Fortunately in the US, it's democracy all the way down
| (up?). The issue is that while municipal zoning boards are
| great at producing good outcomes for homeowners they are
| terrible at producing good outcomes for the _region_ 's
| residents. Unless we're going to start arguing for the
| abolition of state / federal governments then it's
| perfectly reasonable to discuss which democratic body best
| encompasses all the stakeholders. We don't let towns vote
| to secede from the US either.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Cities in California are creatures of the state. The state
| can usurp any of their powers, your thoughts about ideal,
| spherical, frictionless democracy notwithstanding. It's the
| same principle under which the state of Georgia is unable
| to simply vote that black people aren't humans, because the
| federal government forbids it.
| rsync wrote:
| Did you support non-federal legalization of Marijuana in
| California ?
|
| I did.
|
| I hope you'll continue to forgive me if it seems, to me,
| that many people are very excited about local control
| _when it produces results they agree with_.
| Ao7bei3s wrote:
| The difference is that the legalization only affects the
| people in that region, whereas exclusionary housing
| policies affect other people who would like to move to
| the region, but cannot (because they did not get into the
| region fast enough, for example, because they are young)
| and therefore cannot vote on this issue.
|
| _That_ is literally "Democracy for me but not for
| thee." - people who made it there early ("me") can vote,
| and do (effectively) vote to keep newcomers ("thee") out
| and therefore not voting on those "local" policies. Yet
| somehow you turn it on its head.
|
| I think policies should be decided at the level at which
| they affect people. As an example that I think we can
| both agree on: Foreign policy -> federal. Noise
| ordinances -> county. Would you consider this "Democracy
| for me not thee" as well?
|
| I don't care whether I convince you, but I would really
| like to understand how your viewpoint interacts with my
| argument. If I understand it right, the core of our
| disagreement seems to be that I consider everyone who
| _wants_ to move somewhere a stakeholder who should be
| able to vote, and you only consider people who _already_
| are somewhere. The rest follows from that.
| runako wrote:
| > the same principle under which the state of Georgia is
| unable to simply vote that black people aren't humans,
| because the federal government forbids it.
|
| I think in this context, it's fair to note that this
| situation is itself something that can be changed by a
| minority of voters nationwide + another minority in
| Georgia.
| ed312 wrote:
| You literally just need a thin majority of people in a
| community to force through zoning changes. Maybe people
| actually prefer to both live in and live around SFH-style
| development?
| jonahx wrote:
| Honest question:
|
| Is the argument that, as a developer, I should be able to
| construct a large building with 1-person apartments the size of
| prison cells, say, if there is a market for that? Should the
| only limit be restrictions imposed by fire safety policy or
| similar?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| These are called SROs and their demolition in SF is among one
| of the many causes of the current visible homelessness.
| jdeibele wrote:
| Before we moved to our current house, a house a couple of
| blocks away was a meth lab, there was an accidental fire, and
| the fire department let it burn to the ground.
|
| My next door neighbor bought the property and had to go before
| the local neighborhood association to get their approval for
| building 4 houses on the acre of property. They were not happy
| with the idea of trading 1 for 4 until he showed them that one
| alternative was putting 28 townhomes on there instead. Then
| they got on board with his plan.
|
| As I understand it, the city would not have allowed a single
| home to have been built on the property. 4 was the absolute
| minimum.
|
| This is Portland, Oregon and things are pretty different here
| compared to a lot of other places.
| caturopath wrote:
| Your argument seems to be against all zoning of intensity,
| possibly against all zoning period, and doesn't address the
| fact that living in a rowhouse across the street from a high-
| rise building or factory can suck.
|
| Certainly, R1 zoning is a scourge: low-intensity should never
| mean "large lot, huge setback, short house, one door".
| Certainly, also, a land value tax that is allowed to grow with
| actual value should charge folks based on what they're taking
| from society by living somewhere (or whatever other use), to
| make single-family homes and parking lots and the like pay
| their fair share if they are going to exist. But I still think
| you might be making too sweeping of a statement in this post.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Zoning period _only_ exists to stop people of particular
| races from moving into neighborhoods.
|
| All the other things we see as benefits of zoning came later,
| in order to justify that original reason.
|
| And most of the things we assume zoning is protecting us from
| are misunderstandings. "A rowhouse across the street from a
| high rise building or factory" is not something government
| has any constitutional basis to regulate on its own; all that
| comes from a court case that was pretty explicitly to keep
| black people away from white people.
| caturopath wrote:
| > Zoning period only exists to stop people of particular
| races from moving into neighborhoods.
|
| This is NOT true.
|
| The initial zoning was to separate incompatible industrial
| uses from urban uses. A long time ago, people built nasty
| factories across from housing, a quality of life and public
| health disaster.
|
| US zoning is a disaster again, of course: we have very
| little mixing for compatible uses (for example low-
| intensity commercial use near residential) and huge swaths
| of inefficient low-intensity zoning.
|
| -----
|
| That being said, the story of American suburbanization is
| CERTAINLY a story about race, and I didn't mean to imply
| otherwise. R1 was invented mostly to discriminate against
| Black people.
|
| > "A rowhouse across the street from a high rise building
| or factory" is not something government has any
| constitutional basis to regulate on its own
|
| Where in the California constitution are the relevant
| limits/enumerations on Berkeley's powers?
| endisneigh wrote:
| My argument is not about zoning at all - it's about democracy
| and the will of a population. In your example, if the
| majority of the people don't want the factory or high-rise
| building to be there, it won't be there. And if they do, who
| are you, or I to say otherwise?
|
| You either believe majority rules, or not. I happen to
| believe the former, but I do see many comments or believe the
| latter.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > You either believe majority rules, or not
|
| Coming up with a procedure to translate the opinions of
| people into actions by the state is not a yes/no question.
| There's the nuance of direct vs. representative,
| appointees, how things are structured.
|
| You can't boil down political philosophy to an "either/or"
| on democracy.
| Lammy wrote:
| It never made any sense to me either until I learned that there
| was effectively no black population to speak of in the Bay Area
| until World War II and the Second Great Migration, but now I
| just see it as a form of easily-deniable economic segregation:
| https://i.imgur.com/Ke7GP1Q.png
|
| See also: the "freeway revolts"
| u678u wrote:
| It makes a lot of sense if you like living in a neighborhood
| with single family housing.
|
| I live in an apartment, but if I had a house I'd hate for an
| apartment building to be built next door overlooking my yard.
|
| In most of the country private gated communities with HOAs are
| getting a big percentage of new housing. Keeping neighborhoods
| consistent is one of the reasons. I can't find a good link
| easily but wikipedia says 40% of all new housing in California
| is gated communities.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gated_community#United_States
| samstave wrote:
| When I lived in Alameda, I was trying to develop a tiny home
| commnunity, working with some manufacturers of high quality tiny
| homes...
|
| I hit roadblocks when I spoke to the city of alameda regarding
| their zoning laws, which required a certain square footage for
| any given home. IIRC it was >2,000SF per lot for a single home.
|
| Further, if one was to build a shared infrastructure system
| (power, sewer, water, internet) upon which multiple building
| could be erected - It needed to have a single uniform entrance.
| So you couldnt build multiple building with their own discreet
| entrance as that would count as "multi building" and violates the
| zoning law.
|
| There were some on the city council at the time (2013) that were
| trying to get this changed but it never happened - the Alameda
| City Council is rather corrupt for various reasons...
|
| But the zoning law precluded anyone from doing anything
| progressive.
| omginternets wrote:
| >Opponents of single-family zoning say it was used to exclude
| people of color from moving into certain neighborhoods.
|
| I really wish they would include a similar line about
| _proponents_ of the policy. If you 're going to change something,
| you should at least understand why it was put into place to begin
| with, and what purpose it serves today.
|
| Chances are I'm going to agree with this change, but this is
| still biased reporting of the worst kind.
| runako wrote:
| Any analysis of current housing policy & trends, alongside
| public education policy & trends would lead to the conclusion
| that the motives haven't changed much.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| Proponents of single family zoning in berekely in 1916 were
| explicitly racist. It was a way for them to exclude black
| people from town, and at the time housing segregation by race
| was both legal and common. This is quite well known.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| If segregation was legal and common, why would racists even
| need to resort to single family zoning to accomplish their
| goals of excluding people of color?
|
| Did they anticipate the end of segregation and require
| multiple fallback methods of exclusion?
| Veen wrote:
| > Proponents of single family zoning in berekely in 1916 were
| explicitly racist
|
| Yes, but it isn't 1916; it's 2021. Are proponents of single
| family zoning in 2021 motivated by racism (explicit or
| otherwise)?
| altacc wrote:
| Probably not directly, but it has that effect by proxy and
| the initial segregationist motivation is still in force.
| It's 2021 but the divides in wealth, living standards,
| outcomes, etc... still echo the racial divisions of the
| past. Hundreds of years of societal conditioning will take
| hundreds of years to fully revert.
|
| The zoning laws also have a similar effect on those who are
| priced out by wealth & income, regardless of race, leading
| to rich enclaves & poor ghettos. These are harmful to
| society as a whole, which benefits from heterogeneity.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| No, it's probably classism instead. Mandating that people
| rent or own a minimum amount of land means that you can
| keep poorer sorts out of the neighborhood, which also means
| their kids don't go to your schools.
|
| It's gated communities, enforced by the government. And
| proponents want to act like it's morally acceptable
| because...democracy, or something? As if the fact that
| people democratically voted on something always means
| they're right.
| omginternets wrote:
| >The history of American suburbanism is a story of race.
| There are other players (cars, telephones, pollution), but
| race was a major pillar
|
| Yes, but I'm asking about proponents in 2021.
| TedShiller wrote:
| Terrible idea
| chmod600 wrote:
| Are they opening up new land for development? If not, how does
| this have any practical effect?
| hinkley wrote:
| Removal of single family zoning and the enforcement of urban
| growth boundaries are usually characterized as being
| complementary techniques, rather than counterproductive.
| chmod600 wrote:
| But what does it actually change? The single-family houses
| are already there.
| hardtke wrote:
| This change will have zero practical effect. The economics of
| fourplexes and smaller multifamily units do not work. After
| purchasing the lot and tearing down or modifying an existing
| building, the costs are upwards of $750K per unit, well above the
| market value of the units. The only hope is that some of the new
| factory fabricated housing can reduce the costs to make these
| sorts of buildings feasible. Construction is the one industry
| where we've seen literally zero productive gains in the last 50
| years, and that has become the limiting factor on affordability.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| $750k is not well above the market value of fourplex units in
| Berkeley. They're selling for $800-900k these days.
| km3r wrote:
| So why is construction so expensive in bay area? 5000 sq ft
| McMansions can be built for under 300k elsewhere. Do we have
| too much regulation? Local labor is too expensive? Too much
| permitting? A difficult environment to build in (inc.
| earthquakes)?
|
| I also disagree that the economics of fourplexes don't work. If
| they didn't work at all no one would build them. In addition,
| just opening up the option for them to be built should not
| cause any issues, even if it wasn't wildly successful in bring
| more units to the market.
| djrogers wrote:
| > Do we have too much regulation? Local labor is too
| expensive? Too much permitting? A difficult environment to
| build in (inc. earthquakes)?
|
| Yes. Yes. Yes. And no, not really a factor.
| jahewson wrote:
| This is spot on, as we've seen in SF the high cost of
| construction, due to high labor costs (driven by the high cost
| of living - catch 22) means that the only way to build without
| losing money is to build commercial, high-density or luxury
| property.
| qppo wrote:
| Fat chance of this changing anything. Berkeley is liberalism run
| amok. Unless you already own property in one of the shrinking
| "nice" parts it's not that nice of a place to live, and loosely
| committing to allowing multifamily zoning is not going to change
| that.
|
| I'll bet money that even if the commitment turns into law in
| 2022, it will still cost north of $1,000,000 to actually
| construct or convert a multifamily property due to ridiculous
| permitting costs that you can't see up front.
| davidw wrote:
| Single family zoning is par for the course in most of the US,
| and it's not a particularly partisan issue. California just got
| bad before a lot of other places:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/business/economy/californ...
|
| Some places, like Houston, do a bit better through a
| combination of no official zoning and massive sprawl, but by
| and large, California isn't _too_ far off the rest of the
| country.
| orasis wrote:
| "thanks to new proposals to scrap historically racist single-
| family zoning and legalize the widespread construction of
| fourplexes."
|
| Is anyone else tired of this type of lazy advocacy that labels
| something as "racist" in an attempt to support their agenda?
| claudiulodro wrote:
| OK but historically the policies were rooted in racism if you
| continue reading:
|
| > The city was the first in the nation to enact single-family
| zoning, in 1916, which had the effect of pushing nonwhite
| people to more crowded, impoverished neighborhoods in the south
| and west. Berkeley also used racist covenants to restrict who
| could live where - Claremont's inclusion of "pure Caucasian
| blood"-residents, for instance - and with redlining maps that
| praised exclusive neighborhoods like the Elmwood for their lack
| of "Negros" and "foreign-born" inhabitants. (These maps, which
| banks used to deny loans for residents of nonwhite
| neighborhoods, have to this day been linked to premature births
| and low-weight babies.)
| abeppu wrote:
| Does the fact that this was unanimous imply that this was more
| about signaling than about achieving some real-world impact?
|
| Presumably if they can get unanimous agreement today then there
| was some point in the past when they could have passed the same
| resolution but with a mere majority, right? And if you really
| think it's important to remove these constraints in a region and
| state with a really serious housing problem, you'd want to pass
| it as soon as was feasible?
| danans wrote:
| What the article didn't originally mention is that Berkeley was
| the _first city in the country_ to adopt single family zoning 100
| years ago, in response to the large migration of African
| Americans to the West Coast.
|
| Other cities of the country, seeing the opportunity to enforce
| segregation through zoning, followed suit, and today we live in
| the consequences.
|
| Density advocates can only hope that 100 years later the counter
| trend also spreads as successfully.
|
| EDIT: updated comment to reflect updated article content.
| wonder_er wrote:
| Berkley must have been pattern-matching on Atlanta, and wanted
| to keep black people out of white neighborhoods. That's the
| explicit goal of "R-1" zoning.
|
| The original title of the zoning districts are often
| conveniently left out of modern discussions. In 1922, it was:
|
| - R1 white residence district
|
| - R2 colored residence district
|
| - R3 undetermined race district
|
| There's this "1922 Atlanta Zone Plan" (authored in part by the
| mayor of Atlanta) that outlined the R1/R2/R3 zoning paradigm
| that we all live with today.
|
| Quoting from the piece[0]:
|
| > The residence districts are further subdivided into three
| race districts:
|
| > R1 or white residence district.
|
| > R2 or colored residence district.
|
| > R3 or undetermined race district.
|
| > [...]
|
| > The above race zoning is essential in the in interest of the
| public peace, order and security and will promote the welfare
| and prosperity of both the white and colored race. Care has
| been taken to prevent discrimination and to provide adequate
| space for the expansion of the housing areas of cach race
| without encroaching on the areas now occupied by the other.
|
| I wrote about the entire document (and copied it in its
| entirety) here[1].
|
| I hope to someday see the entire zoning paradigm (residential,
| commercial, industrial) struck down, for the same reasons that
| redlining is illegal and widely understood to be immoral.
|
| [0] https://josh.works/full-copy-of-1922-atlanta-zone-
| plan#race-...
|
| [1] https://josh.works/full-copy-of-1922-atlanta-zone-plan
| [deleted]
| samstave wrote:
| I have done a lot of architecture... mostly technical
| archtectuere (data centers, dense corp HQs (goog, FB,
| Salesforce, Brocade, etc...) and a shit ton of medical (SF
| General, El Camino, Sequoia, Nome, and many others)
|
| And I have worked in a few foreign cities (Singapore, Hong
| Kong, etc)
|
| To me; Singapore is the most amazing city. But here is my
| takeaway from all of that WRT zoning:
|
| There should be no commercial property or residential high-rise
| that does not have the following:
|
| Every building should incorporate underground parking, and no
| residential building should have tenants on the ground floor
| and at ground level, there should be commercial space
| (bakeries, shops, etc.) But every building project should
| include parking and commercial space.
|
| Zoning should be much more both maleable and specific at the
| same time.
|
| It doesnt make sense off the cuff, but the thing is that zoning
| should be PER PROPERTY + ENVIRONMENT + NEED + COMMUNITY -
| REGULATION - NIMBYism
| danans wrote:
| > There should be no commercial property or residential high-
| rise that does not have the following:
|
| > Every building should incorporate underground parking, and
| no residential building should have tenants on the ground
| floor and at ground level, there should be commercial space
| (bakeries, shops, etc.)
|
| I agree with that, but this ...
|
| > But every building project should include parking.
|
| Mandatory parking minimums are a big problem - especially in
| dense areas with good transit access. They drive up the cost
| of building significantly [1].
|
| In mixed single/multi family neighborhoods, parking minimums
| make it difficult for homeowners to add ADUs and other
| structures that can help achieve higher density via
| incremental up-zoning.
|
| We should be solving our transit problems by building better
| transit systems, not by building more housing for cars.
|
| 1. https://www.brookings.edu/research/parking-requirements-
| and-...
| natchy wrote:
| > every building project should include parking
|
| How much would it cost to add parking under each building?
|
| Could that money be used toward light rails or bullet trains.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| If the alternative is surface lots which spread out the
| city and make it less walkable...?
|
| It's not like that pool of money can be put into a train,
| right?
| [deleted]
| kleiba wrote:
| _With the article doesn 't mention is that Berkeley was the
| first city in the country to adopt single family zoning 100
| years ago_
|
| You mean except in the headline?
| danans wrote:
| My bad. I italicized the wrong phrase. Fixed.
| kleiba wrote:
| Cool.
|
| Should I change my answer from "in the headline" to "in the
| 3rd sentence" then?
| danans wrote:
| It's your comment ... do whatever you want.
|
| P.S. the article and headline have changed many times in
| the last hour.
| Lammy wrote:
| The headline doesn't say _why_ restrictive zoning was favored
| by so many.
| jamiequint wrote:
| well ackshually
| jamiequint wrote:
| > With [sic] the article doesn't mention is that Berkeley was
| the first city in the country to adopt single family zoning 100
| years ago
|
| Literally from the article: "Berkeley was the first city in the
| country to enact single-family zoning more than 100 years ago."
| jeffbee wrote:
| Note that the city did nothing of the kind. They adopted a
| resolution stating their intent to reform the zoning code by the
| end of next year, a non-binding and thoroughly unambitious bit of
| foot-dragging.
| lacker wrote:
| Ah, that's a good point. Much better coverage of this issue is
| available from Berkeleyside:
|
| https://www.berkeleyside.com/2021/02/17/berkeley-may-get-rid...
|
| This resolution "could start a process", great. It seems like
| only a small part of a political battle around whether and how
| to add more housing in Berkeley. Particularly interesting to me
| is that CA Senate Bill 828 passed somewhat quietly but is going
| to force many cities across California to increase housing
| density.
| dang wrote:
| We've changed the URL to that from
| https://www.ktvu.com/news/berkeley-ends-more-
| than-100-year-o.... Thanks!
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| eh, this isn't a good read of what happened. Zoning reform
| needs to go through a lot of reviews like CEQA, and there are
| places where people can sue to slow it down. It is happening,
| this is just the legal process by which it happens.
| clairity wrote:
| zoning _reforms_ are subject to ceqa, at a legislative level?
| zoning variances on a per project basis certainly are, but
| reforms?
|
| in any case, one thing to keep in mind in any housing
| discussion is that uncertainty in its many forms is what
| principally drives up development costs. ceqa is one tool
| deployed as a weapon to increase project uncertainty, and
| ultimately drive up development costs. complex
| permitting/regualtory regimes and overly prescriptive (vs.
| descriptive) building codes (and their review processes) are
| more sources of uncertainty, risk, and untimately cost.
|
| p.s. - "4+1 by right" is my housing mantra.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Four floors over corner stores.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| yes, zoning reform and area plans are both subject to CEQA,
| there is a bill at the state level to allow rezoning for
| <10units/parcel to skip CEQA review
| Shivetya wrote:
| This is all about trying to short circuit attempts at the state
| level in reforming housing like SB10 and SB478. The first
| allows skipping of some environmental checks but the second
| goes after cities by limiting how floor area ratio
| (FAR)regulations are applied; the common tactic is to upzone a
| property to look like it permits denser housing but set a FAR
| requirement that completely blocks it.
|
| Sadly for libertarians like me it is going to take state
| intervention over cities and counties to fix it. Why is that a
| problem, well I would prefer the cities and counties to fix it
| themselves as local governance should be able to do that.
|
| However the real culprit is the entire process has been
| hijacked by special interest groups along all lines who want
| their piece of the pie or simply don't want anyone else to have
| a share of the pie. So through the elected officials by whom
| they control through contributions and media to the courts when
| all else fails it is very difficult to get anything actually
| done.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The reason why state control works better in this scenario is
| because of the law of numbers. It takes a lot more effort to
| exert control over a state than a city, town, or county. Add
| in the fact that voter interest and participation drops at
| each lower level of government, and you have a recipe for
| capture. School boards are probably the best example of this.
|
| This is a big problem in NYS, where there are too many little
| overlapping fiefdoms with different boundaries, election
| schedules, etc. that your average citizen cannot be expected
| to keep track of and hold accountable; basically government
| by obfuscation. Robert Moses did a lot of bad things, but he
| did towards the end of his career call for things to be
| consolidated at a level no lower than county level.
| [deleted]
| hinkley wrote:
| So... a Wednesday in California.
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